Newsletter for the Alumni and Friends of
Hicksville High School Hicksville, New York

The Editors:
Buffalo Bob Casale '61	Linda (Piccerelli) Hayden '60
Pat (Koziuk) Driscoll '56	Bob (Gleason) Wesley '61

Contributing Editors: Bob Gillette & Walter Schmidt

Webmaster: Roger Whitaker

To contact the editors, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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HICKSVILLE VIETNAM WAR ERA MEMORIAL - PROJECT UPDATE

We gained one new donor in August, so donations continue, but at a very slow pace. $100 was received for a new total of $19,052. After tax expenses last year, we have a total of $18,177 available to us, sufficient to build the Memorial, but not enough to maintain it after construction. Repeat donors have been very helpful, but we sure would like to see new donors help in reaching our $25,000 total goal. Details on where to mail your donation check, continue to be shown in this month's Project Update, which appears in the Honoring Our Veterans tab of the newsletter.

In addition to donations, a number of good things continue to happen to move the Project towards completion. Please see the Project Update in the Honoring Our Veterans section of this newsletter for details.

As always, should you have any new information to report for either the Confirmed or Unconfirmed Lists of Names, particularly to fill in missing data on the Confirmed List, please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

On behalf of the Project Team, we hope all of you enjoy a good, safe, Labor Day Weekend!
Joe Carfora, HHS 1962

Friday, October 13th

3:00 pm: Walk on the Jones Beach Boardwalk ~ Gather at Jones Beach Field 6. Look for the Orange & Black Banner to the West of the concessions stand. Parking is free Mon to Fri for seniors, and the parking lot 6 is on the ocean side (you can park next to the boardwalk). Wheelchair accessible and plenty of benches to sit on & chat, too.

Friday Evening: A suggested gathering spot for Friday evening: Cheers American Bar & Grill at the NW corner of Old Country Rd & Newbridge Rd (the place formerly known as Wickers in the CVS shopping center). WARNING: there is a DJ & music on Friday evenings (begins at 10 pm)

Saturday, October 14th

10:00 am: HHS Homecoming Fair Hicksville High School Homecoming Fair 2017, in the fields behind the main building. Booths from different clubs, fun fair games, a raffle and 50/50 booths supporting scholarships), and both hot and cold food will be at the Fair.

1:30 pm: Home Coming 2017 HHS Football game Hicksville vs. Herricks

3:00 pm: Tour of the old HHS campus. The principal is meeting us in the lobby.

7:00 pm to 12 pm: Saturday Night Gala

Joseph Barry Knights of Columbus, 45 Heitz Place, Hicksville, NY 11801

Cocktail hour followed by a buffet meal with a variety of hot chafing dishes, carving station, pasta & salads, as well as, an open bar (soda, beer, wine & alcohol).

[N.B. For those concerned, there is a wheelchair ramp on the side of the building and a handicapped bathroom off the main room.]

Sunday, October 15th

10:00 am to Noon: Sunday Brunch Buffet, Hilton Garden Inn Melville, 1575 Round Swamp Road , Plainview , NY

[NOTE: If you haven't made your reservation for brunch, there is still time to send in your $30 per person.]

Click here to see the attached flyer for a description of what's in the offing for the weekend and the registration form.

We are asking people to register early and spread the word, Comets '67 to reunite again.

The Newsletter

Photo Gallery

Great Photos

In this crazy capture, we see photographer Kawika Singson
getting up close and personal with lava as his shoes and
tripod begin to catch fire. The photo went viral.

An Airplane's View Of A Distant Storm

Open-Water Roll Cloud

Creative Mirror Positioning

Light Show at the Grand Canyon

"UFO" Spotted In Seattle

Waterspouts Over The Adriatic

A Full Circle Rainbow

The Studley Tool Chest

Praising The Sun

San Francisco is Steep

Sunset In Santorini

The Sky Whale

When Art Meets Nature

Shelf Cloud Over Timisoara

Flyby Eclipse

Underwater Perfection

Beautiful Barn Conversion

Just Room Enough for One Island

Abandoned Parisian Railway

Forest on Shipwreck

Their First Flight

Time-Lapse Moonrise Over LA

World's Coolest Duck .... Ever!

Down The Spiral Staircase

Whiskey On The Rocks.... Ahhhh

Moon Jelly

Forces Of Nature

Coal Train At Sunset

The Eye Of The Moon

Birthdays & Anniversaries

Memory Lane

A Look Back at 9/11

A story about September 11th that very few people know ...submitted by Joe Carfora 1962 

A chaplain, who happened to be assigned to the Pentagon, told of an incident that happened right after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11. A daycare facility inside the Pentagon had many children, including infants who were in heavy cribs.  The daycare supervisor, looking at all the children they needed to evacuate, was in a panic over what they could do.  There were many children, mostly toddlers, as well as the infants that would need to be taken out with the cribs. There was no time to try to bundle them into carriers and strollers.

