MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Apr 25
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SCHOOL BARS ‘SATAN’ KID Officials say he vowed to kill his classmates By CAROLINA GONZALEZ and BRIAN KATES, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

A 10-year-old gifted boy said to call himself “brother of Satan” who has terrorized two Brooklyn schools was barred from classes yesterday, officials said.

The fourth-grader was kept in seclusion yesterday after he allegedly threatened to kill classmates at Public School 236 in Mill Basin — reportedly the second time in a month he had made such a threat.

Schools Chancellor Harold Levy said only that the school district “is making arrangements for alternative instruction” for the boy. A high-placed school official said that the youngster most likely would not be allowed to return to PS 236.

The boy, described as bright and enrolled in the Eagle Program for gifted students, had no prior school disciplinary record, but apparently began to unravel in late March.

On March 28, he was booted from PS 207 in Marine Park after allegedly threatening to kill several children in his class. At that time, one parent said, the boy referred to himself as the “brother of Satan” and warned classmates “not to make me go home and get my father’s gun.”

The parent, whose daughter allegedly was among those threatened, said the boy told classmates that they are “going to be with him in hell.”

At least 50 parents at PS 207 signed a petition demanding that the boy be barred from class. When officers went to the boy’s house, they found a .357 Ruger handgun licensed to his father, police said.

The Daily News is withholding the youngster’s name because of his age. Contacted at their neatly tended Marine Park house, the boy’s parents refused to discuss the case.

It could not be determined whether school officials complied with federal regulations requiring that students who make such threats undergo a psychological evaluation.

Last Thursday, the boy was quietly transferred to PS 236. But his reputation apparently followed him. “Parents were warned through the grapevine that he had been transferred,” said parent Michael Cava.

The fourth-grader had been in his new school only one day when he again threatened to bring a gun to school and kill someone, parents said.

That same day someone circulated a flyer to parents, urging them to keep their kids out of school as long as the child was allowed to attend.

The flyer proclaimed that the 10-year-old had “created a ‘Hit-List’ of children he wanted to ‘Kill’! He described the weapon (gun) he would use for this massacre in great detail. … No one is safe!”

Saul Needle, president of School Board 22, called the flyer “irresponsible,” saying it “inflamed a tense and emotional situation.” The origin of the flyer wasn’t known.

As alarm spread among parents, 317 of the school’s 650 students missed classes on Monday. Yesterday, 100 were absent.

Outside PS 236 yesterday, fifth-grader A.J. Truisi said he had played football with the boy Friday. “He was actually really nice,” A.J. said. “He just got mad and didn’t know how to handle it.”

A.J.’s mother, Christine Truisi, said, “I think a lot of parents bashed a 10-year-old boy without knowing all the facts.”

Most parents, however, were demanding answers. They were fuming that neither District Superintendent John Comer nor Principal Mary Barton attended a meeting Monday night to discuss the issue.

“The depth and the level of frustration in the audience was palpable. Parents were demanding answers,” Needle said.

With Nancie L. Katz
and Michael O. Allen

Apr 22
Love0

Tragedy for 2 B’klyn Families: Auto accidents claim 7 By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and PATRICE O’SHAUGHNESSY, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Sunday, April 22, 2001

The Stewarts and the Shetmans were two close-knit families living at opposite ends of Brooklyn who apparently never knew each other. One is African-American, the other Jewish immigrants from Ukraine.

Both families believed in being kind neighbors, keeping nice homes and rearing good children. And yesterday, both were left ravaged by car crashes that happened within two hours of each other on Friday night.

Victims of Friday’s tragic crash included Auber Stewart…

City cop Craig Stewart and his brother Cedric grieved in Crown Heights over the loss of their parents, sister, brother and aunt, who died when their minivan crashed into a bus at St. John’s Place and Brooklyn Ave. as they returned from a wake in Harlem.

In Gravesend, Aleksandr Shetman was devastated by the deaths of his only children, 15-year-old Inna and 10-year-old Svetlana, and the critical injuries to his wife, Rima. All three were mowed down when a careening Porsche mounted the curb as they walked on Ocean Parkway about 6:30 p.m..

The light-haired girls were walking with their mother and father after shopping. Inna was a student at Edward R. Murrow High School; Svetlana attended Public School 216.

