Bruce Apar’s Blog

Don’t you wish you had a fancy car that came with these same parking privileges? For more information, see Bruce Apar’s Talking Points column on page 8 of May 28 North County News. Happy motoring!

Deeply heartfelt thanks from this corner to Yorktowners Ed Donovan and Patty Malan, whose husband Rich is one of Yorktown’s Finest as a police lieutenant. Each sent extremely poignant sentiments in the wake of my March 19 column about the fifth anniversary of our son Harrison’s passsing.
Mr. Donovan’s gift was a lovely poem by Edgar Guest, “To All Parents,” presumably written by the hand of God, that begins, ” ‘I’ll lend you for a little time a child of mine,’ He said, ‘for you to love the while he lives and mourn when he is dead,’ ” and ends, “But should the angels call for him much sooner than we’d planned, We’ll brave the bitter grief that comes and try to understand.” I cherish your thoughtfulness, Ed. The framed poem now graces my office wall.
Patty Malan took pains to write a beautiful note. “I was so sad for you [the day your son died] … but so happy that you had this wonderful young man in your life.” Patty, suffice it to say I was so moved by your card that I could not finish reading it without breaking down. For that, I thank you and your wonderful family, for every time I cry in memory of Harrison, they are tears only of the purest pride and joy because the angels picked a winner.
Ed Donovan and The Malans are but two more reasons relocating our family to this town and region from Long Island in 1993 is the smartest move we ever made.

Li’l Abner, which played for three performances last weekend at Yorktown High School, is an old-fashioned musical comedy that lit up The Great White Way for two years a half-century ago (in the good ol’ days when people knew how to contract the word little, because apostrophes replace letters in the middle).

Even students having a lot of fun on stage performing a fast-moving, tuneful show like this one are getting an education, and so is an audience unfamiliar with forgotten gems that are rarely revived anywhere, while we overdose on yet another mediocre rendering of Annie ad nauseam.

Music teacher Tom Arduini, who directed the production to a fine turn — complete with crisply choreographed production numbers and well-projected vocal ensembles — made that point at the curtain of the final performance Sunday afternoon. No, he didn’t mention Annie, but he did offer an incisive observation to the audience in the seats and the students on stage that this is “educational theater, not recreational theater.” That is to say, instead of just performing a show like “Annie” almost by rote for the umpteenth time, as entertaining as it may be, students interested in theater craft stand to learn more by inhabiting shows that plumb deeper into Broadway’s rich history.

Some questioned Mr. Arduini’s choice of musical this year, to say the least, yet he proved crazy like a fox in his choice. Having seen my share of school musicals the past 15 years, this staging of Li’l Abner ranks right up there as one of the very best in memory.

As brought to life by an effervescent cast of talented teens, it was funny, fast-moving, highly tuneful and eminently entertaining. The score was penned by composer Gene DePaul and legendary lyricist Johnny Mercer, a hit machine who turned out many standards of the mid-20th Century.

There was not one, but many, standout performances, yet I hesitate to single out names here because this was a team effort all the way, no less so than a varsity football or basketball or lacrosse team pulling together in the same direction to triumph as a singular unit. And the protean effort actors and stage crews and production teams invest in painstaking rehearsals is no less demanding than the draining two-a-days of pre-season football training.

At the end of Sunday’s show, Yorktown’s own theater impresario, Barry Liebman, managing director of Yorktown Stage, said to me, “Every seat in that auditorium should have been filled.” His point, and mine, is that this was a show well worth seeing. At 10 bucks a pop, there’s no better value around. Somewhat sadly, it’s human nature to respond mostly to marquee names, whether a pop singer or a Broadway show title.

Chatting afterwards in the school parking lot, senior Joe Perkowski, a cast member, who also is on the varsity baseball squad, said how much he enjoyed performing on stage and how much he had learned from Mr. Arduini, including things about himself he may never have discovered had he not stretched and pushed and expressed himself beyond the classroom and ballfield.

