PEF PUBLIC SECTOR PRIDE
Award WinNing Nurses PEF members Adrienne Combs (left) and
Sharon Valentine (below) recently won the SUNY Stony Brook President's Award for
Excellence in Classified Service for their work as public servants.- Photos by Dee Dodson
Two Stony Brook members win
President's Awards
By KARA E. SMITH
Having their work recognized and admired by co-workers is one of the highest honors a
professional can receive. This fall, two PEF nurses at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island
were so honored.
Adrienne Combs, a neonatal outreach and transport coordinator and Sharon Valentine, a
nurse educator, both received Stony Brook's President's Awards for Excellence in
Classified Service, awards given to those who demonstrate outstanding accomplishment and
skill on the job.
"Adrienne is one of my role models," said PEF Division 225 Council Leader Dee
Dodson. "A real clinical expert and a good leader."
Combs works in one of the only infant tertiary care facilities in Suffolk county. She
works with seriously ill infants and babies who require long-term care, and is deeply
committed to the work she does.
"What I do is much more than simply a job for me," said Combs. "I love
working with these infants and I'm extremely proud of the work we do here."Combs also
serves as a community liaison, providing training in neo-natal resuscitation and training
other nurses to transport and care for seriously sick babies in their own medical care
facilities.
Honored to be chosen
Sharon Valentine was surprised to learn she had won the award. "A lot of people work here and there's a great deal of competition for this award," said Valentine.
"I was very honored to be chosen."Valentine has worked as a nurse educator in SUNY Stony Brook's emergency department for the past 12 years. "I help orient people who are emergency room nurses or who would like to become emergency room nurses," explained Combs.
One of Valentine's pet projects is the facility's undergraduate research program which
introduces students to the world of emergency-room medicine and exposes them to clinical
research. "A lot of students are interested in emergency room medicine and this
allows them to see first hand what it's like," said Valentine.
"I have never heard anyone speak in anything but glowing terms in regards to Sharon's
work," said Dodson. "She is a talented professional who is thoroughly capable of
handling anything that needs to be done."
Both Valentine and Combs received a plaque and $500 at an October convocation dinner held
in honor of President's Award winners.
Fighting the good fight:
PEF member honored for civil rights activism
Honors for a Freedom Fighter PEF member Leon Van Dyke,
founder of the Albany civil rights group "The Brothers", enjoys a laugh with
friends attending a dinner in his honor in October. Van Dyke is an elementary and
secondary education associate at the State Education Department.
- Photo by Fred Moody
By KARA E. SMITH
They say it only takes a spark to ignite a fire. For PEF Member Leon Van Dyke, founder of
Albany's legendary civil rights organization "The Brothers," the spark that
ignited his fiery activist passions was discrimination he faced in Albany's construction
trade.
"I founded the Brothers in 1965, while looking for construction work in Albany,"
said Van Dyke, an elementary and secondary education associate in the Department of
Education's Office of School Improvement.
"What used to happen is that you would show up at the union hall early in the
morning and they would pick you to work on a construction job that day."
The trouble was, no matter how early blacks arrived or how long they waited, they were
always among the last workers picked, if they were selected at all, Van Dyke explained.
"I finally got ticked off and I went out and picketed the union hall," he said.
"After a while, some of my friends joined me and the next thing you know, we were
picketing every construction site in Albany, including the Empire State Plaza and the SUNY
campus, and the Brothers were born."
Eventually the area contractors and construction labor and trade unions, signed a contract
with the Brothers agreeing to hire a certain number of minorities on their job sites.
Fighting the five dollar vote
After the construction trade victory, people sought the Brothers' help for civil rights
causes ranging from housing, medical care and tenants rights.
"From 1966-69, we picketed against the $5 vote," said Van Dyke. "They used
to pay people $5 to vote at the polls, in Albany."
"We wanted to stop this practice because it had a big impact on the blacks and
unfairly influenced the poor, he said."
"We picketed every polling place in Albany," said Van Dyke. "This really
solidified us as an organization, because the police arrested us at one polling place and
that inspired a whole bunch of other local people to come out and protest. At the end of
the day, the police had arrested about 200 protesters."
