THIS MONTH'S FEATURED HISTORY PROJECT
INTERVIEW:
Eli Acosta
Science Teacher
Interview June 19, 1998

     We were privileged to receive an hour of Eli’s time for him to relate the story of his life and teaching career in Brentwood. We sat together on June 19, 1998 in the recording studio of the high school to get his personal retrospective. He told us he was born in a sleepy little town on the northwest corner of the island of Puerto Rico where he spent the first years of his life playing in fields and listening to the wind in the sugarcane. His birth mother was Rosa Marie Martinez who passed away when he was only four years old. His father was Victor Acosta but all Eli could tell us of him was that he was originally from Spain, his hair was red and it was thinning. He had little opportunity to make more memories of his father because shortly thereafter his parents separated and Victor died.
    He arrived in the United States from Puerto Rico at four years with his birth mother and older brother. From that point on he was raised by relatives he called aunt and uncle. They were his mothers second cousins once removed. The person he called his aunt was Maria Bonpart. Her husband’s name was Valentine. He was from Venezuela. Eli described them as descent, religious people who were caring and loving and the reason he grew up in a Pentecostal home. They passed along strong values, a disciplined approach to work and an example of hard working community members. They already had three children; Daniel, Valentine, Israel. David and Valentine were older. Eli developed a sports connection with Val that stayed with him all his life. Initially they all lived in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn for several years
    He attended PS 13 in Brooklyn; a series of row houses. The building no longer exists. His family lived near there on the fifth floor of a six floor tenement walk-up. He remembered getting his first paying job in Brooklyn, working in a Laundromat. It was located Between Henry and Hicks on Degraw Street. It’s also no longer there.
      It was in 1955 that a young Eli came to Brentwood to live. At that time there was no Sonderling Building and Ross was still in the planning stage. Where the high school now stands there was only farmland. Fifth Avenue was a two lane roadway. When school started for him he attended 3rd and 4th Grades in the Annex (now part of the Public Library). His teachers were, Lou Latito and Henry Masinoff a Korean Vet. who was missing a finger. There he also attended 5th and 6th Grades. When the Ross Building opened in 1957, he and Richard Edwards were both in the 7th Grade and became two of the initial members of their year to attend classes in 1957 and 1958 in the Ross Building. At home he was not without his responsibilities either. He had a plethora of chores to accomplish, among them attending to his own laundry, putting out the garbage and retrieving empty containers, gardening and even on occasion, cooking and washing dishes in the evening – all of which helped to teach him that he was a responsible contributing member of his family and of the wider community.
   When he got to the high school his Homeroom/Shop teacher was Bill Kiriluk. He became good friends with Bill and his wife Judy over the years. Stan Yankowski taught him Science and Social Studies. Eli had Milt Siler and Vince Presno for Social Studies. Ruth Rosenthal was an inspiration to him and was no doubt instrumental in his majoring in biology when he went to college. Henny was still alive then. Eli was still thinking about becoming a Pediatrician.
    Clem Stancik was Eli’s 12th Grade English teacher. It was his first year of teaching. Eugene Bradley introduced Eli to “Leningin vs the Ants”, one of the most important books he would be exposed to as a student and another reason he decided to make Biology his major
    By then baseball had become a first love. He was entertaining dreams of professional sports but by his sophomore year he’d decided that he was too skinny to follow those dreams. He spoke to us about many of the key people in his life at that time, including Roy Rapp, Wade Cummings, Frank Bruska, and Dick Simmons when he arrived in Brentwood. He described himself as a loner in high school. He graduated from BHS in 1962.