At its recent December monthly board meeting, the Parade Committee for Brooklyn’s 150th annual Kings County Memorial Day Parade met at the Bay Ridge American Legion Post to kick off its financial campaign.
The committee hopes to pull out all the stops this coming new year for this city’s first, and one of the nation’s oldest continuous Memorial Day parades. To help launch the effort New York City Deputy Council Leader Vincent Gentile, a staunch supporter of the parade, presented the parade organizers with a check from his discretionary funds.
The committee is chaired by Ray Aalbue, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former public affairs officer for Fort Hamilton and later for the U.S. Veteran Administration hospitals and facilities based in New York.
Aalbue is calling on everyone to help spread the word that veterans do not necessarily have to be affiliated with a veteran’s service organization to participate and march. The parade along parts of Third, Marine and Fourth Avenues will be held on Monday, May 29, 2017.
Parade President Prisco DeAngelis has announced that the committee will be holding a luncheon on Sunday, May 21, 2017, at the Bay Ridge Manor, and urges both veterans and non-veterans to help defray the costs of this historic parade.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan will be the keynote speaker at the 117th annual dinner of the Brooklyn Cathedral Club on Thursday evening, February 9, 2017, at the Marriott Marquis on Broadway in Manhattan. For reservations and more details, visit: www.cathedralclub.org.
Despite the ongoing dog fight between the governor and the State Senate and Assembly leadership to raise salaries of legislators from $79,500 to $99,500, even if a measure is signed by the governor, it’s not likely to dissuade Assemblymember Peter Abbate from running for the City Council seat currently occupied by Gentile in 2017. Gentile, the longest serving councilmember, is term limited.
On January 9, we will be joining the Bay Ridge Merchants of Third Avenue Association at its Pioneers and Civic Awards 23rd Annual Champagne Reception, as one of the group’s civic award recipients. We’re in pretty good company!
Other honorees are our esteemed editor Helen Klein, Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann, Essa Masoud, former Board 10 Chair Joanne Seminara, Sandy Vallas and John Quaglione, who will receive the first Larry Morrish Community Service Award, in addition, of course, to the 2017 Pioneers.
May her memory be a blessing 
Has Gowanus Tunnel proposal been shafted – or postponed for years?