Vol. 6: Jun. 2025 Edit page

Dear Neighbors,

This month’s featured neighbor is Vic Tastrom. Vic is a beautiful, interesting, and fun man. Upon meeting him, I could immediately see why his daughter Alison turned out so well! She is a big personality and a big deal, as is her father. 

I’ve rarely seen Vic out on the street, so it was nice getting to know him and show him around our home. I love history, and a nice by-product of this newsletter is that I get to hear about my home’s past from residents who’ve lived here a long time.

My husband, Mark Funkhouser, aka Funk, is interviewing Vic as I type. Because my house is so small, I can hear them downstairs chatting it up, though I can’t make out what they’re saying. 

As always, please let me know if you’re willing to be the next featured neighbor. I am often told that the neighbor profile is the section of the newsletter that residents love most.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE

We hardly ever get company, but we had two weeks of three different guests. 

The first was our Memorial Day Party that I throw each year for my Bethpage friends. 

Next came my 36-year-old son Andrew to introduce us to his girlfriend Tabitha. They live in New Orleans, and this is the first time that we’ve met the woman that my mother-gut tells me is the girl my boy is going to marry. We had a whirlwind weekend of chatting under our tree with the chiminea going and taking Tabitha into the city show her the bright lights.

Three days after my son left, my girlfriend from Kansas City arrived. I took Tina down to the beach and she loved all the colorful rocks. After collecting a few stones, we placed our chairs in the water to chat. It was freezing cold! I don’t know how our neighbor James gets in the water so early in the spring! Since Tina and I had four days together, I took her to Bethpage to show her my hometown and also to Jones Beach, which is the beach that I spent many summers on covered in baby oil with iodine.

Speaking of Kansas City. Funk recently received a call from the current mayor who wants to honor Funk’s tenure as mayor by naming something after him. Funk laughed and said that he purposely didn’t name a building after himself, as is the custom of previous mayors, because he thinks it’s arrogant to do something like that while still in office. But I think it was a nice gesture on Mayor Lucas’s part. I’ll be excited to return Kansas City to view whatever he has planned for Funk. We haven’t been back since 2021.

OTHER NEWS

1. Last month, the new by-laws were voted in by a majority of shareholders. I think the last time the by-laws were amended was in 1985.
2. Please note that the annual shareholder’s meeting has been moved to Wednesday, 25 June at 7pm. 
3. Additionally, the location has changed from meeting in the circle to meeting via Zoom. All the usual discussion will take place, and I believe we will also be voting for five new board members to fill the vacant seats. 
4. According to an email dated 7 May 2025, all candidate statements that will tell us why each candidate is running should be shared with members any day now.

To reply to this newsletter, please email: [email protected]

To receive my personal newsletter: A humorous look at life, love, spirits & naked politics. Real talk, told from an anxious mind, please click: www.gloriasquitiro.com/subscribe

FEATURED NEIGHBOR

Vic Tastrom.

Where do I come from?

I was born in Mineola Hospital in Nassau County in 1943. We lived in New Hyde Park at the time. I was the second born of seven children. I am the only one in my family who did not graduate from Port Jeff High School. I graduated from New Brunswick High School in 1961, which is where Rutgers is. My father was the manager of a manufacturing plant in Edison. We actually lived in a brand new development in North Brunswick.

I joined the Marines in April of 1961 while I was still in high school. My mother said, “With your grades, you’re not going to college and you have no job prospects. I made an appointment with the Marine recruiter, go see him. Here’s the address.” A month later, while I was still in High School, I was in the Marine Corps. I graduated and received orders to report to boot camp.

On July 19, 1961, I reported to Parris Island, South Carolina for recruit training, then went to Camp Lejeune, for advanced infantry training. After boot-camp leave, I was transferred to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. I stayed a year and  graduated in electronic repair, then transferred to an infantry unit—the 2nd  Battalion, 7th Marines, at Camp Pendleton.

I wanted to get out of California, so in 1964, I foolishly extended my enlistment for three months to go to Okinawa. We traveled through Hawaii, Guam and made a lot of other stops on the way to Okinawa. In Okinawa, we were redesignated 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines. Sixteen days after landing in Okinawa, we were loaded onto the USS Renville in the middle of the night. We were sent to the South China Sea because two US destroyers were fired on by the North Vietnamese Navy, in the Tonkin Gulf.

I was in the first Combat battalion of Marines in Viet Nam. We landed by sea in Da Nang on March 8, 1965, at Red Beach One. Red Beach One was later renamed China Beach and was used as a Rest and Recuperation area. I spent my twenty second birthday on hill 327, watching parachute flares deployed over our heads, as we kept the Viet Cong from setting up mortars, to fire on our positions. Our snipers would harass them, and then retrieve any bodies. They called us “the battalion in motion.” We spent 7 months in Viet Nam, but in between we cruised around the Pacific three different times. We spent Thanksgiving in Japan, at the base of  Mount Fuji, for cold weather training; also went into Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics. We went to Hong Kong for a week, where there was no cold beer, to Subic Bay Naval Station, in the Philippines for jungle training, and finally back to Okinawa for Christmas and New years. March 8th, 1965, was the worst landing I was ever in. Our boat was picked up by wave and tossed on the beach sideways. Every time I see the file footage on the history channel I laugh. We were stationed right outside Da Nang Airforce base.