It reminded me of another student in whose memory our Foundation proudly supports the performing arts in the schools. “There are no small roles, only small actors,” said one teen performer named Harrison Apar. “That would be me.”

Ah, yes, but when he was on stage, making people laugh by hamming it up, he felt ten- feet tall.

Self-esteem is a beautiful thing, especially in a person who is three-feet tall.

Northern Westchester Hospital Grand Prix racer Bruce Apar, whom nobody’s mistaking for a NASCAR dad, let alone a NASCAR driver.

Never again will I entertain the notion that NASCAR drivers are something other than athletes. After a few laps around the track at Grand Prix New York in Mount Kisco — in full racing regalia (pictured above) that had me and about 30 other other thrill-seekers head socked, helmeted and jumpsuited head to toe — I was, as they say in Yiddish, shvitzing. My hair may as well have been under a shower head.

The next day, I sensed slight, dull aches in my right arm and back. But, man, was it ever worth it. The go-karts, built in France and considered the best of breed, according to Grand Prix partner and marketing VP Nat Mundy, can get up to 30 mph, but my top speed, according to the personalized stat sheet we were handed every each of three heats, was about 23 mph.

While negotiating the turns, including two consecutive hairpins, and literally looking over my shoulder to see who was on my tail, I was locked in, gripping the steering wheel with a competitive zeal that surprised me.

This event, on the morning of Saturday, March 8, was part of the Grand Prix Ball fundraiser for Northern Westchester Hospital. While the major-league players each had to pony up $1000 each, going to a great cause of course — the daVinci Robotic Surgery Program — hospital marketing VP Carin Grossman kindly invited me to experience the racing competition. Such are the perks of the working press — or the playing press, in cases like this.

However, there was the proviso that should I qualify for the semi-finals, which took place as part of the evening’s cocktail reception, I could not compete, and for a very good reason. The paying customers may not appreciate being edged out of a semi-final slot by a freeloader. Nobody needn’t have worried a second about that possibility.

In my three heats, each an endurance test of five to six minutes and 10 or so laps, I struck laughter in the hearts of the other competitors by placing 7 of 10, 9 of 11, and 10 of 11. How’s that for progress? So take that, Stirling Moss ! (am I showing my age?).

The smarter drivers — a group that emphatically did not include me — learned well the lesson served up in the orientation session by Grand Prix racing director Ari Gatoff: you are not racing against the other drivers, or even racing for the fastest heat time. Every driver’s fastest lap in each heat is used to determine your ranking.

So why, then, was I trying so insistently in the first heat to pass other drivers in my futile attempt to stay at the front of the pack? Good question.

Another faux pas I made was thinking that cutting corners was a smart strategy. Wrong again. It feels good doing it, as your rear wheels skid around the turns and do a neat little slide step sideways. The truth, though, is that such moves are too clever by half because they cut precious fractional seconds off your lap time.

By the third heat, I kinda sorta figured that out, and started to take wider turns, but the ideal turning strategy is somewhere in between the two extremes I experimented with.

To be continued …

Elyse Apar with Queen of Katonah Martha Stewart
Photo by Mr. Elyse “Bruce” Apar

The good people at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco sure know how to put on a high-octane fundraiser. As guests of the hospital for its March 8 Grand Prix Ball, named for its host venue, Grand Prix New York, a very cool kart-racing complex off Route 117, my wife Elyse and I chatted with former George Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, honorary chair of the event, and had a (very) brief encounter with the cool Queen of Katonah, Martha Stewart. Also among the crowd of 800 were Congressman John Hall and District Director Susan Spear, State Senator Vincent Leibell and wife Helen, and Yorktown Supervisor Don Peters and wife Karen.

After I told Mr. Fleischer how I enjoyed hearing his views as an articulate political commentator on channels like CNN and Fox News, his friendly advice to this an unabashed cable news junkie was, “You’re better off watching ESPN.” He and wife Becki also were quite the ballroom dancers.

