MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Cyclones: Overnight Sensation By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, April 29, 2001

The line of baseball fans began forming at 7:30 p.m. Friday, growing slowly but steadily, until by Saturday morning it nearly stretched around the mammoth Kings Plaza in Brooklyn.

As they waited, they talked of baseball, of Opening Days past, present and future — the next being the June 25 debut of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ new farm team.

Greg Packer, 37, a highway crew worker for the Town of Huntington, L.I., was the first on line. For his trouble, he met Cyclones executive Jeff Wilpon, son of Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the New York Mets. He also got gifts: a Brooklyn Cyclones logo baseball, pennant, hat and T-shirt.

Not far behind were old Brooklyn Dodgers fans Ilene and Myles Seitz.

“He’s the real thing, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan from way back when,” Ilene said of her 63-year-old husband. “It’s his life. He loves it. He got me — not even trying — to love it.”

Born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn, the two moved out to White Plains six years ago, although Myles still works in Brooklyn.

“This brings baseball back to Brooklyn, which has been delayed for 43 years, and I welcome it back,” he said.

By early afternoon, more than 2,000 people had shown up. More than 125,000 tickets — about half of the season — were sold.

Several games in the 3,500-seat KeySpan Park, in the shadow of the old Coney Island parachute jump, were sellouts: Opening Day — and all games against the Staten Island Yankees.

U.S. Serbs Saddened and Angry By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, April 04, 1999

Lana Todorovich was on the phone to Belgrade with an urgent message for her parents: “Get out. Now.”

In the early hours of March 24, U.S. NATO warplanes bearing bombs were on their way to Yugoslavia.

Milan and Yela Simic, 62 and 57 years old, heeded their daughter’s warning. They made the hair-raising journey through the city of Novi Sad, northwest of Belgrade, as the first bombs began to fall.

“They saw bombs and rockets fall on Novi Sad, everywhere just fire and destruction and fear and disbelief,” said Todorovich, a fashion executive from Westchester.

They traveled first to Budapest under cover of darkness, then took a flight on CFA Czech Airlines to The Hague, Netherlands. The paradox of this war and their flight from it: The United States was their ultimate haven from the fighting.

“So the very country that was bombing them,” Todorovich said, “was also their way out of this terrible situation.”

That ambiguous dynamic in which the pain of U.S. attacks was felt along with the comfort of sanctuary in America has played out with many Serb immigrants in the last two weeks.

They love America, they say, but they hate what American-led NATO forces are doing to them.

More than 2 million Serb immigrants live in the U.S., predominantly in Midwestern cities, such as Chicago and Cleveland. In the greater New York area, some 50,000 Serbs live in Paterson and Elizabeth, N.J., and in Astoria, Queens.

Many express disbelief at what they see as the unfairness and injustice of the NATO attack on their homeland. Todorovich, 33 and the mother of a 6-year-old girl, arrived in the U.S. about 10 years ago and is an American citizen. She said the bombing campaign left her disillusioned, frustrated and angry.

“I just believed that we would do the right thing, and we didn’t.” she said. “It is a violation of my American sense of morality, to go ahead and commit aggression, provoke death and atrocities in the name of protecting people from the very same thing,”

Todorovich is not alone in feeling betrayed by U.S. actions in the Balkans. Serbs interviewed in the city said they blame President Clinton, not the American people, who they do not believe support the assault on their nation.

They scoff, however, at the notion that the U.S. quarrel is with Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, not with the Serb people. In protests across the city and all over the world, Serbs have taken to wearing bull’s-eyes on their shirt fronts and backs, suggesting they are also targets of the bombs.

George Bogdanich, 50, of the upper East Side, decried what he sees as President Clinton’s bungling of the conflict.

“These obnoxious references to Hitler and Nazis and so on Clinton ought to be aware that Serbs provided the first resistance to Hitler on the mainland of Europe during World War II,” Bogdanich said.

Americans just don’t understand what is at stake in Kosovo, he said. For Serbs to give in to the Kosovo Liberation Army, many said, is tantamount to a violent separatist movement wanting to secede from Texas and Russia or China saying, “Give them what they want or we’ll bomb you.”

“It’s just a sad situation,” Bogdanich said. “But Clinton does nothing but create ill will and bad policies by demonizing Serbs.”

By bombing and threatening Serb sovereignty, he said, Clinton and NATO did for Milosevic what the Serb strongman had not been able to do for himself: wipe out opposition to him in his own country.

