In a world where unconditional love and protection for children should be expected, Reese Barnes and Robert Miller’s stories expose the harsh realities LGBTQ+ youth face in the foster care system, even after a 2012 reform. Both prevailing over abuse and neglect, they illustrate the pressing issues that remain and highlight the need for systemic change to stop abuse in the foster care system.

 “It wasn’t my fault,” said Reese Barnes, 31, who was abused by her foster dad as a teen. “It took a long time to understand that.”

 Barnes was placed in the foster care system when she was 14. By then, she identified as lesbian. She was part of her high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, had queer friends and was proud to be who she was. But when she went back home, she lived in fear to be who she was.

 “He [her foster father] thought he could abuse the gay out of me. I was attracted to girls and that wasn’t gonna change because he wanted it to,” said Barnes, as she stares up to the clouds out front of the LGBTQ+ Center in Manhattan, New York. “I was probably the only kid who couldn’t wait to go to school. I was too ashamed to tell anyone, so I made sure to just look happy all the time so people wouldn’t start asking questions.”

 In 2012, the Administration of Children Services created the LGBTQIA+ Youth Action Plan, that safeguards the wellbeing of queer children in foster care. Recently, New York City Council Committees, Women and Gender Equity, and Children and Youth held a hearing to further strengthen the policies in place.

 Before policies were created for the LGBTQ+ youth, many children in the foster care system were placed in homes that were not affirming to their queer identity. Some suffered in silence which led them to running away or aging out the foster system with nothing but traumatic experiences.

 At 18, Barnes moved in with her girlfriend’s family. Her foster father was aware of where she was but didn’t make any attempt to contact her. The last time Barnes saw her foster dad; he was finishing off a bottle of whiskey.

 “I liked when he drank because he would pass out,” said Barnes. “I didn’t have to worry about him starting a fight or touching me. I never thought I would be one of them, the ones that get abused. I wanted to kill him, but I knew I would go to jail.”

 More than one out of three youths ages 13-20, in New York City foster care identifies as LGBTQAI+. This is substantially higher than the proportion of LGBTQAI+ youth in the general population, according to reports from ACS.

 “What pisses me off is that we are in 2024 and there’s still kids having to deal with mistreatment at these homes,” said Barnes who has adopted 2 children of her own. “They are only taking reports from kids who are 13 and up. What about the younger ones? They don’t think 8-year-olds know when they are being mistreated. My kids know what mistreatment looks like. I try every day to give them the best life.”

 Barnes refuses to acknowledge her birth parents. She has created a timeline of her life that helps her mental and emotional health.

 “My life started when I was able to love myself,” said Barnes “I pick and choose what I want to be part of the timeline of my life. This part of it [being a mom], is the part I will always remember.”

 Robert Miller, 40, was removed from his home and placed in foster care at the age of 7. Miller grew up living in public housing in Brooklyn, NY. His mother would leave for her outpatient drug rehab treatments before he left for school, leaving him to get dressed and make breakfast on his own. When coming home from school, he would often witness his father selling drugs in the lobby of his building. This is what he called a “normal” life.

 “I ended up in the foster care system because my dad got arrested for selling drugs and my mom was a coke head,” said Miller “She would have me pee in a cup so she can use it to pass her drug tests. She would tell me if I don’t BCW [Bureau of Child Welfare] would take me away. I made this normal.”

 Miller’s grandparents intervened and called the police when they noticed how skinny he was becoming every time they saw him. There were days when he only ate half of his school lunch and brought the rest home for dinner. On the weekends, he would eat snacks for lunch and dinner because his parents neglected to cook for him.

 “I had popcorn for dinner a lot of nights. We had food but I didn’t know how to cook. My moms would be passed out on the couch,” said Miller “My grandparents called the cops and that’s when shit started to go down.”

 Miller was placed in a foster care home in upstate New York. He never experienced physical abuse, but he never got medical care for his mental health. After several months, he was allowed to make weekly calls to his mom, which later led to supervised visits.

 “I was able to see my mom once every few months. It was at some building that all the kids go to visit their parents,” said Miller. “It fucked me up because I was all excited on my way to see her but when it was about time to head back, I would just cry. It hurt but the pain was worth it to see my moms.”

 By 10 years old, Miller was slowly coming to understand his sexuality. He would play with his foster sister’s Barbie dolls, which led to him hearing homophobic slurs said around the home by his foster parents.

 “I used to play with my foster sisters’ dolls,” said Miller “I had wrestling action figures, but I played with the Barbies too. It was all the same to me. I knew I was different because I heard my foster mom calling me a fag.”

 During one visit with his mother, he brought one of his sister’s Barbie dolls with him. When his mother saw it, she started screaming at him, causing a scene at the visiting center. Miller’s mother was strictly religious and didn’t approve of the LGBTQ+ community.

 “She [his mom} looked in my book bag and found the doll,” said Miller “She was pissed. She started screaming at me, at my foster parents saying that they are trying to make me gay and that I will go to hell if I played with dolls.”

 Miller was 12 when his father died in jail and several months later his mother passed away from a drug overdose. He attended his mother’s funeral but has no clear memory of that day. There are many things he doesn’t remember that happened throughout his life.

 “Dissociation is common with children who experience traumatic events,” said Keith Garcia, who is a child therapist. “It can take many years, well into their adulthood to start healing.”

 By 2005, Miller aged out of the foster care system leaving him to start his life on his own. Within the first year he became addicted to opioid pills for a short period of time. He was able to get help to put an end to his addiction. He now works with individuals who have aged out of the foster care system.

 “I didn’t want to be my mom,” said Miller “I met someone who brought me to rehab and let me stay with them until I got better. Now, I do the same for the kids aging out the system.”

The three rooms of the future Bedford-Stuyvesant Museum of African Art were filled with ancient and modern figures, statuettes, and headdresses, all waiting to be seen and savored by the public. The executive director of the museum, Vira Jones, is also the owner of A.J. Archer Construction and Management, which is to develop and construct the space for African art.

In an interview with Brooklyn News Service reporter Aleah Winter, Jones discusses how arts and culture can contribute to economic development. “I want to create the Lincoln Center of Bed-Stuy,” she says.

With her current project, Jones is bringing her two worlds together and hopes to create the museum attached to luxury apartments. While people have suggested that Jones take her project to downtown Brooklyn, she insists on staying in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Mornings are very bad at the grandparents’ house. Early morning peace is interrupted by a low groaning from the narrow hospital bed that now resides in what used to be a spare bedroom. My grandfather, Carmine Angotti, who turned 84 this year, lies curled up like a child against the bars of the bed, and he doesn’t want to get up.

My grandmother asked me to come help her before I went to class because she had dismissed the home care aide, and she couldn’t lift him on her own. Not only is he a good head and shoulders taller than she, and not only is he too heavy for her to lift even at his much-diminished weight, but my grandfather had been suffering from an infection that left ugly, black sores on his foot. The infection made his already shuffling steps more labored, and his balance even worse. So my grandmother called me in to help.

