Features

By Mary Grimes

I had lived in Brooklyn for 25 years with no idea ancestors had preceded me there. Then, a few years ago, one of my sisters turned up a 1924 account by one of our great-grandmothers about her mother.

Titled “A Sketch of A. E. W. Dewey” and subtitled “Published in the Norwalk [Ohio] Reflector,” it told of my great-great-grandmother’s childhood in Brooklyn Heights before she moved to Ohio as a young woman.

GRAND ARMY PLAZA — Speaking at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other officials Tuesday announced a partnership between the city’s three public library systems and the city’s Workforce1 Career Centers.

By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

RED HOOK — PortSide New York, a maritime-themed organization that has hosted cultural and historic programs and tours aboard the retired oil tanker Mary A. Whalen, is in a financial crisis and needs to raise emergency funds so that it won’t have to shut down on April 30.

According to PortSide, the home that the city promised on Pier 11 in the Atlantic Basin in 2009 “is not coming in a timely fashion.”

By Meghan Barr
Associated Press

BROOKLYN — All across America, men gave their sweethearts flowers and chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Michael Jennings gave his girlfriend something more memorable, if less fragrant: a tour of a Brooklyn sewage plant.

By Cynthia Magnus
Special to Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Daniel Moynihan lives with the effects of 9/11 toxic dust exposure and currently suffers from a benign though rare brain tumor that requires surgery.

On September 11, 2001, Moynihan, a Marine Corps veteran, was a volunteer firefighter in Freeport, L.I., with 18 years experience. He was at work driving a truck in lower Manhattan when the first plane struck the World Trade Center. He immediately went to Ground Zero, where he spent the next 12 hours. He was taken to Long Island College Hospital later that day to be treated for smoke inhalation, dehydration and heat exhaustion.

He worked on “The Pile,” as many responders call it, for the next month.

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — “In Korea, parents sacrifice their lives for their children, and that’s what my parents did for me. I always wanted to find a way to pay them back, and figured, why not study about aging so that I can serve even more people?”

So says Soyeon Cho, assistant professor of human services at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) in discussing her research on physical and mental health disparities in the Korean-American populations in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and New Jersey (especially Fort Lee and Palisades Park).

By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

CONEY ISLAND — When the average visitor thinks of the Coney Island area, he or she thinks of the Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, Luna Park, the beach, Nathan’s and Cyclones minor-league baseball at MCU Park.

By Paula Katinas
Brooklyn Eagle

BAY RIDGE— Love is in the air and the possibilities of romance are everywhere! In honor of Valentine’s Day, we decided to ask well-known people on the local scene how they met their mates.

We think the answers will delight you. Some may even surprise you.

Jim Clark, president of Bay Ridge Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, was a community affairs officer for the 68th Precinct when he and his wife Joanne first met.

By Zach Campbell
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

EAST FLATBUSH — Many in Brooklyn rely on Kingsboro Psychiatric Center for mental health care, particularly within East Flatbush and the surrounding area. The facility maintains an extensive outpatient care program, as well as 300 beds for those that need long-term psychiatric care. Kingsboro is the only mental health facility in Brooklyn that takes long-term patients, and within the next year it will be closed.

WILLIAMSBURG — When Alexander Berman lived in New York, he often performed in Williamsburg. Now a resident of Princeton, N.J., his performances most often take place on the floor of the living room with his young twin sons as the audience.

Berman, 33, has been battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma since 2000. He lives life to the fullest, although he doesn’t have the energy to be as active as he’d like to be. He loves to spend time with his wife, Brannan, and their young boys, and to read, write, play music and meditate.