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Dishing with Dee: Boro bar association elects new prez at annual dinner

Dishing with Dee: Boro bar association elects new prez at annual dinner
By Dee Richard

This week was an interesting one. On Wednesday evening, our first stop was Paul Vallone’s law office on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Whitestone, where some of the members and officers of the newly formed Bayside/Whitestone Lions Club addressed the entire group in the hopes of attracting additional members. The officers explained the benefits of becoming a Lion. A number of people present at the meeting seemed to be interested. More later.

Our second stop Wednesday evening was the 9/12 Nassau/Queens Tea Party Group, which held a meeting at the Albertson V.F.W. They had an interesting lineup of three speakers, all of whom discussed a different aspect of the economy. Speaker No. 1 was David Malpass, an economist and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, who spoke about the economy from the Washington point of view. Speaker No. 2 was Jack Martins, the former mayor of Mineola, L.I., now a state senator, who spoke about the economy from the Albany point of view. The third and last speaker was Lee Tu, a certified public accountant as well as a candidate for supervisor of the town of North Hempstead, L.I., who addressed the state of the economy from a Long Island point of view.

On this particular night, the above three speakers were all from Nassau County, but there were at least a dozen important political types from Queens in attendance as well. The speakers all seemed a cut above the usual as they brought everyone up to date on the why’s and wherefore’s of what was happening and what they could do to retain the good programs and how to go about eliminating the non-beneficial ones rather than the usual increasing taxes and reducing services. All in all, it was an informative and enlightening evening as they were like a breath of fresh air.

Speaking of Nassau County, a longtime diner at Il Bacco is James Garner, who was mayor of Hempstead Village from 1989-2005, when he was defeated by Wayne Hall. He was also the first black mayor to serve as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

This past week, Nassau Comptroller George Maragos appointed James as the deputy comptroller. Lots of luck, James, and see you in Il Bacco.

Thursday was the Queens County Bar Association’s 134th-annual dinner and installation of officers at Terrace on the Park. The outgoing president was Chanwoo Lee, the association’s first female Chinese president. The president-elect is Richard Gutierrez, the first male Latino to hold the office. The honors were performed by the Honorable Gail Prudenti.

It was a great networking evening. They had so many in attendance that they filled up two large banquet rooms. There was a tremendous amount of talent in those two rooms beside the obvious judges and lawyers.

We would like to extend our condolences to good friend Carolyn Karoff, who lost her sister Linda A. Bauer recently. Linda died suddenly and unexpectedly. Carolyn held a memorial service for her last Thursday at St. Aloysius Church in Great Neck. We will add Linda’s name to the list of those we pray for each evening. God bless all the members of Linda’s family.

Friday evening was the monthly girls’ night out — and when we refer to ourselves as “girls,” you understand we take poetic license. The girls who were able to make it this month were Joann De Martino, Myra Baird-Herce, Janet Malone, Debbie Markell and me. Our restaurant of choice this month was Il Bacco in Little Neck.

Apparently, Friday is a busy night, so we will have to decide on another evening, as we like to sit and chat after dinner over coffee and a cordial without feeling guilty about holding up other dinner patrons waiting for a table. We all ordered something different and sampled each others’ choices. All the food was great.

Hope everyone had a happy Mother’s Day. One of the things I did was to go to The Home Depot and buy a flat of geraniums in various colors. I love geraniums because they bloom up to and including the late fall.

That’s it for this week.

I look forward to hearing from you with information on people, parties and politics or gossip. I like receiving your voice mails at 718-767-6484, faxes at 718-746-0066 and e-mails at deerrichard@aol.com.

Don’t forget to check out the Focus on Queens page.

Till next week, Dee.