I can’t do much. I’m only slightly taller than my grandmother, and the two of us together can’t support his dead weight. After many minutes of struggling we manage to get him as far as sitting at the edge of the bed, and my grandmother tries to feed him his breakfast there, which is another ordeal as my grandfather, who once had a voracious appetite, refuses to eat these days. Every time he spits out the cereal my grandmother spoons into his mouth I can see her frustration mounting, and then the doorbell rings. It’s the aide whom my grandmother asked not to come back, explaining that the train made her late. I tell her I understand how the trains are, but my grandfather needs to get up.

The aide speaks with a heavy Haitian accent. My grandfather, who is irritated by any language that isn’t his native Italian, doesn’t understand her and doesn’t like her. He tells her to leave and curses at her, but she doesn’t seem to understand him and smiles. She lays a comforting hand on his arm, and he shouts, “Non mi toccare!” Don’t touch me! That she understands, but she’s the only one who is capable of getting him into the kitchen and bathroom.

My grandmother tells me I can leave now that the aide is here. She looks very weary as I walk out the door, and it’s only the beginning of the day.

My grandfather, like an estimated 5.3 million people in the United States, has dementia. By 2050, that number is expected to go up to anywhere from 11 to 16 million people affected by this disease, according to Walter Ochoa, director of the Brooklyn facility of the international in-home care organization Right at Home. This is not an epidemic, Ochoa tells me, but instead a consequence of longer lifespans due to the miracle of modern medicine. A person’s chance of developing dementia increases after the age of 65 and peaks around the mid-70s. As of now, there are about 35 million people in the United States aged 65 and older; that number is projected to more than double by 2030. It’s a phenomenon that Ochoa refers to as the “silver tsunami”: the Baby Boomers are becoming senior citizens, and with that come the issues of old age, like dementia.

Specifically, my grandfather has vascular dementia; that is, mental deterioration caused by a series of strokes that deprive the brain of oxygen. Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease, which is caused by a buildup of proteins in the brain that block the communication of neurons. The end result, however, is the same: parts of the brain begin to waste away. It starts at the hippocampus, which is located in the middle of the temporal lobe and stores short-term memory, and temporal lobe, which aides in understanding language. Then it moves on to the frontal lobe, which manages problem solving and decision-making. Then, on to the parietal lobe, which manages sensory information; manifestations of these symptoms would constitute a moderate case of dementia. The most severe stage comes when the occipital lobe, which manages long-term memory, is affected. A person with dementia can live for many years with this slow deterioration, even as long as a decade. At the end, a person who dies with dementia has a brain weighing one-third that of a healthy brain.

There’s no cure, and there’s no reversing it, and the unfortunate fact is that we, my family, didn’t recognize the signs that something was terribly amiss with my grandfather until it was too late.

The symptoms were small at first. He began to walk with an odd shuffle, head bowed so far forward it looked like he would fall. He would ramble about an old love affair nobody could be sure was true, saying that he had to find her. He would take up obsessions and forget them just as fast: collecting coins, playing the lottery, wanting to speak to the president of Italy. We thought he was senile, or depressed, or maybe his hearing condition was causing the confusion in his head that he complained of so often. But taking my grandfather, who firmly believed doctors were a waste of time and money, to be tested was no easy task. He would go to his primary care physician for rounds of scans and blood tests, never to follow up. If he would be prescribed pills for his blood pressure or diabetes, he would take the pill every other day instead of every day to make them last longer so he wouldn’t have to pay for a refill. That’s just how he was, and that’s how his three daughters – my aunts and my mother – let him be.

Around 2009, he saw a neurologist affiliated with his general practitioner, who saw in an MRI that my grandfather had suffered from mini-strokes. The neurologist prescribed him Aricept, a pill designed to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, though he never officially diagnosed my grandfather with any form of dementia. Even on the medication, his confusion only got worse. It would take him a half hour to walk a few blocks; this irritated my grandmother, who was convinced he was just dallying. Whenever my grandfather would see his doctor, it seemed he would only come home with another prescription, a higher dosage, a recommendation to come back in six months, but no answers as to what was wrong with him. My mother went along to see his neurologist and asked if her father should have another MRI and compare the scans, but the doctor said that would not be necessary and increased the dosage of Aricept. She recalls the frustration of not understanding why nothing could be done.

“They weren’t being clear with us,” she said. “If they knew it was dementia, they didn’t verbally say that to us.”

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence for people suffering from some form of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, only 45 percent of people with Alzheimer’s disease or their caregivers reported being told of their diagnosis.

In 2012 my mother took him to a cardiologist, also affiliated with his general practitioner, who said he had hardening in his arteries and needed a valve fixed. The procedure was simple, but because of his age, the cardiologist recommended he spend the night in the hospital. My grandfather decided then that he didn’t need his valve fixed.

Also in 2012, my grandparents went to Italy for the last time with their eldest daughter, my Aunt Amelia. On the flight to Rome, my grandfather demanded that the stewardess let him in the cockpit to see the pilot, since he was allowed to once in 1971.

After that trip, he went back to the doctor. In 2013 he saw a different cardiologist, and once again the doctor recommended surgery to fix the arteries that were blocking oxygen from his brain. The first operation to put in a stent went very well; so well, the doctor thought my grandfather would be able to endure multiple stents in the next operation. The next operation went horribly. Blood began to pool around the lining of his heart. His organs began to fail, and he was put on dialysis. What was meant to be an overnight procedure turned into a weeklong hospital stay. He was very weak at this time, so weak we couldn’t be sure if he would make it. But as his body recovered, it was clear that his mental state had declined.

A list of the standard symptoms of dementia, provided by In the Know Certified Nursing Assistance, reads like a checklist of my grandfather’s life these past two years. Showing poor judgment and making poor decisions – as when he asked a complete stranger to help him run away and was stranded at the corner, check. Getting lost in familiar surroundings – as when he went to buy lottery tickets in the neighborhood he’s lived in for 40 years and couldn’t find his way home for two hours, check. Seeing or hearing things that are not there – like the “friend” in his head who tells him he should be a saint, check. Losing his ability to understand or use speech – like when he tells me he loves me but could I please stop talking because he can’t understand English, check.

And then there are the symptoms that have become life’s daily battles: neglecting personal hygiene, utter refusal to eat, becoming restless at night when my grandmother is trying to sleep, wetting the bed, behaving inappropriately, becoming aggressive. My grandmother remained his primary caregiver throughout all of it.

After his surgery, the city appointed him a nurse through the Visiting Nurse Services of New York. She came with her own health issues; she was in her sixties, nearly as old as my grandmother, and said she wouldn’t be able to lift my grandfather on her own. That meant my grandmother would have to help the nurse with the tasks she was being paid to do, in particular helping with bathing and dressing.

