16 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2017 16 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 16 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
POINT OF VIEW
Time, once again, to get to work
Hurricanes
unprecedented
in their force
tearing up the
South.
Unrelenting
wildfires
eating up
Northern
California.
Yet another gun
massacre, this time in Nevada with
a death toll topping the last one,
and the one before that.
Our populace has seemingly more
bitterly divided than ever before
between pockets of deep reds and
staunch blues.
For many, this is a dark time. Some
fear this is the darkest time we have
ever faced.
I’ve always said I wasn’t the smartest
member of Congress, but I do
believe I am the biggest student of
history. And if history has proven
anything, it’s that darkness can
breed brilliance and resilience.
Darkness is when we get to work.
Want proof? Just look at Route 110,
a blaze of pavement stretching from
Huntington to Babylon, cutting a
swath in Long Island’s grand commercial
canyon.
Before World War II, the Route
110 corridor was mostly potato
fields and pumpkin farms. And
in the shock of the Pearl Harbor
attack, a unique threat to our way
of life, some Americans feared that
this would be the darkest time we
would ever experience.
But that generation of Americans
turned farmland into factories and
became the backbone of America’s
middle class, the defenders
of liberty around the world. They
transformed those potato fields and
pumpkin farms into the defense
capital of America, with industrial
plants, engineering companies, an
airport and universities.
That generation crossed oceans,
stormed beaches, liberated concentration
camps, freed Europe, raced
to the Pacific and won the war.
And when the war was over, they
came back to a new job, that of
turning Long Island into America’s
greatest suburb.
And then we faced a new threat,
symbolized by the staccato beeping
of Sputnik overhead. Many Americans
feared that this would be the
darkest time we have ever had.
I’m reminded of the famous words
by President John F. Kennedy at
Rice University in 1962.
“We choose to go to the Moon
in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are
easy, but because they are hard;
because that goal will serve to
organize and measure the best of
our energies and skills, because
that challenge is one that we are
willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one we
intend to win.”
We were emboldened by the challenge.
MARTIN A. GLEASON FUNERAL HOME LLC.
CARING FOR OUR FAMILIES
FOR OVER 100 YEARS
SINCE 1913
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We looked across the black
expanse of space and said, “We can
go there, too.”
NASA did not land a man on
moon, Long Islanders and the Long
Island aerospace industry landed a
man on the moon. Leaders like Leroy
Grumman landed man on the
moon, and we transformed Long
Island from the defense capital of
America to the aerospace capitol of
America.
Kennedy’s words spurred a nation
into action. They encouraged
Americans to band together to do
what was thought to be impossible.
Then, as now, the lesson is unchanged.
We must not succumb to
the darkness, but reach out to one
another and get to work.
That’s what Long Islanders do.
STEVE ISRAEL