Sept 7
General Membership Meeting
"Welcome New Members"

Sept 27
Executive Board Luncheon

Meeting Dates
Events Schedule

ATTENTION ROBS MEMBERS RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY
POSTED 9/1/18
     You can find the membership application card for you to fill out on page 8 of the latest copy of the ROBS Newsletter, which you will be receiving in the mail. If you do not receive the newsletter, you can download the Membership Card here. The membership fee is $25. New members can also use this card to join ROBS and go to the ROBS Membership Page on this website for more information on joining ROBS and downloading the card.
    Simply fill out the card, and indicate if there are corrections to be made to your current listing in the directory. Return the card addressed to Carmen Roldan, 49 Linda Lane, North Babylon, NY 11703. Include your check made out to ROBS for $25 with "Dues" written on the memo line.

8TH ANNUAL BHS RETIREES REUNION
POSTED 9/20/18
     On Thursday, September 13, 2018 the 8th Anual Brenetwood High School Retirees Reunion was held at the Brentwood Country Club. The following is a link to view the YouTube video of the event followd by a list of the names of the atendees pictured in each numbered photo.

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Why did we do it?
     What was our purpose in taking on such an open ended “History Project”; for which we evolved a script of questions and got answers from over 150 subjects for two decades?
     We couldn’t answer the question in 1994 when people would ask “What are you going to do with the interviews?” All we could say was that for educational purposes we had to document our record now or lose the chance to preserve so many poignant accounts, funny stories and touching tales told by exemplary educators. We knew these dedicated public servants might shortly, for reasons yet unknown, be leaving Brentwood for good.
     So, we decided to let time sort out the details. We began scheduling appointments. We asked questions and listened saving for generations the essence of what it meant to have been an educator or employed, in this large public school system during the second half of the 20th century. Brentwood remains an exemplar to all others; a diverse microcosm of America reflecting 124 districts on Long Island while simultaneously resembling thousands across the U.S. We’ve accomplished something here to be proud of. Whether we were interviewed or not, ours is a claim of service that few professionals in the State of New York or elsewhere have positioned themselves to share in the way we have.
     INITIALLY the practice of sitting with a subject for an hour and giving them a hundred percent focused attention seemed somewhat daunting to a number of friends and colleagues. So much so in fact that many declined our repeated invitations to speak with us as they left careers or retired from full employment. Despite all assurances that we were not about investigative journalism or invading privacy, they deferred. Now, twenty years after we began, some are saying they may be ready. “Better late than never” we say. However, to all among you who were willing to share not only your classroom experiences and personal stories, but precious memories from your lives along with your fondest hopes for the future, we say “Thanks”. Thanks for allowing us to continue the process by paying it forward as we share these interviews with the Brentwood community and countless professionals and researchers near and far. Through an acceptance of ROBS offer of collaboration with Archivist Dr. Geri Solomon and The Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University our History Project lives on in academia as well as in the collection of the Brentwood Public Library, thanks to Director, Thomas A. Tarantowicz.
   Enjoy unlimited visits to www.robsny.org where you can watch and listen to segments from featured Interviews in the ROBS History Project Section on our Announcements Page each month. Return here to listen and learn again and again.

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED HISTORY PROJECT
INTERVIEW:
Manuel R. Vega
Administrator     He was born on Election Day November 3rd 1932 in Manhattan Physicians Hospital on the West Side, the same day Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected President of the United States His given full name was that of his father; Manuel Ricardo Vega
   It was on August 3, 1998 that Carmela Criscione and I sat in the TV studio to listen to Manny provide the account of life before, during and after arriving in Brentwood and share his memories of an amazing life and career in the District.
   His mother and father had been born in Spain. His mother immigrated when she was eleven years old, his father when he was about twenty. They met and married his father settling in NYC his mother originally moving to Pennsylvania and then to New Jersey for a short time before coming to Manhattan.
   At the time of the interview Manny was living in Sayville on the South Shore of Long Island, south of Montauk Highway one mile from the Great South Bay. During his early years, and as an only child, he was known as “Junior”, He became the beneficiary of all the attention, love and support that a set of caring parents could provide. The disadvantage in being an only child was that he had to use friends as a sounding board for his ideas about how to move through the world to achieve success without benefit of brothers and sisters. Be it known that his paternal grandfather was an architect and builder which in truth may have been the single genetic factor linking his family past to his own considerable talents and graphic abilities. An uncle on his father’s side once had traced family in Spain back to Ferdinand and Isabella and the Battle of Malaga when Spain was at war with the Moors.
    His mother’s maiden name was Fernandez. She came from a family of four. It was a large family with extended generations of 2nd and 3rd generation cousins but at this point all the original aunts and uncles were gone. His mother who was still living with Manny was 90 years old and the matriarch of her generation. His memory of her from childhood was of her always singing. Her father had been an excellent chef so he’d taught her how to cook and there were always wonderful aromas floating through the home with the sound of music that accompanied her everywhere.
    One of his earliest memories at the age of five was of being taken to Radio City Music Hall by his mother and father to see an early showing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was mesmerized. It led unquestionably to his lifelong interest in animation and the creative work of Walt Disney on the west coast. Just prior to his coming to Brentwood and over lapping his arrival here he had been fortunate to be able to go to the Disney Studios in Burbank for several years as an intern and as an educational consultant where he learned the craft of animation taking all he learned back with him to the Brentwood School District where he could be singularly instrumental in producing and directing a professional grade film called Brentwood is Many Kids , this as the district was entering its period of most expansive growth of the 50’s and ‘60’s. It was an effort by the Board of Education to show the community what the school district was doing, while showing how it had evolved from a sleepy suburban summer community of the rich and famous in the mid 1850’s to the sprawling working class bedroom community after the US Supreme Court Decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
   During his early years in Brentwood he would be called to Burbank to Disney during the summers where he was employed. From that rich emersion evolved the animation course eventually integrated into the art department curriculum at the senior high school with aspects embraced at the junior high school and primary levels. Only Manny could tell this story in the way it needs to be told. Only he could provide a window into the degree of dedication and the extent of the labor of love that enabled this effort to record such an accurate telling of the history of this community.
    He was fluent in Spanish and last visited Galicia, the region from which his family originated (northern Spain above Portugal on the west coast side of the Atlantic) in 1990. After listening to his account I had a new understanding of the meaning of the word Creole and how this word applied to Manuel Ricardo Vega with a clear understanding prior to the New Orleans definition.
   His father was about twenty years old when he arrived in the US with a letter of credit from his grandfather, which he never cashed in because he wanted to make it on his own. He worked in maintenance in all aspects of the family business having been apprenticed by his father who was a builder and architect, to take over the business some day. He knew blueprints and had been a professional soccer player in Spain before he leaving. He became Superintendent of a large housing project in Forest Hills, once he moved from Manhattan to Queens.
    From an early age of two or three Manny remembers being fascinated with drawing and coloring. His parents kept him supplied with paper, and crayons and he would draw for hours perfectly content amusing himself with what he loved doing. He spoke of a Kindergarten teacher who had once written a note and given it to him to take home to his parents. He thought it was about something bad that he had done and worried about it until his parents read it and explained to him that it was a letter of praise for the superior artistic skills he demonstrated, the likes of which this teacher had in all her many years of teaching never before seen from a student. Teachers continued to praise his talents until he got to high school by which time he had decided to pursue art as a career.