The former dean of students at Port Washington High School, Al Whitney, would have turned 100 on April 26. As the date neared, his daughter, Anne Carlin of Kings Park, wondered what had happened to the sign dedicating “the pit,” Port Washington’s athletics field, to him.
Thinking the black-and-white sign had long been taken down, although a sign dedicating the field to her late father still remains, Carlin asked Facebook for help. She did not expect the outpouring of love for her father, who retired 38 years ago and died in 2004.
“They still say ‘your dad changed my life,” Carlin said. “[They say] ‘I don’t remember anyone’s name, I don’t remember a principal’s name. I don’t remember a teacher’s name. The only name I remember from high school is Mr. Whitney.’”
Nearly 100 people commented on Carlin’s post to recall how Whitney changed their lives, and over 260 people reacted to the post with likes and hearts. Even more people flooded Carlin’s private messages with their stories of her dad.
Born in Queens in 1925, Whitney joined the Navy before graduating high school to fight against European fascism. During the Allied invasion of Italy, Whitney was part of a two-person team that coordinated efforts with Italian partisans who sided with the Allies. During one mission, someone shot his partner, and Whitney carried him back to safety, winning a Bronze Star.
Whitney also participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, where he swam a mile out from the beach before the invasion to plant explosive devices along cement barricades so Allied ships could approach the shore.
After the war, Whitney moved to Long Island and graduated from Adelphi University as a physical education teacher. He joined the Port Washington School District in 1954 as a PE teacher and was later promoted to athletic director and dean of students at Schreiber High School.
Carlin, who grew up with nine other siblings in Huntington, said her father loved working with kids and always knew how to keep the family of 12 occupied with something fun.
“It wasn’t just my father coming up and playing games with us,” Carlin said. “The kids in the neighborhood would see Mr. Whitney out front and all of a sudden, you know, it went from five kids on our front lawn to 20 kids.”
Carlin said it became routine each summer for the neighborhood kids to come down to the Whitney household with a cup of sugar because Whitney would set up a projector to play cartoons and spin cotton candy himself using a machine he borrowed from the Port Washington summer program’s annual carnival.
Laughing while remembering the spun sugar constantly flying out of the machine and taking showers to get the sugar residue off her before the cartoons could start, Carlin said her father always knew how to bring a community together.
At Schreiber High School, students and staff remembered Whitney as a mentor who led each individual he knew as one of his own.
“He sort of took me under his wing,” said Charles Frankpus, who was on the varsity cross-country team when Whitney served as an assistant coach.
Throughout the 1979-1980 school year, Frankpus said Whitney always made sure he balanced his stressful class schedule by taking multiple Advanced Placement classes along with his athletics.
But the most impactful moment Frankpus remembered with Whitney was when he entered his classroom one day, took him outside, and broke the news about his grandmother’s death.
“My parents, I remember, came to pick me up from school, and he sat on the steps outside … and waited for my parents to come with me,” Frankpus said.
Frankpus was among the dozens of former students who shared how Whitney changed their lives under Carlin’s Facebook post. Other commenters said they were so close with Whitney as a teenager that he was known to them as “Uncle Al.”
Others who reached out to Carlin remembered how Whitney saved them from the brink after suffering from drug addictions or risking not graduating.
“I just was so used to it, I just thought that that’s what everyone’s father was like,” Carlin said. “And then as you get older, like, oh yeah, everyone’s father’s not like that.”
After he retired from the Port Washington School District in 1987, the district dedicated the athletics field below Schreiber High School, also known as “the pit,” in his honor, with a black-and-white sign proclaiming “Al Whitney Field.” A commemorative “Whitney Drive” road sign also temporarily went up on Campus Drive.
Even in his retirement, Whitney didn’t stop giving back to young people. He graduated from a clown school in Florida. With his new degree, Whitney would entertain children in hospitals, performing tricks as a clown.
“It was a laugh because I say ‘my father was a clown,’ but he really was. He graduated from clown school.”
A few years ago, Carlin said she went back to Port Washington with her kids and sister Kathy to find the sign dedicating “Whitney field.” They could not locate the original sign and have long since wondered how alive their father’s memory was in town.
As hundreds of people responded to Carlin’s Facebook post in late April, Town of North Hempstead Council Member Mariann Dalimonte connected Carlin with Nick Schratwieser, director of health, physical education, and athletics at the Port Washington School District.
Carlin and Schratwiser said Whitney’s family is in talks with the Port Washington School District to possibly put up a new sign dedicating the field, which has remained “Whitney Field” since the late 1980s.
“He was just this great guy who, no matter who you were, he would be there for you, whether you’re a neighbor, whether you’re a cousin, a complete stranger,” Carlin said. “But for the most part, he absolutely adored Port. He loved Port, he loved the kids. He loved their parents. He loved working there.”
