Historian Kathy Jolowicz remembers like it was yesterday when she couldn’t walk down 86th Street without hearing people speak German.

 She remembers when she could get authentic German food at mom-and-pop shops and when Christmas time meant the streets were ambushed with music, the polka and the waltz. She remembers when the Upper East Side was Yorkville, where everything from the old country was either imported or recreated to feel like home.

“It’s my passion, its my heritage, it’s my childhood,” Jolowicz said, who was born and raised in Yorkville. “It was my Disney Land.”

Jolowicz lived the memories that are now in picture frames on her walls and are written in massive books on her shelves.  But she shares those memories in exhibits and lectures and displays over 40 pictorial panels that are 30 by 40 inches wide, decorated with Yorkville facts and photos.

During her lectures, her topics shift according to what her audience wants to know.

“If it’s a young group, they all want to know about the war, what was it like for Germans in the war,” she said. “If I have an older group, they reminisce.”

Jolowicz has been writing a book that covers German roots in New York City from the 1600s to the 1960s. It also covers the German’s contributions to New York City and the Upper East Side when it was German Town, or Yorkville/Kleindeutschland.

When she started the book in 1988, she originally wanted to write a six-chapter book about Yorkville. However, the book has grown to 20 chapters as she continues to research and add information about Germans in the city.

“It’s not that you just sit down and write a book,” she said.  “There are so many details that have never been put together and that’s what I’m trying to do now. It’s not easy.”

She also writes about her family. Her parents Ruth and Paul Jolowicz were Yorkville pioneers and moved to New York City in 1932 from Leipzig.

“When you write from the head, the chapters about my family and my experiences, and how they adapted to this country and how I grew up in the adaptation of their life, that was easy,” she said.

Another topic she touched on was her family’s experience adapting to America during World War I and II. At the time of the World Wars, Jolowicz said Jewish kids picked on her for being German American when she was younger.

“Germans still have a bad connotation, not so much the younger ones, but the Holocaust is kept alive, and rightly so,” Jolowicz said. “I would have never condoned such a thing. What I’m trying to do with my book is to bring out the positive side to Germans.”

Jolowicz started the German Language Learning Club in 1990 where she teaches children and adults German at P.S. 169 between Park and Lexington Avenues. Her students and their families march in the German American Steuben Parade every year. Jolowicz, who has two Bachelors of Fine Arts degrees, is currently working on her German Language Certificate from the Goethe-Institut in Germany.

She holds a Stammtisch that meets once a month in Yorkville to eat, drink beer and speak German whether native or non-native. Since 1973 she has run the East 83rd/84th Street Block Association. And she’s a member of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic District.

“My memories are still in my heart of walking 86 Street, the music, everybody knowing everybody,” she said. “This was a community, it was a family, it was a village. And it was all I knew.”

An emergency room might sound like a chaotic place to be, but to Shari Weisburd, RN, it’s exactly where she likes to be.

“When you’re actually physically in the environment there’s a very good flow, everyone knows what they are doing,” said Weisburd, assistant nurse manager of the emergency room in Beth Israel. “There’s a very good sense of how to care for the patient.”

Weisburd has worked in Beth Israel’s emergency room for 22 years and is director of their SAFE Program. She received an art degree at SUNY Purchase and originally wanted to pursue photography. However, she fell in love with nursing when she studied at the Beth Israel School of Nursing and did her externship in the emergency room.

Weisburd handles staff scheduling and directs where patients need to go on a regular basis. On average, Weisburd says Beth Israel sees about 320 to 350 patients a day. Yet, the busy emergency room was put to the test during Hurricane Sandy, and so was Weisburd. When the hurricane struck, Weisburd said they were seeing up to 450, sometimes 480 patients on some days.

“We’re pretty big, but we’re only so big,” she said. “With that huge amount of influx of patients we had to decide what areas can be changed and how one area might be used more efficiently.”

As soon as homes nearby started to lose power, Weisburd said elderly people who depend on electricity for oxygen and those who depend on dialysis started coming in. There was a makeshift area made for dialysis patients and they made arrangements to work together with a nearby methadone clinic that was open.

“I have to say I was shocked at the influx of patients that occurred pretty much immediately after the lights went out,” she said.