Bogdanich bristled at reports of fresh Serb atrocities against Kosovo Albanians since the NATO bombing began. He insisted there is no evidence of such incidents.

Like many other Serbs, he blamed the reports on a biased Western media that have taken complex issues and created a simplified picture of good and evil.

“As a result of the selective press coverage, Serbs have been demonized,” Bogdanich said.

The media, Serbian-Americans argued, tagged the Serb people as genocidal for the killing of 200,000 Bosnian Muslims. But they fail to report that many Serbs have suffered ethnic cleansing at the hands of other warring Balkan ethnic groups, they said. They cited, correctly, the 190,000 Croatian Serbs routed from their homes in 1995 by Croat soldiers being advised by retired U.S. generals under the cover of NATO air strikes.

Mark Milich, 46, a third-generation Serbian-American who lives in Port Washington, L.I., said Clinton’s arrogance was responsible for a debacle.

“Our action is not the way to free people from oppression. America, the land of the free, is now responsible for driving these people deeper into their oppression,” Milich said.

“These are the days of infamy,” said Tatjana, 32, of Bernardsville, N.J., an economist for a telecommunications company who did not want her full name used. “I just don’t believe Tomahawks [cruise missiles] can bring peace.”

Todorovich’s parents are happy to be alive. But their worldly possessions have been reduced to the two suitcases they hurriedly packed when they left Belgrade.

“My parents are just recuperating now,” she said, “trying to get over the fear, the treacherous ride through bombs, through the furnace.”

GRAPHIC: CLARENCE DAVIS DAILY NEWS RALLY: Pro-Serb protesters sporting bull’s-eye look popular in Yugoslavia march outside Grand Central Terminal last week.

ISLAM ON THE RISE; Converts, a Boom in Births Help Swell Rank of Muslims

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, November 09, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN

NADIA BARNES RECITED the shahada, or central principle of Islam.

“La ilaha illa Allah, sa Muhammadun rasulu Allah,” Barnes said after Imam Muhammed Salem Agwa: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is the messenger of Allah.”

The 23-year-old fashion designer and finance student descended from the balcony, where women pray apart from men, into the main hall of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York for a ceremony as old as time itself.

Under the copper dome of the nation’s most resplendent mosque, a gilded crescent pointing to Mecca as she was encircled by a dozen men, Barnes pledged belief in eternal life and hellfire, that “Jesus is a prophet, not a god,” that Muhammed is the “last prophet” of Allah and that Islam is the one true religion. Also, she vowed to give alms to the poor, pray five times a day and one day go to Mecca.

With that, Agwa welcomed her into the umma, or community.

“Good,” Agwa said. “Now you have faith; now you are a Muslim.”

Barnes is part of the dramatic rise for the religion of Islam in New York and in the nation.

Fueling the growth is immigration from predominantly Islamic nations, a high birthrate in Muslim families, and conversion to the religion by African-Americans and women, such as Barnes, who marry Muslims.

Immigration from countries with large Muslim populations, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, has been rising.

And, more recently, Muslims have come here from Indonesia, Africa, and, with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union, new nations like Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Many of the newcomers are highly skilled workers doctors, engineers, pharmacists who have been able to come because of less restrictive immigration laws.

The impact of Islam on New Yorkers’ lives is hard to miss, from the mundane changes, like alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules, to the most heartfelt.

The star and crescent moon now are displayed alongside Christmas trees and Chanukah and Kwanzaa candles during the winter holiday season.

Eid Al-Fitr, a feast that follows the Ramadan month of daylight fasting, was added to the 29 holy days of various religions for the estimated 100,000 Muslim students in city schools.

Mosques and traditional Muslim modest clothing now are commonplace in many city neighborhoods.

As Nadia Barnescompleted forms in a basement office of the nation’s most resplendent mosque at 96th St. and Third Ave., she spoke about the spiritualism of Islam and the calm and peace it has brought to her.

“I just felt the most strength of my life, that I was doing the right thing, that I was meant to do this,” she said.

Not only was Barnes converting to Islam, she was bringing a stray back to the flock: her husband, Muhammed Gundel, 33, a Pakistani immigrant who said he allowed his faith to lapse about 21/2 years ago.

As their ranks have grown, Muslims have done like other religions and established parochial schools for religious and cultural education.

At the Al-Iman School at the Imam Al Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, Masooma Hussain, 13, and her 11-year-old sister Fatima typify the emerging generation of Muslims.

Now of Elmont, L.I., they came to New York from Pakistan with their parents seven years ago.

