Copyright © 2005 Long Islander Newspapers, Inc.
January 27, 2005
By Michael R. Sisak

“A Midwinter Night’s Dream” forged into reality, last Thursday, as students and faculty from Northport High School gathered with residents and activists for a gala that contributed more than $80,000 to the research of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neurological disorder that has afflicted teachers David Deutsch and Chris Pendergast.

It was a formal affair — an early promenade of fashion, dance and eclectic cuisine — executed by a committee of students with the elegance of the inaugural celebrations held the same night in Washington. There were black ties and colorful, matte-finished dresses, a shimmering backdrop (Oheka Castle, the 126-room chateau built in Cold Spring Hills for Metropolitan Opera founder Otto Kahn) and special guests (David Cone, the personable former pitcher for the Mets and Yankees and Dr. Jeffrey D. Rothstein, the director of the Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University).

“I was genuinely blown away by how smoothly the evening went and how enjoyable it really was,” said Deutsch, who has fueled the students’ renewed awareness of ALS since he was diagnosed, last March. “It’s difficult to describe the feelings that I had. I’m sitting there in a room filled with 400 people knowing for the most part they’re there to support me. It’s an overwhelming feeling.”

The gala began as a dream, an idea created by Northport junior Almog Cohen during an Honor Society meeting in November. Cohen, and Honor Society advisor Don Strasser, led a 16-member committee of classmates that canvassed the community to solicit donations of food from restaurants, raffle prizes from businesses and art for a silent auction. And they recruited guitarist Peter Mazzeo of Northport, a string quartet, a trumpeter, and a pianist to provide a musical underscore.

For three months, Cohen catalogued notes, contributions and developments in a blue binder and carried on a blitz of telephone calls each afternoon before a late arrival at basketball practice. A sense of accomplishment, of reality, came with a swell of emotion as she welcomed guests in the grand foyer at Oheka.

“I just started to cry a little bit, just seeing that what looked so good on paper, what we thought would look so great and would attract people, actually did,” Cohen said. “It was by far the best night of my life.”

Strasser was impressed.

“It all came together; it seemed to run so flawlessly,” Strasser said. “The poise of the kids and the compassion they had, it was really amazing.”

Pendergast, a 12-year ALS sufferer who taught Cohen in science when she was a student at Dickinson Avenue Elementary School, said the gala provided a boost to his spirits, a necessary prescription for a disease whose prospects include loss of mobility, body function and, ultimately, death.

“There’s no doubt that being involved actively in fighting the disease in this form is life-lengthening,” Pendergast said. “We can’t undergo chemotherapy or invasive types of surgical procedures to allow us to fight back against the disease, so we have a choice of laying down and doing nothing and allowing the disease to steamroll right over us, or to fight back with spirit and get involved with activities such as Thursday night. That is our only medicine.”

Pendergast, who moves with the aid of a motorized wheelchair and now speaks at a slower pace since his diagnosis, also commended the fortitude of the students who saw the event to fruition.

“It was, on a personal level, extremely gratifying to see so much effort and so many hours of work and so much cooperation throughout the community to pull off something like that,” Pendergast said. “It was an affirmation of the goodness and also the competency of young people. So many grown-ups write kids off as being lost and being self-absorbed. To see what was primarily done by kids is a confirmation that kids are good and that there is hope.”

Cohen and the other committee members were at Oheka well into Friday morning, helping with cleanup and hoping to savor the memory of a wonderful night.

“That night when I came home, it was about 3 and I couldn’t sleep I was so excited,” Cohen said. “My parents were asleep, I was the only one awake, so I was looking at the video [of the event] and I couldn’t believe that we did this.”