August 22, 2018 • www.theobserver.com • Vol. CXXXI, No. 15
HIGHLIGHTS The Observer’s office will be closed Monday, Sept. 3, for Labor Day. See deadline changes inside ... Page 18
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD • EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
AN INSPIRATION TO EVERYONE North Arlington youngster Piperato plays football with only one leg
By Jim Hague ogsmar@aol.com March 24, 2014 was a day just like any other for 7-year-old North Arlington native Josh Piperato. The youngster was having fun at his aunt’s home in Bradley Beach, doing what active little boys normally do. Josh was jumping up and down on the family trampoline. That’s when disaster struck. “My leg got caught and that was it,” Josh explains. Emergency room doctors at a local hospital diagnosed Piperato’s injury first as a sprained ankle,
Photo by Jim Hague Photo layout by Michelle Rybeck
Young Josh Piperato is giving his all as a member of the North Arlington Junior Vikings football team, despite losing his left leg in a tragic accident four years ago.
but as it turned out, it was far worse. “The pain he was having was so intense,” said Josh’s mother Ana. “He was screaming in pain.” Josh also developed a fever that reached an astounding 108 degrees. “It was bad,” Ana Piperato said. “He fainted in my arms. I kept asking him questions and he wouldn’t respond.” A second trip to the hospital ensued. This time, the prognosis was more severe. Josh Piperato developed compartment syndrome. According to the website, WebMD, Compartment syn-
drome is a condition in which increased pressure within one of the body’s compartments results in insufficient blood supply to tissue within that space. It is most commonly due to physical trauma, but can also occur after blood flow returns following a period of poor blood flow. Treatment is by surgery to open the compartment completed in a timely manner, but if not treated within six hours, permanent muscle or nerve damage can result. “Joshua was unconscious and in a coma,” Ana Piperato said. “He developed blood clots
See PIPERATO, Page 12
It appears work at Oval may finally get underway By Ron Leir Special to The Observer
a few hundred times. Untold numbers of phone calls and letters exchanged by engineers and environmental officials, hundreds of pages of documents and exhibits compiling Kearny’s application to the N.J. Department
T
he road to the starting line to get the state to sanction a makeover of the Gunnell Oval Recreational Complex has proved to be as convoluted as circling the oval
of Environmental Protection over the past four years speak to the town’s massive effort. Now, finally, a breakthrough may have gotten the town over a big hurdle. An Aug. 6 letter from Gautam
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See OVAL, Page 10
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THE OBSERVER | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018
30+ YEARS LATER, WOUNDS FROM By Juliana Demarest Special to The Observer
T
hree decades have passed but in my mind’s eye I can see it clear as day. Thirty years later, I wish my mind’s eye were visually impaired. I don’t have to close my eyes to see them — the whole lot of them — lined up along the wall beneath
BULLYING CRISIS the green chalkboard. They sat there during an indoor lunch recess on a rainy day, legs outstretched, holding their hair back from their foreheads methodically uttering, “Uh duh” over and over in a dopey tone. Their
actions were torpedoed for a direct hit right at me. My offense? I had the audacity to wear my hair pulled back off my face in a headband. It was the ‘80s after all. Headbands were practically a wardrobe necessity. However, to these girls, it became fodder with which to taunt me. That was sixth-grade, five years in from when the teasing, the taunting (read: bullying) began. Now, some
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30-plus years later, my adult life is still pock-marked by scars of the past. To this day, the effects of childhood bullying continue to follow me on a regular basis. They say our experiences as children shape us into the people we become as adults. I’d say that’s a pretty accurate assessment. It began the first day of first-grade, when we got our seat assignments and I was placed next to a girl with whom I thought I could be friendly. We exchanged names and I excitedly told her that she shared the same middle name as my sister. “So what?” was her gruff reply. Feeling embarrassed for having shared my excitement, I shrunk back in my seat, when she hit me with her follow-up question: “What’s wrong with your teeth?” I had a few small white spots on my front teeth, barely noticeable and certainly nothing that had ever bothered me before. It was the first time I was introduced to the feeling being self-conscious about my looks. I was 6. Throughout that year, it became clear that this girl was indeed not my friend. My mom had taught me the golden rules of treating others how you would want them to treat you and if you don’t have anything nice then don’t say anything at all. Clearly this girl’s mother had not taught her the same. See, I was a “nice” girl. All the teachers loved me and I was nice to everyone. In fact, I was so nice that I didn’t know how to speak up for myself and defend myself against this girl and her little horde of followers. From that first day of first-grade, straight
through eighth-grade, all I ever wanted was acceptance by this group. All I ever got was bullied. Of course it wasn’t called that back then. It was just “kids being kids.” There were a couple of girls who were picked on more than I was. The teachers would always send me in to make them feel better when they were upset. I recall one girl, “Samantha,” who was always the chubby girl in school. Aside from being teased about the obvious, I recall how the “cool kids”in first-grade made fun of her because her mom would put ice cubes in her plastic thermos of milk to keep it cold throughout the school day. Do you hear how insane that sounds? She was made fun of because her mom put ice cubes in her milk? It sounds like it should be insignificant and merely laughed off, but to a 6-yearold, regardless of how trivial the matter may appear, words from peers can cut like a knife. Over the years, the subject matter of their bullying ran the gamut. From my hairstyle to clothes or a secret crush of mine to my new best friend, nothing was off limits. We couldn’t afford designer clothes from the big names that were in style at the time: Guess Jeans and Benetton come to mind. No. My mom shopped at Kmart and it felt like everyone knew it. My clothes weren’t what you’d call “stylish,” but I wasn’t dressed in rags either. I was always dressed nice and clean, but it was just something else on which they could zero in. By seventh- and eighthgrade, the bullying took on
