Fort Lee Patch Newsmakers 2011

If you type the name "Mark Sokolich" in Fort Lee Patch's search box (upper right of the page), you'll get 205 results. That means the mayor has been at least mentioned in that many articles published over the past year on Fort Lee Patch.

He, along with Councilmen Armand Pohan and Michael Sargenti, were re-elected in November.

A search for "Raymond Bandlow" will yeild 115 articles in which the former school superintendent's name is mentioned, and "Steven Engravalle" will result in 64.

Bandlow announced in August that he had accepted a position in the Beacon City School District in Beacon, N.Y. and would therefore resign from the Fort Lee School District on Oct. 31.

And Engravalle in October was appointed Acting Superintendent for four months after the school board initially tabled a resolution that would have appointed him weeks prior and a special meeting to take public comment on the issue was held.

How about "Port Authority?" Answer: 137.

And do we really need to say why? An explanation would begin with the words, "toll hikes."

The "winner," as far as we could tell, when it comes to at least being mentioned in articles, is "George Washington Bridge" with 230, just edging out Sokolich.

All of the above were 2011 newsmakers to be sure, but Patch decided to take a look at some of the more unsung newsmakers of 2011, or at least those, for better or worse, who may not have gotten quite as much attention, but who certainly grabbed a few headlines of their own:

The Fort Lee Mayor and Council issued a proclamation to Taekwondo standout, Olympic hopeful and Fort Lee resident Merissa Beth Pico at a recent meeting.

That proclamation was in recognition of Pico’s impressive litany of achievements in the sport she’s been competing in since before the age of three, a sampling of which include the following:

• World Taekwondo Federation Olympic sparring since she was under the age of three
• Recently placing third at the USA Olympic trials for 2012 in London
• Named All-American by the United States Taekwondo Association in 2010
• Number one junior competitor in the country for the past three years in her weight class
• Winner of the New Jersey State Championships since she was five years old, which qualified Merissa each year to compete in the USA Junior Olympics every year thereafter through the present except for the year 2009, when she had back surgery

Pico, who has been the subject of a number of Fort Lee Patch stories over the past year, was a student at until fifth grade; she now attends Dwight Englewood, from which she will graduate this year. And perhaps most impressively, she's just two steps away from making the U.S. Olympic team.

And then there's 's Ross Fasman, a baseball player and current student representative to the Fort Lee Board of Education.

Fasman's name came up a lot during the baseball season, but it was his life-saving decision aboard a flight from Florida during which he risked his own life to help a fellow diabetic and complete stranger that made this young man a hero.

Fasman was recognized for those heroics by the Fort Lee Board of Education and also at a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Dream Gala in Mahwah.

Another "newsmaker" this year was Deputy Chief of the Fort Lee Fire Department--and soon to be Chief--Keith Sabatino, who took it upon himself to start a Facebook event page called “Pay It Forward” for Sept. 11. (Full Story)

Sabatino's started out with a modest goal, shooting for 1,000 participants. At last count, that number was more than 85,000.

And then there were "the carpoolers," a group of Fort Lee residents and fellow carpoolers from neighboring towns who said in October that the Port Authority was discouraging carpooling at the George Washington Bridge by ticketing drivers heading for the tollbooths for violations like illegally taking on passengers or stopping at a bus stop in what some of them describe as a “crackdown” and others see as a form of “harassment” on the part of Port Authority police. (Full Story)

The group, led by Leonor Javier of Fort Lee, has vowed to continue there fight so stay tuned ...

And speaking of headlines, consider the group consisting of Fort Lee High School junior Andrew Fuentes, senior Megan Gimson, junior Hunter McCue, sophomore Michael Morell, freshman Laura Shih, sophomore Devin Sokolich and sophomore Jaryn Stewart, who appeared before a national TV audience in October as guests on HLN’s (the network formerly known as CNN Headline News) Dr. Drew show with Dr. Drew Pinsky to talk about New Jersey’s then new anti-bullying law and the effect it's having in their school.

We would be remiss if we didn't mention member Helen Yoon, the only non-incumbent candidate for public office in Fort Lee to win an election this year, as one of our 2011 newsmakers.

Yoon first came to most people's attention shortly after she announced she was running for a seat on the school board when she made comments at a BOE meeting in March suggesting that then Fort Lee Superintendent of Schools Raymond Bandlow and other school officials took part in campaigning efforts for the three incumbent candidates—Peter Suh, Michelle Stux-Ramirez and Joseph Surace—by attending and speaking at a campaign kickoff and fundraising event organized by Suh earlier that month.

Yoon won a seat on the board, bested in the April election only by Suh, but she also filed an ethics complaint with the state School Ethics Commission against school administrators over the campaign fundraiser—a complaint that was subsequently dismissed.

And finally, in a year when Time Magazine named "The Protester" as its "Person of the Year," we at Patch wanted to recognized Fort Lee's own protesters—a group of Fort Lee High School Academy of Performing Arts (APA) students who turned up at a Fort Lee Board of Education in May wearing red duct tape over their mouths in protest of recently announced teacher layoffs in the district.