The redoubtable Ms. Stewart made a million-dollar matching donation to the hospital for its state-of-the-art daVinci Robotic Surgical system, the beneficiary of the evening’s million-dollar fundraiser. The remarkable technology, used primarily for certain urology and gynecologic surgeries, is more accurate, less invasive, and reduces hospital stays and recovery time for patients.

We also had what amounted to an impromptu demonstration of her vaunted reputation as a natural organizer. When I asked about the possibility of a photo, she graciously assented to pose alongside my better half.

Foolishly thinking I could hand off my camera to work my way into the frame with the two ladies, I quickly realized Ms. Stewart had a different composition in mind as she pointed and told me to “stand over there” (a few feet from the table) to get the right angle. A bit deflated by being cropped out of the picture before it even got to the PhotoShop stage, I nevertheless played the dutiful husband, disguised as a fawning photographer, or vice versa.

There’s a lot of talk around Yorktown about what senior citizens want in the way of a new gathering place. The more outspoken among them hanker for a brand spanking new setting altogether, away from the calcified environs of the Yorktown Community & Cultural Center(YCCC), which happens to lie at the historical heart of the burgh. And who would blame them? If somebody offered to either renovate your current home or build a spiffy new one, which would you choose — especially if you weren’t paying for either choice.

YCCC itself epitomizes (or, considering its age and state, entombs) the town’s history. It was the town’s second school building (the first was situated up the road some on Hanover Street, in the general footprint where the original St. Patrick’s stone church now stands). It also happens to house what passes for the current so-called seniors center. It is, without doubt, a makeshift solution. But what is the plausible alternative right now? I sure don’t know. Does anybody?

The word plausible is fraught with all kinds of interpretations. At bottom, the most practical definition, or synonym, is “affordable.” Who among us would happily volunteer to pay our share for a senior center costing a cool several million bucks, which is the estimated sum bandied about.

On the other hand, how many hands would go up among Yorktown families if the question asked instead were who among us would happily volunteer to pay our share for a multipurpose, year-round sports & recreation center costing a cool several million bucks?

TO BE CONTINUED …

I’ve been known to get cranky, along with others, about the curious cluelessness some people exhibit in how they drive (headlights off in inclement weather, which is a state law violation, or dim bulbs at dawn and dusk, so the vehicle is barely visible until it’s on top of you, perhaps literally). There’s also the parking porkers who illegally occupy handicap spaces or lazily hog two spaces, often because, for reasons unknown, they backed in, which takes longer and is harder to execute than head-in parking. Go figure.).

Then there are those health nuts at some fitness centers who create their own space close to the building so they don’t have to walk a few extra steps from the many open spaces further back in the parking lot, even though they’re about to run a couple of miles on a treadmill and perhaps pump some iron. After all, you don’t want to overdo it by parking in the same marked spaces the rest of us overweight peons sheepishly pull into. We need the exercise; you only need a sense of civility.

I thought maybe I was overdoing it when I muttered to myself as I came upon an 18-wheeler totally barricading my side of the road while moored at the delivery bay in back of Panera Bread on Maple Hill Street in Yorktown, just up the road from the Post Office. To get around the truck’s cab, you’re forced to veer into the other lane, but a sharp bend in the road makes it impossible to see oncoming vehicles. OK, I figured, how often is that truck here anyhow, and the street is not a main thoroughfare. So I got past it as soon as I passed the truck, unscathed. Whatever, I figured — the road is lightly traveled, and maybe I worry too much about the annoyances of everyday life that are arrayed against us like so many muskets at a Revolutionary War re-enactment. They look foreboding close up, but in reality, nobody’s about to get hurt. Live and let live. Live and let go.

Wouldn’t you know it, though, that a couple of days later, I got a phone call from a Yorktowner complaining vociferously about the exact same thing. Whaddya know? I guess he takes those muskets seriously too. This no-nonsense fellow even called the police department, twice, but does not know if they followed up on his complaint. He only knows that truck keeps on truckin’, and keeps on stickin’ its nose way too far out into the road where it doesn’t belong.