Weisburd said she and her staff developed a fast pass urgent care area for patients to be treated and released faster. The auditorium in Beth Israel opened up as a makeshift shelter for people to stay and they were offered food and services.

Weisburd said she and other nurses were working 15-hour shifts and were finding spots in the hospital to sleep in to avoid the commutes home.

“Unfortunately, since the hospital was so full, sleeping arrangements were hard to come by,” she said. “We were the only ones open in the area, so you could only imagine, serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan.”

Despite the long hours, the emergency room worked efficiently thanks to dependable generators and fast thinking by Weisburd and her staff.

“We were able to operate without jeopardizing anyone’s health in the emergency department,” she said. “Our patients were safe.”

Weisburd also dedicates her time to sexual assault victims with the Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) Program and has been a sexual assault forensic examiner for about 11 years. She started by assisting the busy nurses who were working with the patients. She saw that the patients weren’t getting as much one-on-one time, so when a SAFE Program came to Beth Israel she took a course to be an examiner.

Weisburd has been the SAFE Program director at Beth Israel for four years.

“It is upsetting to hear how often and how much sexual assault goes on,” she said. “But the idea that I could solely help a kid on my own and give them my undivided attention for those hours, it just seemed like a kind thing to do and the right treatment for someone who has already been through such a horrible experience.”

For two years, Baney has been the administrative director at Mt. Sinai, overseeing their HIV services program. Prior to that, Baney spent 18 years doing similar work at St. Vincent’s before it shut its doors.

Baney speaks eagerly to Our Town about two significant grants the hospital has received over the past year while under his supervision. Mt. Sinai received a federal grant for women, infants and adolescents with HIV for the hospital’s uptown program, as well as an HIV prevention grant from the city’s Department of Health for their uptown and downtown locations.

Baney says formerly only two organizations had been funded in Manhattan, including the Mt. Sinai program, so the new grants are a major step forward for HIV prevention and care in the city.

“We’re doing our best to educate the community not only about HIV and prevention but also about the health status of the community,” says Baney, who notes hospital representatives attend community board meetings to educate people about HIV statistics and general health issues affecting the city.

“We focus on HIV,” says Baney, “but we emphasize other health issues too.”

These healthcare issues include major risks like obesity, hypertension and diabetes, as well as doctor shortages and the necessity of primary care doctors.

“The best prevention method,” explains Baney, “is to have a physician involved in primary care.” This has been shown to reduce the chance of getting HIV as well as promote general health in at-risk individuals.

“We want to get people into primary care services and we’re doing the best we can to make an impact,” he adds.

“The challenges we face are the ones everyone faces—shortages in funding and changes in medicaid reimbursement,” says Baney. “It’s a challenge to continue to provide and expand services for less money.”

There’s another issue Baney and his colleagues work to address: “The patient population is overwhelmingly black and hispanic,” he says. “It’s also challenging to recruit Spanish speaking providers so we work extra hard and we have been successful. Sometimes it takes longer to recruit [Spanish speakers] but I’d rather have someone who reflects the population we’re treating.”

Baney says the HIV services program has some projects underway for the future, but many of them involve continuing to make current practices even better and more effective. This involves evaluating testing programs, getting more people in the door for testing, spreading the prevention message, maintaining supportive networks for patients who are HIV-positive and more.

“Mt. Sinai has an open door to these populations,” says Baney. “We really want to help them, we want to reduce any barriers people have to getting tested. We’re here to help.”

When he’s not actively fulfilling his administrative duties at the hospital, Baney likes spending down time at the beach or a house on Fire Island he shares with friends. He also runs a theater during the summer and on weekends, and works with other organizations involved with HIV prevention and care.

Baney says he also enjoys spending time with his large family, including his dog Bridget, whom he rescued. He hopes to “recruit” another rescue dog soon.

In general, when it comes to his tendency to always offer a helping hand, Baney says: “[his] personal life and professional life are the same.”

The consortium represents a group of high schools that have implemented a system of performance based assessment to graduate students, rather than relying strictly on standardized testing, by an agreement with the board of regents. Cook says the system is used in 28 schools across the state and 26 schools in the city.

High school students who are part of the consortium take one regents exam and otherwise complete performance based assessments. The consortium’s mission statement is that when it comes to education, “one size does not fit all.”

Cook describes the strides that have been made this year by the organization, including an evolving system of assessment that involves a great deal of professional development for teachers in schools.

