Take On Life

Hi everyone,

It’s been more than six years since Linda (Feinson) Lowenthal was separated from her family by a country and a life-threatening disease.

While most everyone — and everything — she loved were back home on the East Coast, Lowenthal was in Seattle undergoing treatment for AML, the three-letter word for acute mylogenous leukemia.

As hard as this cancer was to pronounce, it was even harder to beat.

But Lowenthal, whose parents, Robert and Debbie, ran Feinson’s clothing store in downtown Danbury for so many years, refused to give up hope, even if hope was as fleeting as a blind Powerball pick.

Except this wasn’t a lottery to get rich. This was a lottery to live.

According to the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, the odds of someone matching an unrelated marrow donor are about 1 in 20,000.

Somehow, Lowenthal beat the odds when the cheek cells of a Florida woman, Hillary Gavin-Baker, matched. With one swipe of a cotton swab, Lowenthal’s prayers were answered — only she didn’t know who to thank.

Long before Lowenthal learned her donor’s identity, you see, all she had was a small, white notecard.

“These cells come from a long line of strong women,” the card read. “I hope they will do for you what they have done for my family.”

To read more about Linda (Feinson) Lowenthal and her donor with angel wings, check out my “Take on Life” column Sunday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Consider this scene: Heated debate and staunch criticism of a house of worship planned in New York City.

Now add “some of the most (revolting) exhibitions of religious bigotry known in the United States.”

Sound familiar?

You bet, only it’s not the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero in lower Manhattan.

It’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral circa 1840.

In his 1908 book, “History of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” the Most Rev. John M. Farley, former Archbishop of New York, recounts “the 150 years of persecution Catholic New Yorkers endured under the Dutch, the English, and initially, even from the newly independent United States.”

Today, St. Patrick’s Cathedral is the most recognizable — and most important — Roman Catholic institution outside of the Vatican. But for decades in New York City, opponents of the church did all they could to prevent its construction.

According to Foley’s book, “From 1835 to 1855, so intense was the opposition to Catholics in this city that frequently the Cathedral and other churches had to be guarded at night by armed parishioners.”

While the latest fight for religious freedom in New York City hasn’t resorted to arms, the temperature of this discussion is no less heated and no less zealous than it was 170 years ago.

The difference now, of course, is the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

More than 2,700 lives were lost that day in New York City, a number that will forever weigh heavy on America’s heart.

At the same time, it is imperative to remember that a handful of religious extremists does not constitute the membership of an entire faith.

It is much too easy — and much too unfair — to cast an indiscriminate net over all Muslims when it comes to this issue. The vast majority of Muslims, after all, are peaceful, loving people.

Just like the members of St. Patrick’s Cathedral all those years ago.

To read more about freedom of religion in the 21st century, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Exclusively in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

It’s been more than 25 years since my first college moving-in day in upstate New York. It’s a day I’ll never forget.

On Tuesday morning, I headed to upstate New York once again for moving-in day, only this time, it was to help my oldest son, Michael, get settled in for his freshman year.

After a stress-free ride up the Taconic Parkway, things couldn’t have gone more smoothly.

The cargo carrier didn’t come flying off the roof of the car. (Whew!)

We found a choice spot to park near my son’s dorm. Seconds later — at least, it seemed like seconds — the brothers of Lambda Chi Alpha came out in droves to help us carry boxes to the third floor.

Next, we met Michael’s delightful RA, Paris. She reminded him about the mandatory 4 p.m. floor meeting, but just in case he forgot, she had taped a paper ribbon to the door with all the critical details.

All in all, moving-in day was a great experience for our family.

The whole thing just felt right — from the moment Michael picked up his ID card and chatted up some kids he had met at orientation, to the big barbecue the school set up outside the freshman dorms for all the new kids.

My youngest son, Taylor, is seven years away from his first moving-in day. I guess that gives me enough time to pick up an extra bungee cord for the cargo carrier.

What are your favorite moving-in day memories? Leave me a comment!

Hi everyone,

As soon as Beth Profeta slid the CD into the tray and pressed play, she felt the “spirt bumps” as she calls them, ripple across her arms.

The connection, Profeta will tell you, was instant and unmistakable the first time she heard “Mary’s Song.”

It was the saddest kind of tribute, the hushed whispers of a broken heart wrapped in the eternal embrace of guitar chords.

“I didn’t know Jessie Mayer before she wrote it, but somehow, she knew me and my family,” Profeta said Thursday afternoon at a local coffee shop. “The words were perfect.”

Mayer, a Connecticut-based singer and songwriter, also seemed to know Mary Badaracco, Profeta’s mother and the victim of a sinister cold case that’s gone unsolved for way too long.

This week marks the 26th anniversary of Badaracco’s disappearance from her Sherman home, a story that never made sense from the time it was spun.