That same year, my Aunt Amelia took my grandfather to see a different neurologist. He sent him for a brain scan, and as they waited for the results, he talked to my grandfather. He asked questions about dates and names, from years ago to more recent events. My aunt says my grandfather got many things wrong. The doctor then showed them the brain scan on his laptop. He pointed to the large white areas that indicated the parts of his brain that were, literally, lost.

These damaged areas, the doctor explained, were caused by a series of mini-strokes. No one was aware of these strokes because he was not being monitored by a doctor. My grandfather was formally diagnosed with vascular dementia, the reason for his memory loss, his lack of bathroom control, his nasty attitude. It was the latter symptom that prompted the neurologist to prescribe him a medicine to calm him down, a pill that needed an increased dosage after just three months.

With this diagnosis, we, as a family, had to face some harsh realities: He was not going to get better. He was undoubtedly going to get worse. There was the fear, particularly for my aunt and my mother, that they might be looking at a similar future. And then the guilt. How did we not notice he was in distress? How did the glazed look, the confusion, the excessive salivation, go unquestioned? Why did we assume this was what old age looked like? And then the worry – not for him, whose fate was, in a word, sealed, but for my grandmother. How could she deal with the daily bathing and dressing, the nightly bed-wetting, and the constant complaints?

Ochoa tells me that 75 percent of caregivers for patients with dementia are family members, which clearly puts massive stress on a person who is dealing with the illness of a loved one while also learning how to deal with that illness, likely on his or her own. He mentions a study that a doctor conducted on dementia patients to see how many died within a five-year period. The doctor found that none of his patients died, but five family members did from stress-related diseases.

My grandmother was already showing signs of strain. She had no patience for the feeble, cantankerous man who replaced her husband of 54 years. And, as if this disease was not content to take just one of my grandparents, she seemed to age a decade overnight, her face worn with exhaustion and her back hunched with the effort of taking care of her husband. She needed help, the kind that none of us in the family could give. My Aunt Amelia lives in Westchester; my family lives just two blocks away from my grandparents but my mother works full time, and my Aunt Daniela, 13 and 10 years younger than her sisters respectively, has three young children.     Ochoa would call my family part of the “Sandwich Generation,” children of a generation living longer than ever before. Fifty years ago, when the average lifespan was around age 70, people didn’t need to care for the elderly parents as they do now. The Alzheimer’s Association has found that “sandwich generation caregivers indicate lower quality of life and diminished health behaviors (for example, less likely to choose foods based on health values; less likely to use seat belts; less likely to exercise) compared with non-sandwich generation caregivers.” Neglecting one’s health is especially dangerous if one has a predisposition to vascular dementia, in which ill health could lead to a stroke.

“People are dying in their 80s and 90s, and now you need to take care of your kids and your parents,” Ochoa said. “You have to take your kids to soccer and to ballet, and then your father calls to say ‘I need to go to the hospital.’ It’s very stressful for that generation.”

Statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association roundly support that claim: its studies found that 59 percent of family caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias rated the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high. Additionally, approximately 40 percent of family caregivers of people with dementia suffer from depression, which increases with the severity of the disease.

Facing this, my family decided to find another nurse. It was at this time that the complicated, confusing and oftentimes convoluted insurance laws began to rear their ugly heads. As people over the age of 65, both my grandparents were eligible to be covered by Medicare as their insurance. Medicare paid for the nurse from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, and also for physical therapy that the cardiologist recommended. However, the Visiting Nurse Service required that its own professionals administer the physical therapy, not the physical therapist office located very close to my grandparents’ house. The Visiting Nurse Service did not respond to calls for comment about that rule.

My grandmother decided she would prefer a private home assistance service. My Aunt Daniela found one in the church bulletin that advertised Italian-speaking aides. The service is called Right at Home, and it is the one we are using still. My grandfather’s current aide is the third one he has had through this agency; her name is Hafida Bologna, and right now she’s a good fit. She speaks Italian very well, and was well taught by Right at Home services how to feed, wash and even change diapers, give medications and take the blood pressure of her ailing clients. But more importantly, she has an innate ability to have patience, to soothe his agitations and make him feel safe. She prays with him, something not taught by Right at Home but which seems to work well. She tells me she takes care of my grandfather as she would her father. It’s a relief for my aunts and my mother that there is a trustworthy person to help both my grandparents, but the situation is still not ideal.

That’s because, at this point in time, the nursing service is being paid out of pocket, and at $19 per hour, that’s $912 monthly for the aide who comes only three days a week, four hours at a time. But my grandfather has dementia every day of the week, not just Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. A full time aide would cost in the range of $5,000 per month, which is more than my grandparents earn. They have to pay because like most home care facilities, Right at Home does not accept Medicare. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Medicaid is the only public program that provides long-term care coverage, but beneficiaries must be low-income individuals; to be eligible for Medicaid for the purpose of home care assistance, a single person has to make less than $825 a month, and own less than $14,850 in assets. Most people deplete their income and assets paying out of pocket for services like nursing homes and assisted living, the Alzheimer’s Association found.

My grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in the 1960s. My grandfather owned his own barbershop and worked for 45 years, until he was 75 years old. My grandmother was a seamstress, working in a factory until she had children, and then working from her basement. They paid into Social Security, but because they worked for themselves, the checks they receive now are modest. They lived their version of the American dream by buying property, a four-family apartment building in Bensonhurst, and most of their income came from the rent they collected. My grandfather also receives a small pension from Italy for the time he served in the carabinieri, the Italian police force. The didn’t have much, but they saved for their old age, so that they wouldn’t find themselves with nothing. Now, to be eligible for Medicaid, they have had to forfeit it all.

My aunts and my mother found other legal channels through which my grandfather would become eligible for Medicaid. Instead of letting my grandparents funnel all their money into caring for his disease and selling their property, they contacted a lawyer to guide them in moving all assets into their name. This process actually began six years ago, when my grandparents and their daughters began planning for their estate should one of them fall ill. Knowing from the experience of friends and family members that Medicaid should be an option, they drew up, with the help of attorney (now Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President) Carlo Scissura, an irrevocable living trust. With that document, all the assets that belonged to my grandparents – the building, a few savings accounts – now belong to my aunts and mother equally. Though the trust has been effective for years, it’s a different feeling in the family now that it’s a necessity. It feels as though everything my grandparents worked for in their lives amounted to nothing.

There’s also dissatisfaction about how this system works against people who fall firmly in the middle class. My grandparents don’t have the money to afford the level of care my grandfather needs, but they have too much to qualify for programs like Medicaid without changing their lives. As my mother Patricia said, “You either have to be filthy rich or dirt poor.” My Aunt Amelia echoed the sentiment: “It makes you feel that unless you’re very wealthy or very poor, you have to struggle.”

More recently, they were granted power of attorney, this time with the help of eldercare lawyer Ida Como from the firm of Silvagni and Como, giving them the authority to make decisions on behalf of their parents. Como also prepared the Medicaid application for them; all they had to do was provide the necessary documents, such as identification, utility bills and proof of income. But this convenience doesn’t come cheap: the Medicaid application plus the power of attorney document cost $4,500.