We spent five and a half months in Viet Nam before rotating back to Okinawa. And then we went back to Hawaii where we got a fireboat parade. We dropped anchor in Waikiki Beach, which no one had ever done before.

After I left the Marines, I went to Suffolk County Community College, in Selden, before transferring to the University of Maryland. I resented a lot of stuff because of the welcome we got. If you’d been to Viet Nam and you happened to mention it, people looked at you like you had three heads. Three of my friends re-enlisted because they couldn’t take the way we were treated. A couple of them didn’t make it out the second time.

I did not finish college—I still have 30 credits to go. My daughter Alison makes up for what I lack! She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and had a bunch of medals hanging around her neck. I am so proud of her.

After I dropped out of school I went to work for Dun and Bradstreet as a credit reporter. I was in Georgetown, Washington, DC. I got fed up with that and went to work for a friend who sold furniture. A big warehouse operation. I was the delivery manager. I quit that because he and I didn’t get along after a while. So I went to a place called George’s Radio and TV. It was one of the oldest retail establishments in Washington, DC. I was the assistant buyer in carpeting and furniture. In between I went to work for Landsburg’s Department Store. They were the oldest department store in the region.

I got fed up with living in DC so on November 1, 1978, I moved back here and went to work for Sav-On Fuel, driving an oil truck. I was living in the big 22-room-house in Shoreham with my parents.

I married the daughter of my parents' friends. Dottie was a twin, divorced with two kids and I married her on July 10, 1981. We had a house in Shoreham Village. After we split up in 1987, I moved into my sister’s house in Sound Beach.

Shortly after, I met my second wife, Wendy, at a church meeting in Mount Sinai. Wendy lived at 19 Culross and had broken up with my daughter Alison’s father. Wendy’s ex moved next door into the house that Alison is living in now (#17). Wendy and I lived together and finally got married on October 9, 2009. Wendy was working as a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

One day in 1995, I was in Riverhead and stopped for lunch near where Wendy was working at Light House Counseling. It was next to the Supreme Court and I knew a couple of people who worked in the court. I went to see them and was bitching about my job because I hated the people who took over the company. One of the guys I was talking with was a court officer and he handed me a piece of paper and said why don’t you take the test to be a court officer. I was 53 years old. I went back to Light House and got a check from Wendy because it was the last day you could take the test. I filled out the application in my truck and went to the post office and got it stamped and mailed off and then forgot about it. 

About a year later Wendy and I were planning a tour of Tennessee and I received a large manilla envelope in the mail telling me where to report. I called the number and asked if I could postpone reporting until after our vacation. The lady who answered said to look at the number in the upper right hand corner of the document and tell her what it said. I said it was 00001. She said, “You’re number 1 in the state, do you want the job or not?” Wendy and I cancelled our plans and I started the process. The process took about 2 years. When I reported into the academy, I was scared out of my mind. At 55 years old, I thought I was the oldest person in the academy, and I had taken a huge pay cut to try out for the job. Turned out the man sitting next to me was 63 years old! His name was Ronald Leonard, and he was a friend of Gene Minelli (#15 Culross), they were both in the same Naval Reserve Unit!

My class started with 135 officer candidates, and when we graduated there were about ninety left. My orders were for Brooklyn Criminal Court. I worked at Brooklyn Criminal for two years and then was transferred to Manhattan Criminal Court, in the summons court. I worked in the shadow of the World Trade Center. On March 12, 2001, I was transferred to Family Court in Central Islip. I worked there for 13 years until I transferred to Supreme Court in Riverhead.

Wendy died on April 23,2020. I bring her flowers all the time - she is in Calverton National. She died during the very early days of the pandemic and me and Alison and my other daughter Rebecca couldn’t have a funeral for her. We put her cell phone in her coffin just in case, and a pack of cigarettes because she smoked. Court officers and staff had a parade for her on this street. They couldn’t get out of their cars because of Covid. If you can believe it, a doctor’s office billed me for work they "performed" after she had already died.

Shortly after that, I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment. My daughters supported me through all of it, taking me to my appointments and surgeries. I retired March 29th of 2022. I waited until I was clear of cancer. I have a claim in because of the cancer and Camp Lejeune.

Why did I choose Culross?

I didn’t really choose it. I chose Wendy.

What do I love about Culross?

I grew up in Shoreham and I spent March through October in the water in a poor man’s wet suit: jeans and a sweat shirt. I like living on the water. My house on Culross actually sways on a heavy windy night. In the second-floor bedroom you can see the lamp hanging from the ceiling swinging in circles. We just had all our vegetation on the bluff cut but you have to be careful not to cut it too much or it dies and then bye-bye bluff.

What I’d like to see changed?

I’d like to see everyone pay their dues without complaining. I like what Greg did with our dirt road. It was never paved previously. Some of the houses here, particularly at the top of the street, had found themselves in very bad disrepair. Glad to see they are all in good shape now, those which remain. I don’t want to see too much changed. We "lost" the war with the North Shore Beach Property Owners Assoc. which is good because we "won" our own access to the beach - thanks to those on the board. I would like to see that maintained - I remember when the ravine was a white sand foot path.

The Photo: Vic Tastrom. (Daughter Alison, Vic and Daughter Rebecca, at a dinner for a fundraiser for an animal rescue group.)