Just then a young Marine came running into the center and asked what they needed.  After hearing what the center director was trying to do, he ran back out into the hallway and disappeared.  The director thought, "Well, here we are, on our own." About 2 minutes later, that Marine returned with 40 other Marines in tow.  Each of them grabbed a crib with a child, and the rest started gathering up toddlers.  The director and her staff then helped them take all the children out of the center and down toward the park near the Potomac and the Pentagon.

Once they got about 3/4 of a mile outside the building, the Marines stopped in the park, and then did a fabulous thing - they formed a circle with the cribs, which were quite sturdy and heavy, like the covered wagons in the Old West.  Inside this circle of cribs, they put the toddlers, to keep them from wandering off.  Outside this circle were the 40 Marines, forming a perimeter around the children and waiting for instructions.  There they remained until the parents could be notified and come get their children.

The chaplain then said, "I don't think any of us saw nor heard of this on any of the news stories of the day.  It was an incredible story of our men there.  There wasn't a dry eye in the room.  The thought of those Marines and what they did and how fast they reacted; could we expect any less from them?  It was one of the most touching stories from the Pentagon. It's the Military, not the politicians that ensure our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It's the Military who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag.

If you care to offer the smallest token of recognition and appreciation for the military, please pass this on and pray for our men and women, who have served and are currently serving our country, and pray for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.

This is a good read and displays one of the many good deeds that Americans did during that terrible September day sixteen years ago. However, this is a wives' tale in context only. United States Marines rush in where others fear to tread...you know "the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli". The Marines stationed at or near to the Pentagon were more concerned with a rescue mission near the impact point of American Airlines Flight 77 and concentrated on that. Their effort unfortunately turned into a recovery mission since 189 people died at the pentagon, 125 employees and 64 civilians on the plane.

A scouring of news stories from the days immediately following 9/11 through the next few months uncovered no news accounts about a cadre of Marines rescuing children from a daycare center near the Pentagon, or indeed of members of any other branch of service snatching up kids and cribs then making a protective corral of the cribs and standing guard over it. This is not a story that would have gone unreported, because even if the Marines in question had kept their peace about their actions that day, the kids, the daycare workers, and the parents of the kids certainly wouldn't have.

The tale about 40 Marines charging to the rescue (which began its online life in September 2008), possibly resulted from a mishearing, misunderstanding, or just plain exaggeration of the actions taken that day by Army colonel Dave Komar and his staff and rangers from the National Park Service to assist and protect those who had evacuated children from the Pentagon's daycare facility. Seven park rangers were dispatched to assist the group of evacuees, reaching it at approximately noon. Once there, the park rangers set up a protective perimeter around the children and blocked one lane of westbound traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway to increase safety. They then persuaded the driver of an empty tour bus to help transport the kids to a Virginia Department of Transportation (DOT) facility where they could better watch over and care for the tots until parents came to claim their children.

The park rangers did not magically appear just as the youngsters needed to be moved from the threatened daycare (they joined up with the evacuated group a couple of hours after it reached the open field), nor did they cart heavy cribs full of kids out of a building, nor did they form a ring of cribs "like the covered wagons in the West" and then stand guard outside it to keep the children from getting loose. However, they were involved in protecting a group of children moved from a daycare after the attack, with this protection involving (at least at one point) the establishment of a protective perimeter around their small charges. It's enough of a similarity to have potentially served as the kernel for the much embellished tale involving 40 Marines and a ring of baby cribs.

The most interesting story having to do with the Pentagon's daycare facility that day wasn't primarily about the children or even the evacuation, but one of the parents. That morning, Col. William Stoppel of the National Guard dropped his 9-month-old son at daycare, then continued on to his office in the Pentagon's inner ring, where he was assigned to the Department of the Army's G-1 Office processing promotion packets. News of the attacks in New York prompted this dad to want to check on his son, so at the time the plane hit the Pentagon, he was in the daycare facility on the other side of the building (and thus helped to move kids to the field spoken of earlier).

Unknown to him as he helped shepherd kids, Stoppel's office had been one of those that sustained a direct hit. Many of his co-workers had perished in the attack, including the man with which he had shared a cubicle. Stoppel himself was presumed dead for the better part of the day.

Casale's Corner

THE FUTURE

Submitted by Kathy McDonald Corey, Class of 1960

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years and, most people won't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore 's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It will now happen again with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3-D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world . This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US , young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.
Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans. (NEVER!/Albert)

Autonomous cars : In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving.
Our kids will never get a driver's licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year. Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla. Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighbourhood.
Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will take care of that strategy. With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents). We don't have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.
It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease.. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free Goodbye, medical establishment.

3-D printing: The price of the cheapest 3-D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3-D printing shoes. Some spare airplane parts are already 3-D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past. At the end of this year, new smart phones will have 3-D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China , they already 3-D printed and built a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that's being produced will be 3-D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, first ask yourself: "In the future, do I think we will have that?" and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn't work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work : 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a short time. This will require a rethink on wealth distribution.

Agriculture : There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows. Imagine if we don't need that space anymore. There are several start-ups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as "alternative protein source" (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called "moodies" which can already tell in which mood you're in. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions, if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it's being displayed when they're telling the truth and when they're not.