A lawyer is not a necessary requirement. The Medicaid application is available to everyone to apply to for free. But the many rules and regulations of the process are intimidating, and an error based on ignorance of the system would mean a denial of the application. Should the request be rejected, the whole application process would need to begin anew, or the other option would be to appeal and request a hearing before an administrative board, according to Como. This doesn’t sound too devastating, until you think about what precisely it is that has been rejected. Every day without the means to afford home care assistance is another day of struggle for my grandfather, every week is another hefty sum gone, and every month of waiting for the application to be reprocessed is time that his condition is worsening without the proper care.

Of course, just because a lawyer submits the application doesn’t mean it will be approved. “There are no guarantees,” said Como. “Only that the attorney knows what Medicaid will be looking for.”

At this point, my grandfather’s Medicaid status is pending. Although my aunts and mother started the process this past autumn, and three months is the usual amount of time it takes to take care of all the requirements, there were some issues that caused roadblocks; for example, the application required a letter from the Italian government to prove how much he receives from his pension, because the direct deposit was not “acceptable.” Waiting on the Italian government is a situation no one wants to be in. But the obstacle was surmounted; now all there is to do is wait.

Meanwhile, that foot that was causing my grandfather problems months ago is flaring up again. Those ugly black sores just won’t go away. He had been getting stronger, but now he’s having trouble walking again. More worry, more doctors’ visits, more bad days; the unrelenting cycle of what it means to have dementia.

We deal with each issue as it arises, and who knows what’s coming at us next.

Photo, top: Carmine Angotti served as a member of the carabinieri as a young man in Italy.

Stylish and smiling, Errol Shaw relaxes on a bench, observing the New York City hustle as he awaits an interview. Although he sits in a park across the street from his office, his mind seems to be on everything except his job.

“Once I get home, all I do is write. I’ve always been able to self motivate and dedicate enough time to writing,” he says. Shaw recently had his sixth book published and is currently working on his seventh. He works at NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases Center, but is sure that writing is his true career calling.

“For a long time I’ve wanted to be a writer. In college I had the opportunity to read so many different works from different authors. It really motivated me to do this,” Shaw says, reminiscing on his days as a student at Brooklyn College. “There are some great teachers there and they’ve shaped me into the writer I’ve become. Brooklyn College really is a great school.”

Shaw’s sixth book, entitled The Travel Experience, is a memoir and his first travel book. He wrote it from start to finish in 2013 and it details some of his wildest adventures, such as being detained in the Tel Aviv airport for hours. It was Shaw’s opportunity to blend his knack for writing with one of his favorite pastimes.

“Man, I just love to travel. It’s always exciting, it’s always fun,” Shaw says. His positivity is contagious and his eyes gleam as he remembers his experiences overseas. He laughs boisterously as he tells about the time he was robbed by a camel driver in Egypt. “That may have been one of my worst moments traveling, but it was still a great time,” he says. He is as vivid a storyteller with his words as he is with a pen. He attributes his storytelling abilities, as well as his desire to travel, to his origins.

Born in Saint Andrew, Jamaica, Shaw grew up in a rural setting, raised at times by his godmother, at other times by his father. He speaks in metaphors as he describes his childhood, as if preparing material for a future literary work. “I remember the nights on the farm where I grew up. We used to gather and tell stories. The nights were as black as your shoes man. But we would sit around preparing peas to sell at the market the next day, and that was story time. My dad always had wild stories for us,” Shaw says.

Now Shaw shares his experiences through his own stories, sometimes through his books, sometimes to those lucky enough to have a conversation with him. “The most interesting part about marrying a writer are the many stories he has told me about the many countries he has visited, the weird food he has eaten, and the crazy encounters he has had,” says his wife, Yemellett Shaw. “Every time I pick up one of his books, his weird encounters make me laugh. I can’t wait to visit some of these places he has been to,” she says.

While his father helped make him into a storyteller, his mother played an equally influential role in making him the person he is today. For years his mother traveled back and forth between the United States and Jamaica, but she never took her son with her to New York. “I remember as a kid, watching airplanes fly overhead. I always wondered where they were going to or coming from. I wondered if I’d ever be able to travel like my mother did. Then one day, my mother finally decided to take me with her to New York. And I haven’t stopped traveling since,” Shaw says. Now he takes airplanes all over the world at every opportunity he has.

Living in the United States is another aspect of Shaw’s life that he credits as a factor that made him a writer and a traveler. “If I was living in Jamaica I may not have had the opportunity to go to college and get an education or even finish high school. Plus I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel thanks to the living I am able to make here in the United States. I am so grateful to be here,” Shaw says.

When asked if he had a most memorable moment from traveling, his answer led him to China, a place he has visited multiple times, and right back to him being a storyteller. “When I was in China, we went to a restaurant and ate dog. It was so weird, man!” Shaw says laughing. “Sometimes you need to be adventurous to fit in with the culture.”

Shaw’s travels have given much sustenance to his life. He not only has experiences, stories, and memories, but his travels have also shaped his art. The trips that he has been on greatly influence his writing. His nephew, Lionel Moffatt, has been a travel companion and first hand witness to this. “His travels give him a different perspective on how to illustrate what he sees. It is simply amazing how he puts some of his crazy encounters into writing. I always wondered how he could remember such detail from our trips together,” Moffatt says. “When I travel, I always bring a journal because those details flee fast,” Shaw says chuckling.

Shaw highly values travel, as well as sharing his stories with other people. He says that he wrote a travel book to share the experiences with those who have not or cannot see the world. “Travel is an amazing experience. It makes you richer, more knowledgeable, more spiritual, more of a people person. You learn to embrace more. It just makes you a better person; kinder, friendlier, just a better human being,” he says.

The monk begins his journey before the sun rises, his orange robes swirl by the brisk winds in the empty streets on Sunday morning. At this time, while he waits for a ride to go to the ashram, his thoughts sometimes drift back to the warm and cheery atmosphere of Guyana, his native land.

But as, Swami Shiveswaranda, travels to his place of worship and the sun rises over Flushing, Queens, he snaps back into his life in New York. He sees people driving out of their driveways, pumping fuel into their cars, going grocery shopping, waiting in queue for the bus, and honking their car horns on a not-so crowded Grand Central highway.

The monk steps out of the van and into the large, red brick building. A sign hovers over the double door entrance, in bold orange letters, that says, The America Sevashram Sangha Inc., Jamaica Queens. The adjoined building, once a synagogue is now an ashram, a place where Hindus go to pray and listen to hymns and readings of scriptures from the monk.

Swami Shiveswaranda makes his way to the opulent altar, where he bows and prays. The altar, where holy rituals are performed is an alluring mélange of colors and an overflow of fragrant incenses. It is decorated with candles, vases, marble floors and ceramic statues of Shiva, Vishnu, and Ganesha among other Hindu manifestations of God. The altar is lavished with flowers, garlands and fruits.