The girls, wearing scarves to cover their hair, were outspoken about their place here, belying the stereotype of Muslim women as docile, compliant and oppressed.

Fatima, who wants to be a doctor, said she feels at home in New York.

“It’s not like I’m from another planet,” she said.

Marc Ferris, who teaches in the general studies program at New York University and has written about the city’s Muslim communities, said mosques bring a welcome brand of tolerance.

“In New York City, we’ve got the most international and cosmopolitan Muslim community in the world,” Ferris said. “Africans, Guyanese, Asians, Americans.”

And Muslims from countries that are mortal enemies somehow find a way to worship together in the same mosque when them come to New York, he said.

“At an Albanian mosque in Brooklyn, Turks and Albanians, who are historic enemies, pray side by side. The same with Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims. They seem to be more united here in religion because they are minorities. A lot of the Old World stuff gets buried,” Ferris said.

A source of anguish to them is when Islam is equated to terrorism. They complain that the phrase “Islamic terrorist” unfairly taints their religion for nationalistic acts by groups and individuals who happen to be Muslims.

Numan Okuyan, 42, owner of Metropolitan Graphic Art, a gallery on 82d St., notes that no one referred to Timothy McVeigh as a Christian terrorist when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma.

And, like many Muslims interviewed by the Daily News especially non-Arabs Okuyan, who was born in Turkey to Uzbek parents, blames the media for defining his faith by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Okuyan pointed out that his mosque has worshipers from all over the world; others note that Arabs make up just 20% of the faithful.

Dr. Abdul Rehman, who immigrated here in 1968 from Pakistan, recalled some of the early struggles finding a place to worship or the proper food to eat. Today, he is chairman of the board of trustees for the Al-Noor Mosque in Staten Island, which was started by Pakistani immigrants like him but now has a largely African-American congregation.

By far the largest number of Muslims in the United States are African-American converts.

The Chicago-based Nation of Islam opened a temple in Harlem in 1946 and saw membership soar when Malcolm X arrived eight years later as the imam. But its emphasis on black empowerment and exclusion of whites has been controversial.

M.T. Mehdi, secretary-general of the National Council on Islamic Affairs, said members of the Nation of Islam are not genuine Muslims because they are in a political movement, not a religious movement.

Traditional Islam is a color-blind religion, and the Nation of Islam is reacting to white racism in this country, Mehdi said. Of special concern to Muslims, he said, is the baggage Louis Farrakhan brings in his history of statements that have been deemed anti-Semitic.

But Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan reacted angrily to that characterization of his movement.

“I’m a Muslim,” Farrakhan insisted. “Don’t try to make me a politician. When we say that the Nation of Islam will be more political, it is out of our spiritual underpinning, our faith in Allah that we challenge the forces of evil in this society.”

GRAPHIC: MARK BONIFACIO JON NASO DAILY NEWS JON NASO DAILY NEWS MARK BONIFACIO BENEATH DOME of Manhattan’s Islamic Cultural Center, worshipers, including Nadia Branes and her husband, Muhammad Gundel, pray and study (photos opposite and top). Dr. Abdul Rehman and daughter Naheed (above) worship at Al-Noor Mosque in Staten Island, where he serves as chairman of the board of trustees.

SENIOR CITY-ZENS; They left only to find there’s no place like home

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, October 26, 1997

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

Horst Liepolt left New York City in 1995 for Berlin, where he was born 70 years ago, only to discover his heart belongs to the Big Apple.

Ditto for Dolores White, now retired, who yearns to live in the city again.

Howard and Arlene Sommer, in their 50s, are giving the city another whirl after their children flew the coop. And, two years into their return from a 40-year sojourn in suburbia, Mort and Sonia Goldstein are loving every second of life in the city.

In all the good notices New York City is getting for its historic reduction in crime and improved quality of life, not to mention the burgeoning economy, a little-remarked-upon but growing trend is that the city is also becoming haven to a group that appreciates the big town’s excitement: retirees and the so-called “empty nesters.”

Although statistically difficult to measure, anecdotal evidence confirms that a growing number of retirees, especially former New Yorkers, are choosing the city and spurning such traditional retirement locales as Florida, California and Arizona.

Commissioner Herbert Stupp of the city Department for the Aging said he is not surprised.

“It’s a very senior-friendly city, perhaps the most in the country,” he said.

New York is a good place to grow old because of all its conveniences, including access to health care, the most developed mass transit network in the Western Hemisphere and discounts everywhere for seniors, Stupp said.