Please, Panera, do something as soon as possible. That size truck is not practical for that location. Let’s not wait for an accident to happen.

The Talking Points column on page 8 of this week’s Feb. 20 North County News is all about a new doctor recruitment program under the auspices of Hudson Valley Hospital Center. It is being administered by Westchester Medical Practice, led by its medical director, Dr. Richard Becker, also known in Cortlandt as the newest member of its Town Board (elected in November 2007 in a stinging rebuke by voters to an incumbent they ousted).

Dr. Becker, a partner in the private practice of Hudson Valley Cardiology Group, is also medical director of Hospital Medicine Associates (HMA), where he manages the new hospitalist program for Hudson Valley Hospital Center.

He calls it a “trend catching on like wildfire.” At Hudson Valley Hospital, full-time internists without their own private practice, all certified in this case by the American Board of Internal Medicine, focus their efforts on in-patients who are “acutely ill.”

Two-thirds of admissions to the hospital now are managed by a hospitalist. Dr. Becker says that percentage was zero in 2005. In five to 10 years, he estimates 100% of patients will be administered to by a hospitalist. He compares it to emergency room care of years ago, when your doctor would meet you in the ER. HVHC started with three hospitalists in July 2005 and now has 10, with two more expected to come aboard by July 2008.

Dr. Becker explains the rationale: “You are stuck today with a much sicker quality of in-patient. The level of acuity is much higher. The average age is well over 80 for in-patients, versus 65+ years ago.”

Due to modern medicine that lets many maladies be treated as out-patient care, he says that “To be admitted now to a hospital, you have to have pneumonia with respiratory failure. The patients tend to be older and sicker and take more time to heal, so it is more cost effective and quality effective to have specialists in the hospital 24/7.”

Hudson Valley Hospital has four hospitalists on duty in the daytime and one at night. They are based in the hospital, and are employees of Hospital Medicine Associates.

“We do our own staffing, hiring and billing,” says Dr. Becker. “We have a contract to provide services with the hospital, so can attract high quality physicians. We have the most successful program in Westchester.”

He continues that the “key is having an administrator and board of directors who understand the problems to react accordingly in the current marketplace.”

Dr. Becker juggles his schedule by practicing cardiology in his group Monday through Friday in the morning hours, and devoting each afternoon to overseeing the hospitalist program at Hospital Medicine Associates and the physician recruitment program at Westchester Medical Practice, as described in the Feb. 20 NCN Talking Points column on page 8.

HUDSON VALLEY HOSPITAL CENTER HOSTS YORKTOWN CHAMBER

John Federspiel, president of Hudson Valley Hospital Center, presented a concise overview to the Yorktwon Chamber of Commerce board of the extensive capital construction the former Peekskill Hospital is undergoing now through 2010.

Among the major improvements will be a four-story patient tower with 84 private rooms, 150-space parking garage, expanded emergency room, operating rooms and progressive care floor. A nature boardwalk also is planned. All tolled, 110,000 square feet of new space and 23,000 square feet of renovations are in the works.

Architectural firm Perkins Eastman describes its approch as a “life-affirming environment,” bringing bright light into the rooms, says Federspiel. He noted proudly that HVHC has the “only non-wait ER in the area” and “is the only non-union hospital in the area.”

The hospital is near its $12 million fundraising goal for private donations to help pay for the expansion during the quiet period of its financing cycle, with $600,000 raised by hospital staff, including pledges of $1200 to $1500 from the building’s dietary and housekeeping departments, says Federspiel. He also cited a $1 million charitable remainder trust donation from recently retired automobile dealer Bill Geis.

NEW BOARD MEMBERS
He said that hospital board is welcoming new members Bernard Curry of Curry Auto Mall, Joseph Visconti of real estate broker RGI Properties, who is active in the Christopher Columbus Society and Elks Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and Vishnu Patel of IBM and the Yorktown Museum Board.