The monk, dressed in orange robes proceeds to the sit on a cushion adjacent to both the altar and the congregants. He puts on his black-rimmed glasses, looks around and listens to the bhajans, devotional songs sang in Hindi by the musicians in rhythm with the drum and harmonium.

Day after day, Swami Shiveswaranda, 53, strives to realize God. His duty as a monk ranges from guiding disciples of the ashram to realize God to being a source of solace to help those in difficult times. It has been a long odyssey from being an outstanding college student in Guyana on his way to medical school to the temple in Queens. But it is all part of his spiritual journey.

It has taken Swami Shiveswaranda 27 years to earn the title of a monk. He has spent his first three years in the ashram. He has then spent ten years as a Bramacharya, one who takes the vow of celibacy in thoughts, words and deeds to attain self-realization. He has spent 14 years living in Cove and John ashram in Guyana before going to Calcutta, India to take an oral exam to achieve the spiritual stage of a monk. He came to the U.S. 11 years ago.

*                        *                        *

Moments later, he is introduced as, ‘His Holiness Swami Shiveswarandaji’ to give the day’s reading. He begins his pravachan, which is a combination of lectures on scriptures taken from the Ramayana, one of the two great epics of Hinduism depicting the duties of relationships and portraying ideal characters. His pravachan is based on the acceptance of death.

“Death is hard to take in. It is the reality of life in this world,” Swami Shiveswaranda said to the congregation comprised of almost 50 people including men, women and children of all ages.

“Life is a series of joys, great joys and deep sorrows,” Swami Shiveswaranda he said. Shiveswaranda is referred to as Swami, because he has undertaken the lifetime vow after spending so many years in the ashram. His orange robe symbolizes this vow.

A monk’s vow forbids him from: owning personal properties, eating for pleasure, possessing money, and maintaining personal relationships. Now, he resides in New York where the circumstances are different from his homeland.

Swami Shiveswaranda is not just a sanyasi, a monk who has given up all worldly pleasures and broken all family ties. He has given up his academic goals to live the life of asceticism and risen to the challenges of being a monk in New York.

“There are times when I greatly miss Guyana. The people are more accepting and respectful,” said Swami Shiveswaranda in a soothing tone. The people in New York are respectful and accepting also but they are prone to question everything.

“Once, at the ashram, a father told his eight year old son to bow at the altar, but the boy, asked him why?” continued Swami Shiveswaranda. From young, kids learn to ask questions and reject anything blindly, which is a good thing.

Swami Shiveswaranda talked a little about his family. He has taken the sacred vow, which forbids him from spending his free time with his family. However, he attends religious functions when his brother, sister, niece or nephew celebrate an anniversary, but he is forbidden to stay overnight at their homes.

“It was hard breaking away from my family,” said Swami Shiveswaranda in calm voice. “It was not an instant decision. I was in periods of indecision and anguish,” he said.

He recalls that his dad was sad and his mother wept when he told them about the life he wanted to lead. Both of his parents expected him to be a doctor.

Swami Shiveswaranda, who was originally known as Bhaskar Ramkissoon, graduated from high school with advanced levels and gone on to the University of Guyana where he graduated with a degree in chemistry and a minor in mathematics. He had been awarded a scholarship to attend medical school in Cuba, but he declined because of his devotion to God and his connection to the ashram, which started from childhood.

“He was a brilliant student at the university,” said Sagar Lachmansing a former colleague who is now the vice president at Aurochemicals in Washingtonville, New York. “He was a focused student,” added Lachmansing, 54.

Instead of going to medical school, he has attained a post-graduate degree in education from the University of Guyana. He has taught chemistry, math and physics at the Hindu College for seven years while he was at the ashram. His support throughout his journey sprouts from his Guru, his teacher, Swami Purnananda who encouraged him to get his degree and take the path to serve mankind.

“A person with a degree would be looked on more favorably,” he recalled his guru telling him.

Swami Shiveswaranda no longer thinks about the decision he has made years ago to lead a monastic life. He has overcome that challenge, he nodded his head and said, “I’m much too old for that. I have gone through that phase.”

Swami Shiveswaranda lives at a temple at Woodside Queens, called Divya Dham House of Worship. The New York Times describes the temple as, “a vast temple complex and living history museum.” The temple features a model of the Himalayas and a man-made cave that houses a shrine. Swami Shiveswaranda is not only a spiritual leader. One of the reasons, he has migrated to the United States is to serve as the head monk of Divya Dham, a temple that takes up half a block. He is responsible for the management of the temple, which is opened to the public every day of the year from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

He lives with four other monks in the temple. “They are there when you are in times of difficulties. They give you strength,” Swami Shiveswaranda said. Also, being in ashram on Sunday mornings with the disciples gives him strength.

“He [Swami Shiveswaranda] is an embodiment of knowledge and humility. We’re blessed to have him in our lives,” said Pramela Bipat, 40. “We learn something new each time we leave from here,” continued Bipat who is an ardent disciple of the ashram.

With what started as pure devotion to god as a young boy growing up in a poor neighborhood, Swami Shiveswaranda has followed his heart and achieved spiritual morality. His journey continues north as he leaves the U.S. to attend a religious ceremony in Canada for a week. “Happiness comes from within the inner state of mind,” he added.

For most of his childhood, Aanas Mohamed played basketball, a sport he would give up anything  to play.  He was the most active and outgoing child among his eight siblings—until he was diagnosed two weeks after his 15th birthday with Type 1 diabetes.

Seven years later, Mohamed is one of many college students trying to balance his studies with the demands of coping with the disease, formerly known as juvenile diabetes.

The disease Mohamed is living with, diabetic ketoacidosis, is a complication of diabetes that has become increasingly common. It is far more likely to strike people under 45 years old than those older, and it is life-threatening. It normally develops from Type 1 diabetes, which Mohamed has, and needs to be monitored constantly—not an easy task for him as he tries to juggle school with the demands of his diabetes and, also, hemophilia.

“Having diabetes is almost like adding another course to your schedule,” Dr. Lori Laffel, chief of the Pediatric, Adolescent, and Young Adult Section at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, told the magazine Diabetes Forecast.

As a science student at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, Mohamed, 21, said that he wants to be a physician’s assistant. He hopes to do a job that will help people to appreciate life’s brighter moments.

Students with diabetes were not given much leeway in the past, but that changed in 2009 with an amendment to Americans with Disabilities Act aimed at protecting diabetics. If a student misses class often due to a doctor’s appointment, he or she would not be penalized, but could be required to submit the missing course work at a later time.

Colleges have Disability Services offices that provide help for Type 1 diabetics, according to the American Diabetes Association. The upside of registering with a school’s service is that in the event of the event of a diabetes-related emergency, a student will be able to make up work if he or she misses a class or test, and must be given fair treatment.