Shetman, a Manhattan hotel employee who came to the United States about 10 years ago, lived with his wife and daughters and grandparents in a two-family house on E. Second St.

“They spoke Russian, so we would just say hello to each other, but they were very nice people,” said Frances Felice, who lives across the street. “They were such nice, pretty girls. I would see the mother take the little girl to school every day. I feel very sad for them.”

…and her daughter, Lorraine.

The accident occurred when Issac Chehebar, 20, of Avenue T, somehow lost control of a silver Porsche Carrera as he traveled north on Ocean Parkway and jumped the pedestrian median curb. The car struck and killed Inna instantly. Svetlana died yesterday at Coney Island Hospital. Their mother was in critical condition at Lutheran Medical Center.

Anthony Abbate Jr., 15, also was struck by the car and suffered a broken leg.

Chehebar, who tested negative for alcohol, was not immediately charged.

Meanwhile, neighbors of James Stewart, 75; his wife, Auber, 72; their daughter. Lorraine, 49, and son, Melvin, 52, stood stunned on President St., where, on sunny days, James and Auber were a fixture on the bench outside their renovated brick house.

A stoic Cedric Stewart emerged from the home to say the remaining family would “stick together and hang tough.” He described the Stewart clan as “a close-knit family, closer than most.”

Craig Stewart, 42, is an 18-year veteran officer assigned to Brooklyn Central Booking.

The Stewarts and an aunt, Zora Goins, 75, were killed at 8:20 p.m. Friday when the 1996 Dodge minivan Lorraine Stewart was driving sped through a red light and plowed into the side of a city bus.

Several people on the B45 bus suffered minor injuries, police said.

Accident investigators said Lorraine Stewart may have been racing to Kings County Hospital because her mother has a history of heart trouble and may have suffered an attack. An autopsy of Auber Stewart did not confirm that was the case, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner said.

There was no sign the van had mechanical failure, but none of the van’s occupants was wearing a seat belt, police said.

Nathan Perry, 44, who lives next door, called the Stewarts “a family from heaven. They are the type of neighbors you want living next door to you. They are close-knit.”

With Tom Raftery and Suzanne Rozdeba
Apr 20
Love0

TB Sidelines B’klyn Teach by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Friday, April 20, 2001

Teachers at a Park Slope, Brooklyn, middle school learned yesterday that a colleague who had been out of school for over two weeks was hospitalized with tuberculosis.

Health Department spokeswoman Sandra Mullin confirmed that a member of the staff at Middle School 88 has active tuberculosis but said the risk to anyone else at the school is very low.

Mullin said students will be sent home today with a letter to their parents explaining the situation. People at the school who had contact with the staff will undergo TB screening.

TB infects about 8 million people a year worldwide, and kills 2 million a year.

Health Department officials say New York City’s infection rate of the disease has declined drastically in the past eight years.

Apr 14
Love0

He’s Held in Mom’s Slaying By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Saturday, April 14, 2001

Detectives were questioning a 20-year-old man suspected of stabbing his mother to death in an argument in their Brooklyn apartment, police said yesterday.

The son apparently had been given an ultimatum by his mother, Christine Thompson, 44, to “straighten out his act” or leave home, a police source said.

Neighbors in the building on Lincoln Place in Prospect Heights heard loud music, arguing and crashing objects coming from the victim’s fifth-floor apartment during the night and predawn hours.

Downstairs tenant Naoko Ozaki, 25, said she called the building superintendent when water began pouring from her ceiling about 8 a.m.

When the super, Cresencio Alvarez, went to check out the problem in Thompson’s apartment, he heard her screaming for help and called 911.

“The police kicked the door down,” Alvarez said. “I saw only the leg. She was lying in the hallway. The blood was everywhere — on the wall and on the floor. I saw bloody footprints.”

Thompson, a guard, was rushed to New York Methodist Hospital, where she was pronounced dead from stab wounds.

The son, who works at a Manhattan Kmart, showed up at the apartment about an hour after police arrived and was arrested before being questioned at the 77th Precinct stationhouse. A kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon was recovered.

The pouring water came from a sink that apparently had been left running before the fight, police said.

Neighbor Raul Morales, 61, said the victim had trouble with her two sons.

“The big one is in jail now. The other one is a little bit out of his mind,” he said. “He looks at you with wide-open eyes, or he’s laughing like he’s crazy.”

