Dear Readers,-
Hicksville Fire Department Sept. 11, 2025 Ceremony
Hicksville Volunteer Fire Department is announcing their final plans to commemorate the twenty-fourth anniversary of September 11th. The Hicksville Fire Department will commemorate the somber anniversary on Sunday, September 7th at the Strong Street Fire Station memorial. The memorial was erected in memory of Ex Chief Terrence Farrell and Honorary Chief George Howard, both who lost their lives while performing rescue efforts on September 11, 2001. Ex Chief Farrell, a member of Citizens Engine Company 3 and elite member of the New York City Fire Department, Rescue 4 and Honorary Chief Howard was an ex-Captain of Emergency Company 5 and member of the Port Authority Police Department working out of JFK Airport in the Emergency Services Bureau.Click here to continue reading Hicksville Fire Department Sept. 11, 2025 Ceremony
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My First Trip to Lithuania
My First Trip to Lithuania - Summer 1978
by Dr. Giedrė Maria Kumpikas (former Hicksville High School teacher)
Lithuania had been shut off from the Western world since the summer of 1944. My parents had fled the oncoming Russians, barely eluding them by twenty kilometers and avoiding deportation and death in the Stalinist Labor camps in Siberia.
Many years passed. First, five years as refugees in Germany; then almost thirty years as immigrants in New York. Life had been hard for my parents. They had lost their country, their relatives, their honored position in society, and had become factory workers. My mother, due to her linguistic ability, learned English quickly and was able to obtain an office job, later a job as an artist coloring photographs. Many, however, remained factory workers, although most had university degrees. Throughout these years, we progressed ever so slowly and finally bought a house in the suburbs, then nine years later, we upgraded to a better one. I graduated from college and even earned a PhD.
The memory of Lithuania, fleeing the Russians, was an ever-present factor to my parents and passed on to me as well. Lithuania! Where was it? It had actually been eradicated from the world map, yet I knew it existed, although now it was called the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. A Republic? Hardly. People could not leave; they could not write to anyone in the West, could not attend Church for fear of reprisals; lines for food and other daily necessities were long, and it was uncertain as to whether the staples would be there when your turn came.
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