Continued on the next page
THE OBSERVER | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018
03
BULLYING STILL EXIST TO THIS DAY Continued from previous page new significance. I would walk to school every day and I would dread when I had to turn the last corner. Walking the last stretch of sidewalk toward the schoolyard was like walking the plank, with a group of my tormentors often huddled at the end like a pit of snakes. They’d stare at me, covering their mouths as they leaned in to whisper in each other’s ears. To this day, I still don’t know what they would say to one another. Maybe it’s better that way. At the beginning of seventh-grade, when students from the other two schools in town would merge into my school for seventh- and eighth-grade, I was lucky enough to meet someone who’d become my kindred spirit and my best friend. She would also join me in becoming a victim of this group of girl-devils. Our close friendship became the target of their attacks when my friend and I saw the writing on the wall. Literally. We literally saw the writing on the wall. The wall of the third-floor girls’ bathroom to be precise. They had written that my friend and I were lesbians. I barely even knew what that really meant. This was the late ‘80s. It wasn’t like it is now. There was not much in the way of tolerance and acceptance. All there was was devastation and humiliation. I had finally found the best friend I had in years, and now they were trying to take that away from
me too. None of them wanted to be my friend and now that I had that best friend they tried to destroy it by making it into something it was not. But I survived. Somehow, by the grace of God, I made it through, although not unscathed. At 43, I remain painfully self-conscious of what other people think. My self-esteem has never been in what you’d call a “healthy state.” It’s funny because I’ve often been told that I exude confidence. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. Up until the time I moved out in my mid-20s, I kept on my dresser an old pine box, roughly the size of a shoe box. It was a keepsake given to me in grammar school by an elderly wheelchair-bound neighbor who’d had polio as a child. In that box I kept all my secrets: school pictures of my boy crushes, notes passed between my couple of close friends and me and my old diaries. There were two. One was a pretty purple one adorned with tiny white hearts and the other was a red and white Hello Kitty one with a lock. After at least a decade of serving as a stand for a picture frame, I slid the box off my dresser and sat with it on the floor. It was like opening a Pandora’s Box of bad memories. With it opened the floodgates of years of hurt. I was able to pop open Hello Kitty’s pathetic little lock. I flipped open to a random page but the words
Inside this edition ... Opinion............................................................................................6 Around Town..................................................................................9 Food & Dining Directory..............................................................10 Sports & Recreation.....................................................................11 Health & Wellness Directory.......................................................13 Real Estate....................................................................................16 Real Estate Directory...................................................................18 Obituaries......................................................................................19 Classifieds..............................................................................20-21 Business Directory......................................................................22
leaped out as if I had just writing them yesterday, not some 20 years ago. “I made up a new song,” I had scrawled in purple ink. “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I just want to die.” To this day I can still hear the tune play in my head. Those words were written by me in sixth-grade. In sixth-grade I WANTED TO DIE because I couldn’t bear the way I was being treated
by my so-called friends and dreaded going to school each and every day. No child should ever have to feel that way. I now live 3,000 miles away from where I grew up, but the effects of the way I was treated are always right behind me like the proverbial monkey on my back. It’s there when I look in the mirror or see pictures of myself and hate what I see.
It’s there when I have to put myself out there in new social situations. It’s there when I see my own daughter being treated in a similar way by some little snot-nose kid in school. It was rather coincidental timing that I was recently asked to share my childhood bullying experiences. About two weeks prior, I had an
See BULLY, Page 17
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NORTH ARLINGTON PRESENTS
FREE SUMMER
CONCERT North Arlington’s Free Summer Concert series
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28
with the first time local appearance of GARDEN STATE RADIO. This dynamic act will be performing Pop-Rock hits from the 80’s & 90’s up to today. Audiences will be thrilled by the music of Pat Benatar to Katy Perry; Michael Jackson to Journey: Paramour to Rhianna and much, much more.
THE CONCERT TAKES PLACE AT RIVERSIDE PARK BEGINNING AT 7PM. Come early as this concert is sure to draw a large crowd. Don’t forget your beach chairs or blankets and enjoy a night of fun under the stars in a beautiful park setting. There is plenty of free parking available and refreshments will be available.
FINAL SHOW OF THE SEASON!