On Sunday, Mary Badaracco will be remembered by the CUE Center for Missing Persons at Hatters Park in Danbury. The vigil will start at 3:30 p.m. and copies of “Mary’s Song” will be sold for $5, with every penny going to support the CUE Center.

“After all the evil we’ve seen, it just goes to show you how beautiful people can be,” Profeta said. “We’re so grateful to all the angels out there trying to help us find my mother.”

Everything else — the lost birthday parties, the lost prom pictures, the lost hugs and kisses — are gone forever, lost to an unspeakable crime.

Badaracco, who was reported missing Aug. 20, 1984, loved mowing the grass in her bare feet and feeding the deer by hand in her lush backyard.

She loved a good beer and a good joke. But more than anything, Mary Badaracco loved her two girls, Beth and Sherrie.

“We meant everything to her. Family was everything to my mother,” Profeta said. “My mother never would have left us without saying a word.”

To read more about Beth Profeta and her mother, Mary Badaracco, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Stanley Bysiewicz, well into his 80s but still built with the firm posture that comes with dignity and duty, pulled out his toothbrush and went to work.

Bysiewicz, the father of Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, brushed and brushed until he finally saw his reflection staring back at him.

Bysiewicz, the son of a potato farmer in Middletown, wasn’t buffing his pearly whites, mind you.

Bysiewicz was polishing the noble brass buttons of his old U.S. Army Air Corps uniform, the same uniform he wore in North Africa and Italy during World War II.

An accounting man by profession and a patriot by choice, Bysiewicz was honored in 2007 along with dozens of other World War II veterans in Middletown, all of them card-carrying members of the “Greatest Generation,” as longtime TV newsman Tom Brokaw so aptly described these heroes.

Bysiewicz, like thousands of World War II veterans across Connecticut the last three years, was awarded a certificate of recognition that day.

To the youngest members of the audience, it was just a piece of paper.

But to those who served during World War II, it was a public pat on the back, a heartfelt thank you more than 60 years in the making.

“As soon as I saw my dad coming down the aisle, I smiled. His uniform fit like a glove,” Susan Bysiewicz said Thursday night. “The brass buttons were all shiny. His shoes were all polished. He looked terrific.”

Stanley Bysiewicz, 88, is one of the lucky ones, you see. And not just because he made it back home in one piece after his tour with the 376th Bombardment Group.

Bysiewicz is lucky because he’s still here to share his story with us, to make sure his sacrifices — and the sacrifices of so many men and women from Connecticut — are not lost.

According to Susan Bysiewicz, 40 World War II veterans die every single day in our state.

Think about that for a minute.

That’s 280 World War II veterans a week and 1,120 a month, all from Connecticut.

Over the course of a year, the number climbs to a staggering 13,440 lost veterans.

If we wait to clap for Connecticut’s World War II heroes on Veterans Day in November — three months away — there will be 3,360 fewer slots in the parade route.

If we don’t stand up and cheer for these heroes now, if we don’t tip our caps and shake their hands today, we may not get a second chance.

To read more about Stanley Bysiewicz and Connecticut’s World War II heroes, check out my “Take on Life” column Sunday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.

Hi everyone,

Drew Aquilina earns a living — and a pretty good one, at that — making beautiful parks and gardens come to life with his drawings.

But the landscape architect doesn’t stop there with his inspired pencil.

Aquilina, a 1985 New Milford High graduate, also uses his drawing talent to make “Iggy” the turtle and other pond creatures come to life in “Green pieces,” his award-winning cartoon strip headed to a bookstore near you.

With a launch date set for January 2011, Aquilina is back home this week visiting friends and family, and promoting his book, “Green Pieces: Green From the Pond Up.”

The animated volume boasts more than 350 of Aquilina’s cartoons, many of which date back to the early 1990s, when “Green pieces” was a regular feature in The News-Times.

“I love nature and I love to draw and I love to make people laugh,” Aquilina said Thursday from his hotel room in Farmington. “These were cartoons I wrote back in 1992, 1993, 1994, so it amazes me they’re still kind of relevant and people are enjoying them.”

But for a long time — a very long time — Aquilina’s drawings might as well have been cave drawings.

The original artwork hibernated underneath his bed in Arizona, where Aquilina lives with his wife, Lisa.

“I hadn’t forgotten about them, but in a way I had,” said Aquilina, 43. “Lisa was looking for something under the bed about a couple of years ago and she just pulled them out. She didn’t know what they were at first.

“I had shown her the cartoons when we first met, but these were the original (storyboards). She started looking through them and she told me, ‘You have to make a book out of these.’ So that’s where we are today.”

To read more about Drew Aquilina and his debut book, check out my “Take on Life” column Friday.

Only in the print edition of The News-Times.