This Month's Featured Articles

Fossils, Minerals, and More!- Why Hicksville’s Gregory Museum is a Vital Piece of History

The Hicksville Gregory Museum is a vital piece of Long Island public history, located at 1 Heitz Place right off Woodbury Road. This museum was constructed in 1895 and originally served as a courthouse with multiple jail cells and a village hall for the local community. Currently, the Gregory Museum houses Long Island’s largest rock and mineral collection, as well as a multitude of fossils and exhibits that are consistently rotated on other topics related to both local and world history. Being Long Island’s only museum focused on Earth Science, it is necessary that these exhibits remain open to the public so that future generations may experience the excitement of studying our past!

Exterior snapshot of the Hicksville Gregory Museum.
Courtesy of the LI Press

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August 2026: Things I Never Knew About Leon Galloway

Introduction

When I was a student in Hicksville High, I didn’t know what to make of Principal Leon Galloway.  My older sister Marilyn had known him as her teacher, and she spoke highly of him.  She spoke highly in the same way about Raymond Rusch, whom I later knew as an Assistant Principal.  When Mr. Rusch and I first met, he greeted me warmly and asked about Marilyn.  In contrast, the few times that Mr. Galloway and I spoke seemed impersonal; he definitely did not exude warmth in my direction.

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A Mini-Skirt English Lesson

The Mini-Skirt English Lesson

     It was 1986, I was teaching an English class in a Senior High School on Long Island.

I was actually a Foreign Language teacher - French, German, Latin - but through a series of what I considered unfair administrative reassignments I found myself in front of an English class.

     It was a class of twenty-seven, twenty guys from the football team, and seven girls who were football team admirers. None were interested in English, besides that they were Seniors!

Teaching French or German or Latin is very different from teaching English. In the former, you teach structure; in the latter, you teach literature and analysis.

     So, here I was standing, The Great Gatsby in hand, trying to have them read it, understand it, and grasp its deeper meaning. A girl said, “I didn’t even understand the first paragraph.”

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