| 2003
A
79-year-old Douglaston man faced deportation after the feds fingered him
as a Nazi…Neighbors of
the NYPD Queens South Task Force
rallied to keep the cops at their 73rd Avenue
head-quarters…Express bus service for eastern Queens residents was
saved from Bloomberg’s budget ax, thanks to a fare
hike….
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The borough was hit with 28 inches of
snow this February, keeping schools closed and roads empty.
Tribune photo
by Ira Cohen
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The stage was set to transform the RKO
Richmond Hill Theater into a branch of the Museum of Sound
Recording… Former City Councilmember and borough President candidate Sheldon
Leffler pleaded not guilty in January to charges that he accepted
illegal campaign contributions…It was “Blue Lights Out” at Kmart, as the retailer filed for bankruptcy and shuttered its Glen
Oaks stores…A proposal for a catering hall at Fort Totten gave local residents agata….
Queens’ new Borough President,
Helen Marshall, outlined her plans for 2003…A Queens jury sent
Wendy’s massacre mastermind John Taylor to New York State’s Death Row….
Queens flew its flags at half-mast to
mourn the shuttle crew….City
Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr., said it was time for New York City to secede
from New York State…State environmental officials moved forward
with their plan to have Phelps-Dodge
shell-out $19 million to clean its former Maspeth plant….
More than 30 Queens schools were added to
the list of “most improved.”…Queens
residents and straphangers did their bet to adopt to counter-terrorism enforcement….
It began with a few flakes and buried us
on Feb. 17…The big blizzard dumped
28 inches of the white stuff on Queens, shutting us down for a
day…Firefighters at Engine Co.
261 in Dutch Kills battled a five-alarm blaze, a roof collapse
and a blast at a Con Ed facility on the day of the blizzard. Ironically,
261 was later shut down by the City’s budget ax....
Queens got flu shots and $37 million for
our West Nile “Battle
of the bugs.”…
The NBC series “Third Watch” filmed a segment in Dutch Kills…Con Ed removed a
utility pole from the middle of a Kew Gardens street…The Trib
followed-up on sinking homes in
Jamaica Hills.….
Queens went to war, and the Tribune
kept readers informed on security and our neighbors who went to Iraq
to fight….
Actor Adrien Brody cast the family of Army Reservist Tommy Zarobinski
into the spotlight at the Academy Award ceremonies in April…Gary
Anthony Ramsay, a columnist for the Trib’s sister
publication, The Southeast Queens PRESS,
began reporting for Tribune readers from Kuwait….
Maspeth Marine Robert Marcus Rodriguez, 21, died in combat in Iraq...The
City kicked butt in April, making smokers
take themselves to the street to take a drag… Budget cuts threatened to slice deep into Queens libraries, and
communities in two parts of Queens rallied to try and convince Mayor
Bloomberg to keep their firehouses
open. Bloomberg threatened to shut two Queens houses – in
Woodhaven and in the Dutch Kills section of Long Island City…
Eleven men were arrested and charged on
April 23 with stealing $1.6 million worth of mini-liquor bottles from a LaGuardia Airport storage facility –
and reselling them to area merchants…A dozen trees in Forest Park were
filled by the Asian Long-horned
Beetle....
Queens Navy Corpsman Ted
Bittle returned home from Iraq with a Purple Heart…A four-foot
long alligator was found
roaming around Alley Pond Park....
A group of Queens lawyers and realtors
were charged with stealing
customers’ identities to collect on phony mortgages…A State
Supreme Court Judge ruled that the MTA would have to
roll-back transit fares. A good Samaritan fund, and returned
Jackie Russell – the 13-year-old Jack Russell terrier/companion of NY1
News entertainment reporter, George
Whipple…
After 31 years of delivering lunch to the
Tribune, Good Food Deli
in Flushing - the place across the street from the Trib’s
former office - planned on closing its doors.
The Tribune turned
33 1/3-years-old and prepared for many more years of covering the news.
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