GEORGE PATAKI CONFERENCE CENTER
Federspiel told the Chamber board that this summer its Dempsey House building situated on Route 202 next to the hospital campus, where marketing and fundraising departments are based, will be rededicated George Pataki Conference Center to commemorate a $1 million gift given to the hospital by the former New York Governor.

PAT MORROW TO RETIRE
He announced that the hospital’s longtime marketing chief Patricia Morrow, who has been with the hospital concurrent with Federspiel’s own 21-year career there, is retiring at the end of June.

When now-suspended Yorktown High Principal John Sullivan first arrived at the school as an interim principal three years ago, one of the first students to strike up a relationship with him was Andrew Steinmetz, who had the distinction of being class president all four of his high school years.

Young Mr. Steinmetz, whose family is close friends of ours, is a natural leader. He is a freshman focusing on communications and politics at the University of Pennsylvania, and it would surprise no one who knows him to see him in the future as a high-profile media personality, perhaps holding forth on TV for the 2020 Presidential Election.

It’s also no surprise that he and his YHS cohort — which includes past class officers Ari Cohen and Kate Tessi — are planning to be present Tuesday, Feb. 26, at the Yorktown Board of Education meeting where Mr. Sullivan’s suspension is scheduled to be addressed and adjudicated. Presumably, the options are: the suspension will continue, with no immediate resolution of his status; it will end, with his reinstatement as principal; or it will end, with his termination as principal.

“Some of us will be speaking,” Andrew told me Saturday, Feb. 16, from the Philadelphia campus, where he was pledging a fraternity. “We think there will be a pretty large turnout of current students and some of them will be speaking too.

“In talking to many of the students in the building now, everybody wants to have their voice heard.”

He allowed as how even alumni like him and the others are concerned about the impact of a possible change in leadership and how it might affect YHS students, something about which he has direct experience.

“Are they going to have their principal back or be thrown into transition? Change in leadership is a difficult thing. It took us a couple of months to adjust to Mr. Sullivan when he came in. It takes awhile for a new administration to gain the trust of the student body.”

Mr. Steinmetz continues, “As difficult as a transition as that is, Mr. Sullivan made it easy because of his accessibility to students. I was in his office every single day just having normal conversations. That’s something a lot of administrators lack, the ability to have a level conversation and connect with young people. That’s something he excels at.”

The Yorktown High Class of ‘07 graduate told me that he is “trying to understand the other side of the story here. I’m trying to take an objective look at this. There’s no reason why the district would draw such negative attention to itself if they didn’t have justification to do it, but I just don’t see the rationale for it.

“I think it was done for personal reasons, kind of a power struggle, but people can work around it.” He is referring to the icy relationship between the principal and Yorktown Schools Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano, who issued the suspension (see story on home page of NCNlocal.com).

He also remarks that the high school has seen marked improvement under John Sullivan’s leadership, a point on which there is a broad agreement in the community of parents and students.

“He is an excellent principal,” continues Andrew, “and the buillding needs him around to continue its progress.”

Just about all of the reaction and commentary on the Sullivan suspension has emanated so far from his supporters and sympathizers, in large part because Superintendent Napolitano and the Board of Education have stated that they are prohibited from commenting publicly on personnel matters. However, they presumably will be commenting on this personnel matter at the Feb. 26 Board of Education meeting at Mildred E. Strang Middle School (7:00 p.m. in the cafeteria).

That leaves an inference that they choose not to comment on it until then, perhaps on advice of legal counsel, or perhaps they have a game plan that calls for revealing reasons on Feb. 26 that are a lot more compelling than a missed meeting and incomplete performance evaluations of staff.

If that’s in fact where all this is leading, Andrew Steinmetz, for one, would find it unsettling: “It’s not going to be good if they [Board of Education] pull a trick play out and we all are supporting him and didn’t know there was more information, and we all look foolish. I really hope this whole thing all works out.”

The Yorktown High Class of 2006 graduate said he was planning to get in touch with Dr. Napolitano to share his sentiments in support of his principal and friend, John Sullivan.