Members of the Mineola Fire Department brought some holiday cheer to Hurricane Sandy victims recently by distributing Christmas presents to children in several communities along the South Shore of Nassau County.
The Mineola volunteers, including 16 firemen and 12 junior firefighters, traveled in three fire trucks to East Rockaway, Inwood, Oceanside, and Baldwin to bring a bit of Christmas to families whose holidays were adversely altered by the hurricane.
The trip was the result of a fundraising effort that featured a pancake breakfast at the Mineola Fire Department on Nov. 18, which drew $7,000 in donations for hurricane relief.
“The people were very generous, especially the families of the firefighters,” said Gary Mazur, an ex- chief of the Mineola Fire Department.
Mazur and fellow Mineola volunteer Brian Strauss came up using the pancake breakfast, which the Mineola department holds annually for a designated charitable purpose, to raise funds for hurricane relief efforts.
Mazur said the firefighters used the money from the breakfast to buy “a ton of toys” from John’s Variety Store in Williston Park and Walmart. The toys were wrapped by members of the Mineola Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary, who categorized them by gender and age.
Then the volunteers rode fire trucks in an excursion they coordinated with Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray, Hempstead Councilman Tony Santino, and Chris Shelton, retired chief of the East Rockaway Fire Department.
The Mineola firefighters visited firehouses in East Rockaway, Inwood, Oceanside and Baldwin.
“We distributed them to everybody,” Mazur said.
Village of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss, a longtime Mineola firefighter, said the gift-giving trip was an “incredible” experience. Strauss recalled the father of children who received presents telling him, ““I didn’t think we were going to have a Christmas.””
The Mineola volunteers Christmas visit wasn’t the first time they’d brought support to the South Shore communities. On Thanksgiving, 30 members of the department were joined by Tony Gralto, owner of the La Palma Restaurant, who donated food along with Manny Carvalho, owner of Bairrada in Mineola, to serve Thanksgiving dinners to 1,500 people in the Rockaways.
Members of the Mineola Fire Department had also assisted South Shore firefighters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as part of a rotation among fire departments assisting departments that had lost equipment during the storm.
“That’s what firefighters do,” Strauss said, adding that the Mineola department is continuing to lend assistance to the Long Beach Fire Department.