Paying for votes was stopped in about two to three months time as a result of this
protest.
Lifelong work honored
Last month Van Dyke was honored for these and other civil rights activities at a dinner
held in his honor at the Albany Marriot Hotel.
"It was a tremendous honor," said Van Dyke. "It's extremely satisfying to
know that my work has been appreciated."
"I remember Leon Van Dyke from when I first moved to Albany in the late 1960s,"
said PEF President Roger Benson. "I admired him enormously because of his social
outreach and the significant role he played in raising issues of racial equality in
upstate New York.
"When I realized he was a PEF member I was honored to represent such an important
figure," said Benson.
Benson explained that Van Dyke has also been extremely helpful in forging ties between PEF
and the NYS Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus and Assembly Deputy Speaker Arthur
Eve.
Today Van Dyke remains active in a number of political and civil rights groups, including
the NYS African American Political Action Committee, the Paul Robeson Committee and an
initiative to build 1,000 schools in sub-Saharan Africa.
"You never know who you touch," said Van Dyke. "I still have people coming
up to me and saying they remember my work with the Brothers."
THE FACE OF BRAVERY - PEF member Carl
Stiglich (center) was awarded the DOCS Medal of Merit for saving a drowning man last
October. Stiglich is flanked by PEF Region 4 Coordinator Dave Stallone.
Prison chaplain a godsend to drowning swimmer
By KARA E. SMITH
Have you ever felt inexplicably compelled to act? PEF member Carl Stiglich, a protestant
chaplain at Sullivan County Correctional Facility, felt and answered such a pull last year
and ended up saving a drowning man's life.
Stiglich was also awarded the Department of Correctional Services' Medal of Merit this
fall for his actions.
"I was in Cazenovia for the New York State Chaplain Association Meeting when I had a
nagging thought that I should leave the meeting early," said Stiglich. "I ended
up leaving about a half hour before it was completed."
Once outside, Stiglich heard a cry for help about 25 feet away, and realized someone was
drowning in nearby Cazenovia Lake.
A courageous choice
"It was the beginning of October and the water was about 58 degrees," said
Stiglich. "I looked out across the water to where the swimmer was and saw he was
about 100 yards away.
"I'm not a strong swimmer and I didn't know if I could swim all the way out there to
save him, but knew I had to try," he said.
Stiglich ran down to the lakeside, stripped off his shoes and jacket, grabbed a long stick
for the drowning man to hold onto and jumped into the lake. PEF Member James Forsythe, a
chaplain at Clinton County Correctional Facility, ran to get help and blankets.
"I basically thought I was swimming to my death," said Stiglich. "As I
started out, I thought about my children living the rest of their lives without a father,
but I knew what I had to do.
"I just kept yelling out to him, telling him I was on the way, it took about 10
minutes to swim to him," said Stiglich.
Once there, the man grabbed onto the stick and Stiglich headed back to shore dragging the
man behind him.
"I stopped for a rest at one point and the man started going under water. That's when
I realized that I couldn't stop. He was completely dependent on me," said Stiglich.
An act of divine providence
Meanwhile, in what Stiglich terms another act of divine providence, Chaplain Forsythe
had run to the kitchen for help instead of back into the convention center. The cook on
duty was a local fire chief who was experienced in life-saving techniques and knew of a
canoe moored in the lake nearby. He paddled out to Stiglich and the swimmer and the pair
were soon brought to safety.
"By the time we reached shore, the rescue squad was already there," Stiglich
said. "I didn't need any medical attention, but the rescued swimmer was taken to the
hospital - his temperature had dropped to 92 degrees."
In the year since the rescue, Stiglich has met and occasionally hears from the young man
he saved.
"I asked him to send me postcards when he reaches milestones in his life," he
said. "In the last, he wrote that he was attending college.
"God was really taking care of things that night. He had his eye on the drowning man
in the lake, and he compelled me to act," he said. "I couldn't have lived with
myself if I didn't make the choice to at least try to save that young man's life.
"God's grace is there when you need it," he said.