Retirees themselves cite the ease with which they can live, the excitement of the city and its cultural offerings.

But Charles Longino Jr., a demographer at Wake Forest University, was brutally blunt on the reason the elderly are returning to the city.

“They are coming back because they’ve gotten old and widowed in Florida, and their health is failing, and they want to be near their families,” he said.

Andrew McPherson, a junior equity research analyst at Salomon Brothers, concurs.

Seniors often move to warmer climates when they retire, he said. But as they hit their mid-80s, especially when one spouse dies, they have a harder time getting along on their own.

“The kids still live up in the Northeast. Then the issue is, every time Grandma slips and falls or has a problem, the kids have to hop on a plane and fly down to Florida,” McPherson said.

It makes more sense for Granny to be near the family.

And, sensing a need, developers in the city are offering upscale continuing care and assisted-living apartment buildings, where older residents receive personal care, including help with getting dressed, bathing and medication.

Glenn Kaplan, chairman of the Kapson Group, which owns and operates 20 such facilities in the region, said his firm has another 22 on the drawing board or under construction, including five scheduled to open in the city within three months. Other developers recently opened senior care apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Other evidence supports retirees who say they are returning because of their love of the city and what it offers. Real estate firms, which are on the front line of selling and renting homes and apartments to the returnees, say they are experiencing a boom.

Andrew Heiberger, president of Citi Habitats, which rents more than 3,500 apartments a year in the city, said returnees make up about 6% of his business, up from about half that just a few years ago. His firm found an apartment for Horst Liepolt just this month.

Liepolt was a Grammy-winning jazz record producer who ran the Sweet Basil jazz club in Greenwich Village for 10 years before returning to Berlin with his wife, Clarita, two years ago.

“I thought with the Wall coming down, and with the whole rebuilding thing, it was going to be like the Wild West and honky-tonk, something happening, excitement,” Liepolt said.

He found quite the opposite.

“In those 2 1/2 years, there was no excitement, only Doomsville.”

Contrast that to an awestruck Liepolt visiting New York for the first time almost 40 years ago.

“You see it in movies, you see it in pictures, but it was another thing to actually be here. It was amazing. That was it. I felt very good and right at home,” Liepolt said.

It’s a sentiment Howard Sommer, a 57-year-old president of an investment fund who was born and reared in the South Bronx, understands.

Sommer’s journey took him briefly through Chicago before plopping him down in Long Island for 30 years of the whole suburban treatment: two children, a big house on 31 /2 acres, a swimming pool and a tennis court.

But when the kids grew up and went to college and, upon graduation, moved to Manhattan, Howard and Arlene Sommer, 55, found themselves with too much house. Howard was itching to get back to the city, but his wife was not too sure she was ready to give up the space and comfort of their home and the bonds she formed over the years.

They sold the home anyway and have been renting a Manhattan apartment for seven months now. Arlene is back in school studying to become a psychoanalyst. And Howard is having a terrific time.

“At this point in my life I want to be in the middle of everything,” Sommer said. “I love stepping out of my apartment and being on the streets and all the people and the energy and the excitement. . . . It’s good to be a New Yorker again.”

When she turned 65, Sonia Goldstein decided it was time that she and her husband, Mort, leave Plainview, L.I., and return to the city, where he was reared.

The dossier: 40 years in the suburbs, three children, a dog and a large house that had an office for Mort, a psychologist. He needed some convincing because the move meant ending his practice. Solution came in the form of a two-day-a-week practice on Fire Island. He feels now he has the best of both worlds.

And Sonia is just loving it.

“New York is the place to be when you are retired,” she said. “You are not dependent on a car. You can get to wherever you want to go with mass transportation, and you are not locked in isolation in your home.”

The couple has subscriptions to practically all the cultural institutions in the city.

“The way we get together with friends that we don’t see as much anymore is we have subscriptions with them,” Sonia Goldstein said. “So, I have a subscription to Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theater Club, the Roundabout and then in between, my daughter and I love the ballet so we go to that, either traditional ballet or Alvin Ailey.”

The older-than-60 crowd numbers 1.3 million in a city of 7 1/2 million people, so cultural institutions, even as they court families and younger audiences, find their base is highly dependent on retirees.

At the Roundabout Theatre Company, for instance, more than 30% of the 35,000 people on its subscription roll identify themselves as retired, said marketing director David Steffen.

“It’s important that everyone realize that there is this huge influx of people coming back into the city,” he said.

Dolores White, for one, has been to all the retirement places and thought they were nice — but not for her.