“The student would need to register with the center for disability to present the professor with an accommodation form,” said Valerie Stewart-Lovell, director at the Center for Student Disabilities at Brooklyn College.

“On that form it would state the student is able to eat and drink in the classroom and may be excused for breaks,” Stewart-Lovell said. The form is signed by the student and given to the professor. “Students could be allowed for excused absences so long the student does their part by registering with us and getting the form to their professor.”

Mohamed knows that when his sugar is low, he needs to eat something quickly. Or he may need bathroom breaks.

“You can’t eat or leave in some classrooms, and I’ll be the only guy eating and drinking,” said Mohamed, who signed the accommodation form. For the most part, “I just tend to keep my disability to myself.”

Mohamed, who went to Intermediate School 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg in Brooklyn, recalled how he loved to play basketball everyday after school.  And some nights, he would rush home in Brighton Beach, grab a quick bite and then head off to the basketball court nearby.

“I used to be an active person,” he said, tossing his empty right hand into the air.

Basketball  was not the only non-academic activity he enjoyed. “I also used to be a little tech savvy working with phones, laptops and all,” he said. But, today, being tech savvy is not so much a hobby for Mohamed.

“When I used to play a lot of basketball, I used to always get tired, I drank a lot of Gatorade, a lot of water and used the bathroom a lot,” Mohamed recalled.

“So for me, these symptoms of diabetes were seen as normal.” Mohamed thought so because  he felt his energy was used up during his long hours spent in the gym. “I’m a middle-school athlete playing basketball, of course I’m going to be tired, I’m going to be thirsty and of course I’m going to be using the bathroom a lot,” he said pounding his hand lightly on a round black table during an interview in the cafeteria at Brooklyn College.

According to the American Diabetes Association, some symptoms of Type 1 diabetes include: urinating often, feeling very thirsty, feeling very hungry even though you are eating, extreme fatigue, blurry vision, cut or bruises that are slow to heal, and weight loss even though you are eating more.

“I had those symptoms besides throwing up, but, I thought I played basketball, I’m an athlete, I go to school, I learn, I play basketball there, then I come home and then go to the courts in the night to play,” Mohamed said.

But then, the ugly truth came out when he fell sick and ended up in the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital in the nighttime. He was not eating properly in the previous weeks and had lost significant weight in just about two weeks. “I went from 157 to 105 pounds,” he said, nodding his head. “It was a lot,” Mohamed said.

He was suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis. “The step before falling off the table,” he said in a fading voice.

According to the American Family Physician, a clinical review journal, diabetic ketoacidosis is caused by reduced insulin levels, glucose use and increased gluconeogenesis, a metabolic pathway used to keep blood glucose from dropping too low, from elevated counter regulatory hormones.

“When the acid is high and the pH is low, that is called ketoacidosis,” said Dr. Vinuta Marigouda of Interfaith Medical Center.

Diabetic ketoacidosis is a serious condition that could put the patient into a coma or lead to death, Marigouda added.

“From the way I looked and the smell of my breath, the nurse knew I had diabetes,” Mohamed said. “I never expected that I would have diabetes.”

According to the American Diabetes Association, patients with Type 1 diabetes do not produce insulin, a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy vital for daily life. The illness, which was referred to as juvenile diabetes, is usually diagnosed in children and young adults. The association stated on it website that only 5 percent of people with diabetes have Type 1 diabetes.

“I was in the ICU for four days,” Mohamed said. His A1C test, known as the glycated hemoglobin test, gave a result of 16 percent. Once a person’s A1C test is higher than 6.5 percent, he or she is diagnosed with diabetes. Mohamed’s blood sugar for the past two to three months was escalating to the point where he reached the dangerous stage of diabetic ketoacidosis.

Shockingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that from 1988 to 2009, the most recent data available, the number of hospital discharges for people with with diabetic ketoacidosis as the first-listed diagnosis increased from about 80,000 to about 140,000.

The agency also noted that the disease hit mainly people under 45 years old.

Marigouda said that if a patient does not go to the hospital, the sugar level will be very high. The patient will end up drinking a lot of water and urinating a lot. Because of excessive thirst, the patient will show signs of dry mucous membrane and hypotension.

Hence, patients who show symptoms of diabetes should consult their healthcare provider immediately to not only prevent complication but also death.

Mohamed grew up in a large family. He and his family migrated from Yemen and settled in Brooklyn in 1996. He has three older brothers and four older sisters.

On the day Mohamed fell sick, his panic-stricken sister and brother rushed him to the emergency room at Coney Island Hospital.

“It was devastating to hear Aanas got diabetes at a young age but he is the type of person who would always accept it and fight back,” said his brother, Saned Mohamed, 25. “Everyone was just trying to help him understand his new lifestyle and the changes he had to make and we are here to help him.”

His mom could not be interviewed because she went back to Yemen to spend some time with her family there. But, Mohamed said, “she was sad, and she told me the same thing my father told me, ‘Don’t be stupid with your health.’” She also warned him that no one else in the family had diabetes at such a young age, and therefore, he needed to take on more responsibilities to preserve his health.

“We could have prevented some of the symptoms of diabetes and I would have not ended up in the ICU,” Mohamed said about not detecting the autoimmune disease earlier.

“I used to go for a yearly check at the doctor’s office,” he said. But that was not enough because, diabetes is quite a tricky disease to detect. Mohamed did a physical test at the doctor’s office during his summer vacation in 2006 so he could be a part of the basketball team at his middle school. His blood and physical were checked off as good.

“When I was younger, insulin would get used up,” Mohamed said, but there was no way to tell. “It would show up as normal in my report. And, one day it was just gone, just gone.”

Another turn in Mohamed’s life was the death of his father in 2011 from pancreatic cancer. It was a trying time for Mohamed but he pulled through.

“Everyone in my family was depressed,” said Mohamed. “I, personally wasn’t depressed, but I had to live my life with hemophilia. I thought this wouldn’t be a huge thing. I took it the good way.”

He added: “Hemophilia is going to stay with me for the rest of my life just like diabetes.”

Growing up, Mohamed spent most of his childhood indoors and watched his friends run and goof around. But because of his hemophilia, his parents were cautious of him bruising himself.

Hemophilia is an inherited genetic disorder in which the blood does not clot normally because it lacks the vital blood-clotting proteins. Small cuts are not a problem, nor are daily injections. But, injuries to the knees, ankles are elbows are of greater concern because deep bleeding could occur in the without the patient realizing it.

Mohamed limps on his left leg because he broke his ankle. “I was playing basketball and I broke my ankle and was rushed to Coney Island Hospital,” Mohamed said. For him, it is impossible to do surgery because he is a hemophilic and diabetic, so he took physical therapy to heal the ankle. “I’m a special patient,” Mohamed said.  Although he took physical therapy, Mohamed limps when he walks.