Original Story Date: 04/14/01

Apr 09
Love0

STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Rare street hopes makeover will be worth all the hassle By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Monday, April 09, 2001

Residents of quiet 74th St., a few blocks from the Narrows in Bay Ridge, have been waking to the quaking of their homes lately as heavy machinery rolls in.

Repairs to step street at 74th St. and Colonial Road in Bay Ridge have delighted tenants, though they must endure intrusion of heavy machinery.

It is the start of a major project to replace the unusual step street linking Ridge Blvd. and Colonial Road at 74th St., as well as repair the street’s sewers and water mains.

“Let’s face it, it has to be done,” said Blanca Ortiz of 115 74th St.

But that doesn’t mean she enjoys it. “I’m in bed this morning and the bed, along with the house, was shaking,” Ortiz said.

She quickly called Janet Richichi, community construction liaison from the city Department of Design and Construction.

“I told her that I hope our houses don’t develop cracks because of the pounding,” Ortiz said. “She told me that she’d consulted with the engineers and that they’re not supposed to pound beyond a certain degree so as to not cause any damage.

“It’s an inconvenience, and the noise, but it has to be done.”

The consolation for the neighborhood is that its unusual public steps finally will be repaired.

Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D-Bay Ridge) secured the $300,000 that Community Board 10 officials told her in 1997 it would cost to fix the steps.

“In my enthusiasm and my naiveté about how these things work, I thought it was going to happen, like, right away,” Millman said.

When city officials inspected the project, they found that the sewers and water mains needed total reconstruction along with the stairway. It took the intervening four years to get the $786,000 estimated cost for the project into the budget, with the city Department of Environmental Protection picking up the tab for the remainder of the project.

City Design and Construction Department Deputy Commissioner Matthew Monahan said the street above and below the steps would have 600 new feet of curb, three fire hydrants and five catch basins to draw off rainwater, along with the new steps, sewer and water main, when the project is completed in July.

The repairs were long overdue, said Steve Harrison, chairman of Community Board 10. “The steps are unsafe,” he said.

“That they are fixing them is something that makes us ecstatic.”

Step streets are more common in the Bronx, but Brooklyn, being part of Long Island, is flatter. Harrison believes only two such street steps exist in the borough, the set under reconstruction and another set on 76th St.

Marylou Notaro of 145 74th St., who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, praised the city workers doing the job but said she was concerned about what would happen to a community garden on either side of the steps.

“About 10 years ago, we turned an area that was a dumping ground into a beautiful garden, and people from all around the neighborhood came to admire the roses and the tulips and the daffodils,” Notaro said.

“I’m hopeful that after the construction is done, we can restore the garden to the beautiful garden that it once was.”

Apr 08
Love0

Thousands Protest: Demand Palestinians be given homeland By SUZANNE ROZDEBA and GREG GITTRICH, Daily News Writers

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Sunday, April 08, 2001

Middle East tensions spilled out on the streets of Manhattan’s East Side yesterday as thousands of protesters rallied outside the Israeli Consulate to demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes in Israeli-occupied lands.

Waving posters with images of bloodied children and screaming words of protest in English and Arabic, Palestinian New Yorkers and supporters called on the U.S. to stop all funding to Israel and fight for the return of all refugees to their homeland.

Cops keep an eye on Palestinian rally outside Israeli Embassy in Manhattan.

“International law stipulates that we have the right to return,” said Arjan El-Fassed, co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestinian coalition that called the protest.

“I don’t think U.S. taxpayers want to pay Israel to continue to kill children.”

The crowd, unofficially estimated at 5,000, began assembling outside the Israeli Consulate on 42nd St. and Second Ave. in the late morning and soon stretched more than three blocks.

Shortly before 2 p.m., the throng — packed with children and teenagers — marched to Union Square, where they listened to a passionate speech from Palestinian scholar Edward Said.

Protesters accuse the U.S. of sponsoring terrorism by funding Israel.

“This is a battle against an imperialist colonial power,” Said said, winning a roar from the crowd. “This is not Palestinian violence. This is Palestinian resistance.”

Many of the protesters, some of whom came from as far away as San Francisco, carried placards with anti-Israeli slogans including “USA: Stop Funding Israeli Terrorism,” “Down with Israel” and “Zionism = Racism.”

