Save this date. A public meeting of all citizens will be held at the village hall for our plans for Mineola's centennial celebration on Dec. 8.

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Bob Koenig has worked at the Mineola Post Office for the past 19 years. He now lives in Levittown but comes from an old Mineola family. His parents are George and Evelyn of Brown St. Bob has a band called the Keys and they played on TV in Dance Party USA.

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My wife, Grace, received the St. Pius award at St. Agnes Cathedral for 10 years and Helene Sommer got the Bishop John McGann award for 30 years of service to the Corpus Christi Religious Education. Also with us was Ursula Bordonaro, director of religious education. Our pastor, James Bowman, treated the three ladies and myself to dinner at George Martins. Afterwards we had a chance to speak to the celebrant, Archbishop John Dunne. The bishop used to be a priest at Corpus Christi and actually remembers our daughter Sister Annmarie when she interviewed him years ago when Annmarie worked as a reporter for this paper.

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A party of 25 celebrated the birthdays of Julie and Pat McCrave. Julie was 80 on Oct. 23 and Pat will be 81 in March. Their daughters Bernadette and Ellen of Brown St. hosted the party. A picture of the happy couple appears elsewhere on this page.

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I'm a great stamp collector and I now have the "inverted Jenny," the plane that was printed upside down by error; the first ever US stamp with Franklin's face from 1847; and the rarest US stamp, the Franklin one penny plus the world's first ever stamp, the English "penny black" and the world's rarest stamp, the British Guinea of 1856. There are only four of these in the world. These stamps have a total value of $6 million. But no, friends, I have not become a millionaire, all of these are just copies given to me by our daughter.

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Dan and Virginia Scheidel had dinner at Panera's Bread. Dan is a retired 3rd Precinct cop and is pretty happy about his son who is now detective. AnnMarie Jankey and Kay Spalding of Mineola were also at Panera's.

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Paul and Diane Ratcliffe live on White Road. He has been a volunteer fireman for 35 years and works as a maintenance manager for an elevator company in the city.

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Tony and Sharon De Franco lunched at the Seacrest Diner. Tony owns the local IHOP.

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Anna Lamm is a waitress at the same diner. She and her husband, Ed, live on Linden Boulevard.

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Mary Gorry has been with the post office for 20 years. She was delivering mail at CJ Gifts when we caught up with her. CJ manager Maryann Ferron says that Mary is the one who recommended her for the job at the gift shop. "Nevertheless, they are still friends," Maryann said.

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Looking for a good Irish restaurant? Patrick's East Side Grill in New Hyde Park belongs to local ladies from Mineola - Francine McPoland and Betty Terzi.

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The train was crowded on the recent trip to Washington and I ended up sitting with a woman from Dutchess County who told me she edits publishers' galleys. One of her clients turns out to be Dover Publications in Mineola.

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I remember when I first took the train as a young soldier returning from leave to go to Georgia. I was surprised when the train pulled out of Washington, all the black people began to move to the rear of the train. I asked the conductor, "How come?" and he told me, "We have Jim Crow, south of Washington." That kind of racism still existed in 1942.

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Jim Cataldo likes to shop at Munder's Hardware. He lives on Jerome Avenue and owns a restaurant supply business.

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Cheers for Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy for taking time out of her busy schedule to visit the new Mineola High School library. Principal Ed Escobar showed her around. Later she took questions from the students about issues before Congress.

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Carmela Bernacchio, Steve Ford and Peter Gollobin did a great job running the affair, Mineola In Style Night. In addition to Carmela, Steve and Peter, the Mineola Chamber of Commerce was represented by directors Jerry Mehlman, Gary Katz, Phil Fortuna, Bill Greene, Suzanne Skaflestead, Cathy Whitley, Dr. Gail Stevens, Dr. Ronald Nagelberg, Lud Odierna, John Broder, Linda Doerrbecker and Nancy Portoghese.