He uses an insulin pump that he attaches to his stomach every day. He takes it off only when he takes a bath or exercising. Wearing the pump at all times prevents hyperglycemia, abnormally high blood glucose level. For Mohamed, the pump is his life saver.

“The pump is mostly for people who are adventurous, or have no time or people whose blood sugar is not controlled,” said Mohamed. “It’s like a little tubing that goes into my skin.”

If Mohamed’s sugar is too low or too high, the pump supplies him with the insulin he needs to bring it back to the normal level.

An estimated 350,000 people in the United States use insulin pumps, according to the website Diabetes Self-Management. Not everyone prefers the pump though.

Aliza Tessler was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 12 years old. Upon finding out she was diagnosed with diabetes, she shed some tears, but her mother cried for almost two months. “I think she is still upset by it sometimes,” said Tessler, now 20 and a student at Brooklyn College.

“My father didn’t really react as strongly as my mother did. And my twin sister actually got jealous, because I got a lot of attention when I was diagnosed,” she added.

But when it comes to choosing between injecting yourself twice a day and attaching a pump on your stomach to supply insulin to the body, Tessler chose the injections for several reasons.

“I got the pump about 10 days after I was initially diagnosed,” said Tessler, who opposed the idea of wearing a pump.  “I didn’t know where those tubes were leading to, and I thought injections were the best option. My 12-year-old mind was wrong, and I’m very happy my doctor and mother encouraged me to try the pump.”

Tessler said, her mindset has always been, “Okay, so I’m diabetic. Who cares?”

Likewise, Mohamed accepts  the disease. “I took it the good way,” he said. “You can’t let something control you, you have to control it.” He added:  “We were the chosen ones.”

Photo: College student Aanas Mohamed says of his Type 1 diabetes: “You have to control it.” (Saned Mohamed Photo.)

The theme song “Moving On Up” from the Jefferson’s blares through the speakers and resonates throughout the dance studio in the Brooklyn College West Quad building. Its 9:00am on a Monday morning the students are in position and their teacher stands in front of the mirror lined studio, microphone in hand, coaching them through a sequence of twirling and stepping. The students are all laughs and awkward steps as they follow along with the professor who every few minutes stops the music grabs a partner and executes the move correctly as they try to catch on.

This is ballroom dance class, led by Sergei Nabatov, 59, ex-military officer and engineer, turned world-renowned ballroom dancer.

This may seem like an unlikely jump in profession to most, but for Nabatov, now ballroom dance professor at Brooklyn College, that was exactly the turn his career took back in the Ukraine many years ago.

He discovered his love for the art form when at 21 years old, joined a dance club while planning to work in the civil aviation engineering.

“It was the only way to meet some girls,” he said with a laugh. But more than girls he found a passion he would spend the rest of his life pursuing. Although he graduated with a master’s degree in Civil Aviation Engineering from the University of Kiev, he continued to dance and enter competitions, winning his first competition just three years after he first started dancing.

Although at heart he is a dancer he credits his engineer experience as well as his life as a military officer to his success as a ballroom dancer.

“I am blessed to be from a military family.” he says with pride. nike kobe 9 His father was a military officer, and following in their footsteps, his eighteen year old daughter, a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh, is a navy enlisted officer as well. He says the military gave him the discipline and the focus to persevere as a world-renowned dancer. “Ballroom dancing is a hard job,” he says “If you are talented and want to prove it, it will take the rest of your life, practicing at least 6 hours a day to make people like your performance.”

Nabatov acknowledges that ballroom dancing is quite a stretch from engineering, but, for him, the two work together, as his engineering background has contributed to greatly to his ballroom dancing career.

“Half of my brain is an engineer and half is a ballroom dancer,” he said, his slightly Russian accented voice always carrying a hint of laughter. “Many choreographers don’t know how to switch the loud speaker on or the amplifier. But I know. So it helps.”

Not only has his engineer experience helped with his dancing career but it has helped him as a professor as well. He helped design and develop the Apple I Book application for his ballroom course called Dancesport. On the I book app that is required for the class, students can read the related material, hear notes play videos and music, and the lessons for the entire course can be found in the I book.

For Nabatov the change in career move wasn’t a hard choice to make. He says the moment he joined dance club he was sucked in and that is the passion he tries to get his students to feel. His love of dance lead him to choreographing  and naturally to teaching the art form which he says gives students the opportunity, like him, to meet different people and connect with others with the same passion.

“Many of my students have found not only dancing, but marriage and kids,” he tells during a sit down in one of his classes on a recent Monday morning. “They meet on the dance floor and get married in the wild,” he added with a laugh.

He created the first ever ballroom dance school in Ukraine, from where famous US Dancesport Champion, Maria Manusova graduated. Then in 2001 he was contacted by a colleague from Fred Astaire’s Dance studio and invited to work in the United States as a dancer and choreographer. He then joined the Brooklyn College teaching staff where he created the first ever ballroom dance course in the college.

Some of his students from Brooklyn college include well known dancers Dmitry Chaplin top ten finalist from So You Think You Can Dance and Maksim Chmerkovsiy professional dancer and finalist on Dancing With the Stars.

Watching Nabatov in action it is not hard to see how his very disparate career moves have culminated in the classroom. He stands in the front of the dance studio, dressed in all black, cotton pants, t-shirt and dance shoes, microphone in hand chanting instructions like ” one.. two.. three.. twirl” or “quick.. quick.. slow arms up two three” to which the students follow suit, reminiscent of a military line drill if one were to ignore all the giggling from the students. He controls the music and equipment while demonstrating dance moves simultaneously yet so effortlessly. And when the giggles and chatter among the students persist or some become distracted, a firm “Listen to me now” gets them all at immediate attention.

He is a balanced combination of discipline and fun, while he knows how to keep the students in line, his rapport with them is affable and comedic. He is hands on with them. He holds them by the shoulders to guide them along, he holds their legs to show them which way to turn, nike kobe 9 elite gs and he holds their hands as he explains the moves to them. And after dancing with them he hugs and thanks them. It is not hard to see his love of ballroom dancing reflected in the way he teaches his students the art of dancing.

From the front of the room he surveys each dance couple. He spots one student not keeping up with the steps and Nabatov playfully yells to the student’s partner “Can you kick him?” the class erupts in laughter as Nabatov runs to the student, fists in the air as if to engage him in a fist fight. Then he shows him to accurately perform the move. Here he is less militaristic, less mechanical and his obvious love of what deems to be an amazing art form prevails.

“He’s very patient and he really teaches you,” says Jean Vernon, a physical education major who enrolled in the class as a requirement for her major. “He makes it so simple, the way he breaks down the steps. If I can do it, you know he’s good,” she adds with a laugh.

Another student Toni Figueroa, a theater major, echoes the same sentiment. “It’s a pretty fun class. And he’s very funny and eccentric. He makes it fun.”