And when she says “I’m a city girl,” she doesn’t mean just any city.

“I’ve been to Chicago, which I liked. I was in San Francisco. I liked it. I’ve been to Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, but I like New York the best,” White said.

The 68-year-old former teacher grew up in Brooklyn, and remembers cutting class to see Frank Sinatra at the Paramount in the 1940s. She remembers Harlem, Little Italy and Chinatown.

She is now working on exchanging her rambling East Northport, L.I., home for an apartment in the Tribeca-Battery Park area, or in Brooklyn Heights.

“There’s such an array of cultural activities, restaurants, shopping . . . you could just sit on the stairs of some of the office buildings and people-watch for hours,” White said.

The city’s rejuvenation recalls for her the old days.

“We felt very free in those days, traveled in the subway with ease. I see that coming back. I see it coming back again. That is what is drawing me back to moving back to the city,” she said.

Original Story Date: 10/26/97

Teddy Bear Saves Lives: Helps mom and daughter flee Thai inferno By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

Sunday, July 13, 1997

The life line that would pull them out of the 15th floor of Thailand’s towering inferno was just out of reach, so Rochelle Stein-Salmi of Branford, Conn., borrowed her daughter’s brown teddy bear to hook the line that saved their lives.

The rescue of Salmi, 50, and her 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca, from a luxury Thai hotel that was turned into a death trap was seen on television around the world.

Rebecca swung out first on the rope harness, her teddy safely tucked under one arm.

Her mother went next, nearly tumbling out of the leg harness when she first pushed off the window ledge.

They were pulled safely to the roof.

“Well, I’ve seen it on television eight times, and I’ve seen it in the newspaper twice this morning, and I can’t stop crying,” Salmi’s sister Melanie Stein Wolf said in the family’s home.

Her voice broke and she sobbed again. “I guess it is the danger as well as the joy. We are very, very glad she is alive,” Wolf said.

Salmi, who grew up in Huntington, L.I., and Rebecca were among the lucky ones to survive the fire Friday in the Royal Jomtien Resort Hotel in the beach city of Pattaya.

The death toll reached 84 yesterday as searchers continued to find bodies piled up at exits that were padlocked by the hotel to prevent guests from skipping out on their bills.

Wolf said it was her sister’s resourcefulness that saved her life.

“My sister was very very smart. She used a wet cloth over her mouth. She used the teddy bear to extend her arm to grab the rope. She used the heavy curtain to protect her from the smoke, and she was very brave,” her sister said.

Salmi has a knack for adventure, her sister said.

“One thing that my sister did about 10 years ago, my sister and her husband sailed across the Atlantic in a 45-foot boat. Took them three weeks. I knew she was strong,” Wolf said.

In Thailand, Salmi recounted watching the blaze creep closer to the room where she and Rebecca huddled.

“I am overwhelmed to see the destruction. From my room, I could see the fire when it started and the flame from the second-floor balcony. We watched the whole fire from my room,” Salmi said.

“I think I did the right thing. . . . We put wet towels under the door, but the smoke was so heavy. I was talking by the hand phone the whole time with my friend. I did everything I could, and when the rescue came, finally, I just collapsed.”

Salmi, who is staying with an American family she met after the rescue, is angry over the lack of any safety measures in the hotel.

“The sprinkler system did not work,” she said. “The smoke alarm did not work. Nobody, nobody told us anything. No yelling about fire, nothing.”

Chinatown Fireworks Are Off the Menu By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

nullSunday, June 29, 1997

A week before Fourth of July celebrations in the city, fireworks were hard to come by in Chinatown. Not even a measly firecracker could be had.

The young men hanging around shops on Mott St. eyed a stranger warily. No, he didn’t have fireworks, said one. Not anymore. He didn’t know where to get any, either.

“Too dangerous,” he said. “Too many cops all over place.”

And he was right.

Chinatown once was notorious for barkers loudly hawking fireworks out in the open. Cars and vans and trucks would arrive on Mott St., loading up with everything from Roman candles to M-80s, M-100s, to M-1000s, which are quarter sticks of dynamite. Not anymore.

This year cops blanketed the neighborhood with leaflets warning people to stay away from fireworks and to report anyone suspected of selling them.

Additionally, a police van with loudspeakers on its roof has cruised Chinatown warning that fireworks are illegal.

The message blares: Have a safe and happy Fourth of July and help cops save fingers, hands and lives by calling (800) FIRE-TIPS to turn in those selling fireworks.