Before reaching Union Square, protesters wearing masks threw stones at a green cardboard representation of an Israeli tank.

Traffic was tied up along the route, but police reported no arrests, despite a few heated arguments between the demonstrators and a handful of Israeli supporters.

“The U.S. is just on the brink of understanding what is going on,” said Palestinian refugee Reen Abu Sbaih, 29. “People don’t see the human side of Palestinians. We want freedom. We want justice.”

The insistence that Palestinian refugees who fled Israel when it was created in 1948 be allowed to return is one of many longstanding issues that persistently stoke violence in the Middle East.

The refugees and their descendants are spread out in camps across the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

The Israeli Consulate was closed for the day, and its officials could not be reached. But Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn) blamed Palestinian leaders for the many failed attempts at peace in the Middle East.

Similar pro-Palestinian demonstrations were held yesterday in Canadian, Australian, Spanish and Palestinian cities.

With Michael O. Allen

Dec 03
Love0

WOODLAND TO REPLACE LANDFILL Mother Nature getting back 400 acres of f ormer dumps By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

nullSunday, December 3, 2000

Forget a tree. Soon, a forest will grow in Brooklyn.

In East New York, to be exact.

Atop the former dumps on Pennsylvania and Fountain Aves. now grow mugworts, fragmites, some switch grass here and there and the occasional ailanthus, the tree that grows in Brooklyn.

The greenery doesn’t hide the rusted hulks of tire rims, the orphan gravel piles and stray dogs.

Nor can it eliminate the PCBs, other toxic wastes and pollutants, construction debris and household trash buried up to 130 feet high across the landfills’ 400-acre expanse before the dumps closed in 1985.

But onto this patchy landscape, ringed by Jamaica Bay’s splendor, an unlikely collection of interests has conspired to bring, of all things, a forest.

Starting in June and over the next four years, Brooklyn will host an experiment in landfill restoration, said John McLaughlin, director of ecological services for the city Department of Environmental Protection and the man behind the forest design.

The city will denude this acreage of its poor excuse for vegetation, cover the land with an environmentally approved plastic liner to cap the old landfills, then ship or truck in more than 1.3 million cubic yards of sandy soil.

The new soil – from a foot to 4 feet in depth – will provide the base for the forest.

McLaughlin’s design calls for 20 species of trees – 18,000 in all – 25 species of shrubs – up to 23,000 of ’em – and 30 species of grass and wildflowers across the two landfills.

All will be plants that grew on the coastline before European settlement.

In place of the landfill stench that used to waft over East New York, the aroma of hollies, birch, cedar, hickory, maple, oak and pine trees should fill the air.

There also will be trails for hiking and bicycling, picnic areas and perches for bird watching.

The price is expected to be $221 million.

McLaughlin, 40, was born in Astoria, Queens, and raised in Brooklyn. While other kids wanted to grow up to be Presidents or ballplayers, McLaughlin knew from the time he was about 10 or 11 that he would devote his life to horticulture.

“My aunt had a house on Long Island, and every summer I would go out there and plant a vegetable garden and do the shrubs and the trees,” he said. “I loved it.”

He has lived in Brooklyn since his family moved to Greenpoint when he was 2 years old. Today, he’s married and lives in Bay Ridge.

He said the East New York forest is by far the biggest project of its kind ever tackled in New York City.

“It’s a legacy to leave on to future generations,” McLaughlin said. “I’ll never get to see the final picture of what it’ll look like because it’ll take many, many years for the trees to grow to real appreciable size. But, if I could leave it on to my children or somebody else’s children to see, then that’s a wonderful thing.”

The forest, said Leander Shelley, a community leader who served on the citizens advisory committee that oversaw the restoration of the landfills, is a dream come true.

“I grew up here in East New York in the 1950s,” said Shelley, 57. “I remember the odor and the stench from the landfill, all the garbage being processed out there and dump.

“Now, people will be able to interact with nature here, in a setting like Central Park.”

The parties in this environmental reclamation are the residents who suffered because these landfills were their neighbor, the city DEP, the National Park Service, which owns much of the land as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

DEP will be responsible for monitoring gas emissions and maintaining the closed landfills for up to 30 years.