Yet in a melancholy tone he reveals this may possibly be his last semester as a Professor at Brooklyn College after 13 years. “The number 13 is an unlucky number in many countries and it looks like it is. . . this could be it,” Nabatov said. The Physical Education program removed ballroom dancing as a mandatory course and all courses that are not mandatory will be cancelled due to budget constraints. But he remains hopeful that the course will continue under the Liberal Arts department but as of now, that is yet to be decided.

Regardless of the fate of ballroom dancing at Brooklyn College, Nabatov will continue in his work as a professional dancer and adjudicator where he organizes competitions, nationally and internationally for both children and adults. “I’m proud of what I did in Brooklyn College from scratch to this level.” he said.

“Ballroom dancing gave me the chance to be an unbelievably international man in every aspect, ” he said, reflecting on his experience over the years.

Nabatov says dancing has changed his life and is still changing lives all over the world. As proof, he referenced the documentary Hot Mad Ballroom, that depicts the lives of New York pre-teens who turned from gangs and street violence after being introduced to ballroom dance.

And what more proof that it does change lives than his own life–from a career in aviation engineering to professional ballroom dancer and professor.

As if on cue the music comes back on drowning out all chatter in the studio. Nabatov signals to the front of the studio indicating that it its time to resume his dance training. “That’s it,” he says smiling as he waltzes hurriedly to the front of the studio to join his students.

When the music comes on duty, or destiny calls and Nabatov always answers.

At 7:59 A.M the bell rings at Midwood High School. The halls are filled with silence, except for the sound of Pachelbel’s Canon in D inviting you into room 467, the room of Michael O’Neill, who is dressed for his part as conductor of his class, donning a signature pinstripe charcoal suit with today’s accent of purple.

After discovering that it was one of his students’ birthdays, O’Neill lowers the classical music and reaches for a red pen. With the red pen as baton, he waves it around animatedly, conducting his class to sing Happy Birthday in a jazz style (one of many choices O’Neill offers, including Brazilian samba). Snapping his fingers, O’Neill belts out, “Felicem tibi, natalem diem!” the Latin version of Happy Birthday.

His red pen quickly changes form from baton back to correction instrument, as he walks down the aisles of his classroom, meticulously checking homework as his students break into maniples (named for groups in a Roman army).

O’Neill runs his class like a well-oiled machine, where there are monitors to erase the boards, to open the windows, to write the pensum (homework) and agite nunc (classwork) on the boards, to control the baroque music playing, and even monitors to even remind him when the bell rings, as he jokes with his students that, “You may not realize this, but once in a blue moon, I like to go on.”

O’Neill is now the only Latin teacher at Midwood High School, currently teaching four sophomore 1^st year classes and one 2^nd year Latin class. “Mr. O’Neill is one of a kind,” said Alvi Rashid, 20, a former student of O’Neill’s. “He is genuinely a lover of Latin and it shines through in his teaching.”

O’Neill says that by maintaining order in the classroom he is staying true to his role as conductor (which he noted comes from the Latin word, ducere, meaning in his own words, “to lead out of darkness, falsehood and vice”) an obligation that he believes is especially necessary in education (also from the Latin, ducere) in today’s world, where children are distracted by technology and are stuck living in a society that “ignores the true and real human good of the students.”

He has been teaching Latin at Midwood since 1987. He originally taught Latin I, II and II, but in 1999, budget cuts eliminated Latin III. “New York City can’t teach math or Latin, but they can teach children how to use a condom,” he said, apologizing for having to use “such language”. A 2^nd year of Latin which was mandatory for the Humanities program in the school, became optional 2 years ago in 2011. “This is not the kind of education I want for my students, more money is being spent on the remedial, a pursuit of less than mediocrity,” he said.

O’Neill’s approach to education provokes different responses from his students. “At times, he is too strict, there is no head holding allowed in class, no drinking water, and once a kid put a Halls in mouth and got in trouble for it,” said a sophomore in O’Neill’s 3^rd period class, who wanted to be identified as only Shayane. Another sophomore, Ishmael, who wanted his last name to remain anonymous, chimed in, “His class is unnecessary; he gives too much homework and expects too much.”

“He’s difficult, but I see he wants the best for us and he knows what he’s doing,” said Anne, another student who wished to use only their first name who is a junior who is repeating O’Neill’s 1^st year Latin class.

“Unfortunately, I am not as strict as I used to be; the high authorities asked me to be less strict,” said O’Neill. “Children are used to getting away with things, being ignored and just tolerated.” He continued, “What do you prefer? Soft sand that sinks or hard concrete that supports you?”

Despite his reputation for strictness, O’Neill rarely yells at his students, and instead makes jokes with them whenever possible. “Humor shows intelligence,” said O’Neill. “Jokes break the tension and keep people interested in the work.”

Catching a student looking into space, O’Neill exclaims, “Stop staring at her, Malcolm! If you want to get her number casually bump into her after class!”

Even those on their toes, aren’t free from O’Neill’s playful jokes. When a student in his 5^th period class gets an answer correct, O’Neill remarks, “I don’t care what they say about you Esther, I like you.”

“I never had him myself, but I had a lot of friends who would share stories about his class,” said Helen Pozdniakova, 20, a graduate of Midwood High School.

Some of his other famous sayings include, “Don’t worry, one day you’ll get a girlfriend too!” “If you want to get away from my commentary, do you work,” and “Don’t ask an answer as a question, we’re still going to laugh at you just as much.”

O’Neill, who grew up on Ave P, became engrossed in Latin after a high school teacher let him borrow a Latin book. “The Latin word order sounded so noble, refined, polished and exquisite,” he said. From then, O’Neill began to teach himself Latin, until taking classes in college.

“It took a long time for me to decide between science and classics,” he began. “I then saw the book as a laboratory and from there I knew the thing was to become a Latin teacher.”

O’Neill began teaching Latin at Westchester County high school for a single semester part time before switching to Midwood High School, where he would remain for 26 years and counting, encouraging his students to “fulfill their stature as human persons on their mission to attain the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

“Every child no later than seven-years-old should take Latin. It is the grammar, it is the logic of language, it makes you a lawyer in analyzing, teaching you analytical thinking and synthetic thinking,” said O’Neill. “We need to use bold face, italics and colors to make a point, whereas the Romans used words themselves.”

O’Neill practices the same discipline he has with his students with his own seven children, Lucia, 11; Rosa, 13; Michael V, 10; Callixtus, 8; Donata, 6; Severin, 9 mo.; and Cajetan Benedict Ignatius Aloysius Augustan Pius O’Neill, 4. According to O’Neill he teaches them a semester’s worth of Latin in a mere three weeks over the summer, four hours on weekdays, and two hours on the weekends. His children also take ballet, piano and soccer classes in addition to reading.

“I may leave the system because of all the changes, but I never want to stop working and educating,” With a hint of sparkle in his blue eyes, he boisterously proclaimed, “I have things to contribute to the world of people, I want to die with a pen in my hand!” and made his way through the now, noisy hallways of Midwood for his 5^th period class.