It has been like this for months.

A gift shop owner said he didn’t sell fireworks, didn’t know anyone who did and added he doubted any fireworks could be had in all of Chinatown these days.

“It’s too risky,” he said. “They could take your store from you. And if you sell fireworks out of the back of your car, they’ll take that, too.”

Recognizing New York as a major destination of bulk fireworks, where they are distributed for street peddling, police began a crackdown this year and concentrated on stopping fireworks before they got within city limits.

By cooperating with law enforcement authorities in Long Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, cops assigned to the city fireworks interdiction teams have seized 25,443 cases of fireworks, with a street value of more than $50 million, said Deputy Inspector Michael Brooks.

Brooks, who heads vice enforcement, said at least 22,000 cases of fireworks were seized outside the city. Last year, 9,500 cases were seized.

Here are some examples: A city fireworks interdiction team, assisted by Nassau County cops, stormed the residence of a Seaford, L.I., man last Thursday. After evacuating five homes surrounding Lawrence Guarino’s residence, cops seized 515 cases of fireworks valued at $400,000.

Guarino was charged with reckless endangerment, criminal possession and criminal storage of explosives.

A week earlier, the commander of the interdiction team, Lt. Al Pignataro, was off duty driving on the Long Island Expressway when he noticed a rental truck with an orange, diamond-shape plaque, identifying the vehicle as carrying fireworks.

The truck, carrying 325 cases of Class B fireworks, did not have a Fire Department permit for the load. The driver, Edward Varucene, 42, of Southampton, was charged with reckless endangerment.

And yesterday Brooklyn detectives, acting on an informant’s tip, arrested 31-year-old Carlos Mutt, who had more than $10,000 worth of fireworks and was selling them from a Putnam Ave. address, police said.

“Fireworks are no longer sold in New York City the way they were once sold,” Brooks said. “They’ve been completely driven underground.”

Firefighters responded to 1,364 fireworks-related fires in 1991, compared with 345 last year. Injuries were reduced to 38 last year from 56 in 1995.

Most of the injuries occur on and around the Fourth of July, said Dr. Armen Kasabian, chief of microsurgery at Bellevue Hospital.

“We were seeing M-1000 blasts, whole hands blown off,” he said.

Last year, Kasabian said, Bellevue treated just three minor fireworks-related injuries over the holiday.

Queens Activist Is Shot Dead

By Homepage, New York Daily NewsNo Comments

December 18, 1996

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN and JOHN MARZULLI, Daily News Staff Writers

A Queens community activist who collected teddy bears for homeless kids and helped start a volunteer ambulance service was found slain in his printing shop last night, the victim of a possible robbery.

Richard Trupkin, 64, had been shot several times in the head and body, police said.

A neighbor discovered him about 5 p.m. in the basement of the Lamarr Printing and Offset Co., on Roosevelt Ave., near 57th St. in Woodside.

Trupkin, of Valley Stream, L.I., had owned the business since 1966 and had been a major fixture in the community.

City Councilman Walter McCaffrey (D-Woodside) said he knew Trupkin for more than 20 years and described him as a “really sweet guy.”

“Any time anything had to be done in the neighborhood, Rich was always there, Johnny on the spot,” McCaffrey said.

“This is a tremendous loss,” said Witold Rak, president of the Woodside chapter of the Kiwanis Club. “He gave his time and energy to make Woodside special.”

Rak said Trupkin, a former president of the club, had recently helped organize a raffle to raise money for community projects such as purchasing food for the needy.

Trupkin had sold the winning raffle ticket and had just received $5,000 to hand over to the winner yesterday.

Police were trying to determine if Trupkin was targeted for the winnings, said a source familiar with the investigation. Detectives found the $5,000 in Trupkin’s desk, but a petty cash box on the first-floor apparently had been rifled, sources said.

Trupkin usually kept the front door of his printing shop locked while he worked in the basement. The neighbor became suspicious when she found the door unlocked but Trupkin was not upstairs.

In a 1993 Daily News profile, Trupkin said the best part of his job as an activist was “seeing the fruits of volunteer labor.”

Trupkin, who published a monthly local paper called The Woodsider, was a former member of Community Planning Board 2 in Queens and was founder of a safe haven program for youngsters among merchants in the area.

Ed Fowley, the “unofficial mayor of Woodside” and fellow community activist, said Trupkin had recently collected about two dozen teddy bears for homeless children at Bellevue Hospital.

“Rich will be sorely missed, ” he said.

Original Story Date: 12/18/96