A century ago, Brooklyn did not reach as far as the spot where the landfill is located, McLaughlin said. The city’s growth led to the filling in of salt marshes in the area, first for human use, then for waste disposal that began in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We’ll just set the table, then have nature do the rest,” McLaughlin said. “We can’t duplicate it 100%. If you put [in] the scaffolding of the primary species, then through nature on its own, dispersal of seeds from wind or migrating birds, other species that go with that community would also come in.”

The hollies and other plants will provide food and nesting places for mammals and other wildlife such as hawks, owls and migratory songbirds.

“If they plant a forest that is available for people to use, it would be a beautiful spot to hike and look over Jamaica Bay,” said Steven Clemants, vice president of science at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “With the height of that landfill and the view, it would be gorgeous. There’d be an amenities value to people.”

Shelley can’t wait.

I’ll be the first one walking up there when it opens up, or try to be, anyway,” he vowed.

GRAPHIC: TARA ENGBERG John McLaughlin (l.), director of ecological services for the Department of Environmental Protection, and Geoffrey Ryan stand on what used to be a trash dump. TARA ENGBERG Bird’s-eye view of 400-acre landfill that was shut in 1985 and is being converted to forest.

May 07
Love0

Hizzoner’s Relationship Not Private Affair by JIM DWYER

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

Sunday, May 07, 2000

Last fall, a Daily News reporter wondered why the mayor had vanished most summer weekends. For years, the mayor made public appearances on Saturdays or Sundays all summer long, so reporter Michael O. Allen asked the mayor’s press office about his schedule.

Because the answers were vague, Allen asked for the mayor’s public calendars.

File a freedom-of-information request, the reporter was told — a classic stalling tactic, but Allen sent in the paperwork.

A few weeks later, he got a call from the press office. Withdraw your official request, and we’ll tell you what you want to know.

Yes, the mayor had cut way back on his weekends.

How come? Speak to deputy mayor so-and-so, the press office told Allen, and he’ll give you what you need.

The deputy mayor said the mayor was taking more private time on weekends to be with his son.

“He’s also got a new love in his life,” the deputy mayor said. He gave a long, theatrical pause.

“It’s called golf.”

We now know the mayor has developed a very close relationship with a woman who is not his wife. He brought her to the party for the New York City Marathon and to be with him on New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

And he apparently stayed at the friend’s beach home in the Hamptons many weekends last summer.

Nothing here calls for Kenneth Starr and a grand jury investigation. While Bill Clinton lied about his involvement with Monica Lewinsky and confessed to being ashamed of himself, the mayor has all but boasted about his involvement with his friend Judi Nathan. She was posing for pictures all week.

Still, anyone who files Giuliani’s nonmarital relationship under the category “purely private” is hallucinating.

When three or four New York City Police detectives have the job of chauffeuring the mayor to liaisons in the Hamptons with his friend, the public life meets the private around the Douglaston exits of the Long Island Expressway. From the city line to Nathan’s condominium in Southampton, it is 75 miles.

“There’d be one or two city Town Cars in the parking lot all weekend,” said a Southampton neighbor of Nathan’s. “These big guys would be in the cars, with the motors running when you went to bed at night, and they’d be there in the morning. There were always at least two, sometimes three or four.”

Not so long ago, a New York City mayor got in trouble for sending city detectives to Long Island. In 1991, when David Dinkins dispatched two detectives to investigate a fire at the home of a friend, Giuliani clucked disapprovingly: “This poor guy gets into trouble every day.”

Last week, I asked the Police Department how much it cost the public to have the current mayor delivered by a police taxi service to his woman friend in Long Island. I wanted to know if helicopters had been used, hotels booked, food paid for, and if there had been any repayment by the mayor for these expenses.

“We never give out details of security,” Police Chief Thomas Fahey said Friday.

“Not details of security,” I said. “This is a request for costs.”

“Then you’ll be able to see which guy made the most overtime and figure out who spent the most time with him,” said Fahey.

“Give the cost information without the names,” I proposed.

“FOIL it,” he said.

“FOIL it” means file a freedom of information request. It would do no good, Fahey assured me, but I should file it anyway.

We argued some more, and then he said to put the questions in writing. I did. Late in the day, his office called back: “The chief wanted me to tell you that our statement is, ‘We’re not responding.'”

Later on, Fahey revised his official answer: “We don’t discuss security.” Of course, some of this is security, and some of it is a taxi service provided to the mayor.

