PORT JEFFERSON
Life, according to Joe Edley, three-time National Scrabble Championship winner and Port Jefferson resident, is like a bag of tiles. His metaphor purposefully mirrors the one so famously quipped by Tom Hanks when he played a simple-minded man expounding folksy wisdom while inadvertently changing history.
"Scrabble is so much like life," Edley, 64, when he was gunning for a fourth national title. "Learning how to play is like [that quote from] Forrest Gump, 'you never know what you're gonna get' when you put your hand in the bag of tiles."
This year, Edley will be trying again to capture his elusive fourth Scrabble championship. First he’ll have to get passed Nigel Richards, the current national and world champion who will be there defending his title.
HAUPPAUGE
Rev. Monsignor Francis Midura died suddenly on Monday night. He had been leading St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church for more than nine years.
Midura dedicated his life to serving the local community, as leader of St. Thomas More and fire chaplain with the Hauppauge Fire Department.
In, Midura said he received his calling to enter the priesthood at age 13 or 14 while he was attending Catholic school. He entered the seminary high school in 1958 and was ordained in 1970.
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COMMACK
The mother of Commack graduate Gabriel Philby-Zetsche is not only being accused of murdering her son, but allegedly went to lengths in effort to cover it up, according to local police.
Times Union reports that Lucy Rafa, landlord of the apartment 52-year-old Tracy Zetsche and her late son shared, said the former Commack mother refused to let her show the apartment to new potential tenants on July 26 - the day an autopsy revealed Philby-Zetsche was murdered.
Philby-Zetsche, 22, a 2009 Commack High School graduate, His mother has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
State lawmakers on Tuesday joined doctors and parents at to announce new legislation that requires hospitals to offer pertussis booster shots to new parents and caregivers to protect their babies' health.
The law stopped short of requiring parents to get the vaccine because lawmakers said they thought it would be going too far.
According to Stony Brook University President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., who is a specialist in infectious diseases, pertussis was a leading cause of death among infants and children until regular vaccination reduced it to about 1,000 U.S. cases a year by the mid- to late-1970s. However, he said, pertussis is on a comeback, with approximately 27,500 cases reported in the U.S. in 2011.
A case of pertussis was reported in July at Gelinas Junior High in Setauket; another was reported in Commack. "This is a preventable disease, based on vaccinations," Stanley said. "It's something we should not have to deal with."
