Paying It Forward
Like his predecessor Mabel Farley, Galloway seemed to devote as much unpaid time to volunteering as he did to his paid job as an educator.
For understandable reasons, his volunteer work often focused on youth who were at risk due to circumstance, such as summer camps or swim excursions for orphans, or for children of impoverished families. For that matter, the somewhat rough-and-tumble crew that everyone at HHS called “Galloway’s Boys ” may have come about because of his desire to help youth who were not fitting in socially, and thus were putting themselves at risk.
Galloway also volunteered in social arenas other than needy youth. Like Farley, he served on the Hicksville Public Library’s Board of Trustees, through which the library offered lectures that informed Hicksvillians of government and social developments that affected them. These lectures explained a wide range of topics, from the introduction of Social Security, to a review of how air travel was making distant vacation spots more accessible.
Still together through Galloway’s most active years in Hicksville, Leon and his mother shared a dwelling and often vacationed together. Anna Galloway died in 1966, and the following year her son finally felt free to marry, so he did. He passed away late in 1985. He is buried in a family plot in Broome County, New York, along with his parents and the siblings who died in infancy.
May he rest in Peace.