Since the city has chosen to stonewall, we are free to analyze it ourselves. It is fair to say that the cost to the public of the mayor’s personal friendship was at least $200,000, much of that having to do with overtime and the need to dedicate so many detectives making $55,000 to $75,000 annually sitting in a Long Island parking lot.

Naturally, the mayor is entitled to protection, wherever he is. So are his wife and family, who continue to live in Gracie Mansion, the official residence supplied by the public. His wife and children also have police protection and chauffeurs, a reasonable precaution.

What about Judith Nathan? Asked by The News’ John Marzulli if she also receives police protection, Commissioner Howard Safir retorted: “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

Whatever the bright line between public and private life, Giuliani long ago declared that his temperament was a force that would shape the city.

And if he were a senator, he has even declared what the standard of public morality should be. In February, he called for the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms.

“The Ten Commandments is part of our tradition, it’s part of our history,” said Giuliani.

A few weeks later, the mayor and his “very good friend” Judith Nathan marched on St. Patrick’s Day, in a parade where gays are banned for practices seen by the Catholic Church as sinful as, say, adultery.

The wife who shares a public home with the mayor was not in that parade.

Dec 19
Love0

‘AMADOU’S ARMY’ HAS NEW RECRUIT IN WINNIE MANDELA By MICHAEL O. ALLEN SUNDAY NEWS STAFF WRITER

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

nullSunday, December 19, 1999

The Rev. Al Sharpton’s efforts to recruit people for “Amadou’s Army” – a group of New Yorkers who will go to Albany for the Amadou Diallo murder trial – got an unexpected boost yesterday from Winnie Mandela.
Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist and former wife of Nelson Mandela, arrived at Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters unannounced to support the effort.
“It’s wonderful that, as we stand here and fight for a child from Africa, Amadou Diallo, the queen from Africa and everywhere else would make a surprise appearance,” Sharpton said.
“Amandla! Amandla!,” Mandela, her right fist up in the air, said, chanting the Zulu word for power and a rallying cry of the anti-apartheid movement.
“In South Africa, they used the police to carry out their racist laws, but out of that was born a progressive police movement,” Mandela said. “They did exactly what you are doing here.”
The gathering was for Sharpton’s weekly radio show, at the end of which about 200 people attending were asked to sign up to attend the trial at its new venue in Albany.
State appeals court judges stunned the city Thursday when they moved the trial to Albany from the Bronx, ruling that the four cops charged in the Feb. 4 killing of Diallo could not get a fair trial by jury in the Bronx.
Saikou Diallo, Amadou’s father, said his son’s rights would be diminished by the trial being moved to Albany and called for the federal government to take over the case.
Sharpton said the signup would mobilize the same multiracial group that protested in front of city Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan in the shooting’s aftermath.
“If the cops involved in the shooting think they’ve gotten away with something by having the case moved to Albany, they should check out Justin Volpe’s new address,” Sharpton said, calling for a rally Tuesday to urge prosecutors in the case to seek federal intervention.

Oct 03
Love0

Art of controversy: New ‘Sensation’ sparks throngs of protesters By Michael O. Allen, Michael R. Blood and Dave Goldiner, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

By Homepage, New York Daily News No Comments

nullSunday, October 3, 1999

NEW YORK — The controversial “Sensation” exhibit opened Saturday amid heated protests outside the Brooklyn Museum of Art — and a massive show of support from art lovers.
Nearly 1,000 mostly Catholic protesters prayed, clutched rosary beads and held signs denouncing the exhibit, which includes a portrait titled “The Holy Virgin Mary” decorated with elephant dung.
“Enough is enough; We draw the line here,” shouted Desiree Bernstein, a member of an evangelical church on Staten Island. “This is not art to me. This is an abomination.”
But block-long lines also snaked outside the museum as a near-record number of supporters waited to see the explosive show.
Museum officials opened the doors early to accommodate a massive crush of visitors — many of whom passionately defended the museum’s right to have the exhibit.
“I don’t feel it’s offensive at all,” said Julie Durkin, 21, a student at Parsons School of Design. “People just need to be open-minded.”
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who started the controversy over the show when he denounced it 10 days ago, was nowhere to be seen.
Aides said the mayor — who slashed city funding and plans to sue to evict the century-old museum — did not plan to comment on the opening.
He seemed like the only New Yorker keeping his lips sealed Saturday, as protesters of all stripes created a near-carnival atmosphere outside the stately museum on Eastern Parkway.
Conservative politicians blasted the exhibit as a “hate crime.” Catholic activists handed out anti-exhibit vomit bags, and a nun held a sign reading, “Defend your Holy Mother against this porno.”
They were joined in an unlikely alliance by animal rights activists, who object to several works in the exhibit that include dead animals.
“There’s a fundamental difference between free expression and art that causes harm to living beings,” said Adam Weissman of the Animal Defense League.
On the other side of the trenches in the budding cultural war, a potpourri of artists and First Amendment advocates also rallied behind a separate set of police barricades.
Gary Schwartz, executive director of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, handed out leaflets reading, “Hey, Rudy, I’m a taxpayer too.”
“The purpose of art is to challenge,” Schwartz said. “Whether it offends some people shouldn’t determine whether other people can see a painting.”
One artist dressed in a Grim Reaper costume to dramatize Giuliani’s supposed antipathy toward the arts. Others held signs of the mayor’s face splattered with dung.
Despite the tension, the protests were peaceful, with police reporting only a few shouting matches. One veteran anti-Giuliani protester, Robert Lederman, was arrested when he refused to stay behind the barricades, police said.
Police said there was a bomb threat at the building earlier.

SHOWING: Betsy Feliciano, above left, carries a picture of the Virgin Mary during a protest Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Viewers, left, examine Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” during opening day of the British exhibit.
MUSEUM SHOWING: John Dixon looks at “Angel” a silicone and acrylic sculpture by artist Ron Mueck during the opening day of the controversial British “Sensation” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York on Saturday. New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani opposes the show.null

Sep 26
Love0

After 27 years, man retires from job as keeper of Lady Liberty’s flame By MICHAEL O. ALLEN

By Homepage, New York Daily News One Comment

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Over the years, Charlie DeLeo figures, he must have climbed the iron girders through the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty to the torch more than 2,500 times.

“I knew it was time to leave because my legs gave out,” he conceded one day last week.

Thursday was DeLeo’s final day on the job changing Lady Liberty’s 750 light bulbs, a job he did for more than 27 remarkable–and much-chronicled–years.

For the occasion, friends and co-workers held a long sendoff picnic for him. Perched on his head was an off-white baseball cap they gave him. Embroidered on it were the words “Keeper of the Flame.”

“I had butterflies in my stomach, because, you know, I’ve spend most of my life working at the Statue of Liberty,” he said of his last day on the job.

Reminiscing with his co-workers, DeLeo recalled that Americans had just walked on the moon for the first time and were still dying in Vietnam when he began his life’s work.

His love affair with the Statue of Liberty began when he was 9 years old. His fourth-grade class from Public School 42 on the lower East Side made a trip to the island in 1957.

He visited again in 1968. This time he was a Marine, bedecked in ribbons, including a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound he got during a mortar attack on his unit in Vietnam.

DeLeo remembers muttering under his breath as he stood before Lady Liberty, “Man, I’d give my right arm to get up to that torch one time.”

“Little did I know God would hear my prayer, and that four years later I would become the keeper of the flame.”

On impulse, during a visit in January 1972, DeLeo, who was unemployed at the time, decided to ask for a job. Three months later, he started work.

Through the years, there have been countless stories in newspapers and on television about DeLeo and his work.

“Spencer Christian once interviewed me for ‘Good Morning America,’ and he said, ‘Charlie’s job is not for the fainthearted,’ They showed me doing my thing, and then he called me Spider-Man, and I am like Spider-Man,” DeLeo said.

Though DeLeo stands little more than 5-feet-5 and weighs not a wisp over 140 pounds, “pound for pound, I’m a crackerjack,” he said.

DeLeo has devoted so much of his life to his work, there were some things he never got around to. He never married, for instance.

“I certainly don’t worship the statue, but I talk to her,” he said. “Ever since my mother died of cancer in 1974, Lady Liberty has been like a mother figure to me.”

FLEET 2 (KRT122 Vert C, 5-20-98) A U.S. Navy helicopter from Light Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 94 (HSL 94) flies by the Statue of Liberty Wednesday during the opening ceremonies of Fleet Week ’98 in New York City.

(c) 1999, New York Daily News.