“We just had a conference—a citywide staff development day, and we had our annual conference of about 600 teachers,” says Cook.

The conference incorporates workshops for teachers and speakers, including Cook herself, who presented at the conference.

“We’ve also been documenting the work that goes on in the consortium schools and put out a report with data that shows just how effective this way of assessing is,” she adds.

Still, Cook and the consortium have had some struggles this year.

“I think there are always challenges facing public schools and public education,” she says. “There’s still an overemphasis on testing.”

“We’re finding another way besides standardized testing,” adds Cook. “The tides may be turning, but even though we’ve designed a system that’s very effective there’s still a lot of emphasis on high stakes testing.”

The “other way” Cook describes involves performance based achievement that reflects specifically how well students would be able to function in college, for instance defending research papers, writing literary essays and performing science experiments. The consortium pushes classes that are more in-depth than mere test preparation.

“The DOE uses those test scores to measure everything from teacher effectiveness to school success and that’s a big challenge,” explains Cook. “It’s this sort of use and misuse of standardized test scores”

“There’s so much more to educational success than a score,” she adds. “Children aren’t test scores, they’re more complex.”

The consortium has been empirically successful. Cook says the kids in consortium schools are doing better in college than their peers, the schools have higher rates of teacher retention, lower incident rates and greater overall college retention.

She adds the alternative system has doubled the rate of graduating English language learners compared to the rest of the city.

“People have to ask what is it we want kids to be able to do when they leave high school,” she says. “We’re preparing kids to survive and get the most out of the college experience.”

In the coming years, Cook hopes other schools that have so far been pilot schools in the consortium will become full members, helping to sustain and expand the program.

When she’s not pushing for educational reform, Cook spends time with her children and granddaughter. She also helps with the publications put out by the consortium and writes children’s books, proving kids and the power of education are never far from her mind.

In certain respects, the rapidly evolving institution is just that. Instruction began at the school, which aims to attract the “best and brightest in technology” according to the University, in January of this year.

“On a daily basis we work on activities as diverse as designing significant academic programs to defining on-boarding procedures for new employees,” says Dove. She adds the school’s progress is due in part to its entrepreneurial culture—a spirit shared by the selective school’s student body—as well as the support of individuals and organizations in the community.

In the past year alone, Dove has overseen the hiring of new faculty and staff and the welcoming of the school’s “beta” class of eight full-time graduate students. These students will be the first to receive a one-year Master of Engineering degree in computer science.

Cornell Tech also moved into its Chelsea campus, a space donated to the University by the Google corporation. Dove says they have also made significant progress with campus plans for the Roosevelt Island location. The Roosevelt Island site, an ambitious, futuristic-looking establishment according to blueprints, is expected to see construction beginning in 2014. In 2017, Roosevelt Island will become the school’s permanent home.

“It’s been a very productive and rewarding year,” says Dove.

Dove looks ahead with great optimism for Cornell Tech. She says in the coming year the school plans to further expand its academic programs, hire more faculty and continue building relationships with industry partners and community organizations.

The school will also finish planning the Roosevelt Island site to facilitate the process of campus construction.

When she’s not hard at work at Cornell, helping launch a bold startup which is sure to change the future of New York City and even the world, Dove, a fitness enthusiast, fills her free time with her other great loves: dogs and photography.

Diana Byer gets to her studio on East 39th Street at 7 in the morning, every morning. She first catches up on paperwork then teaches her ballet company from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Then she rehearses the company from 11:45 a.m. until 4.

From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., she teaches children classes. And after completing some more paperwork, Byer finally heads home.

“It’s a very long day,” she said. “But for any small arts organization in a major city, the artistic director has very long days.”

Byer is the founder and artistic director of the New York Theatre Ballet, a company that performs classic and original ballet for adults and families and teaches ballet for children. Founded in 1978, the company has become known for its programs, such as the LIFT Community Service Program, that gives scholarships to kids who may not be able to afford ballet classes.

LIFT has been in effect for 24 years and is an outreach program that goes to shelters around the city for kids who are homeless or at risk. The children audition and up to 30 kids each year are awarded scholarships to help them enroll in the Ballet School NY, part of the New York Theatre Ballet. Byer said children also get clothing, mentoring and tutoring, whatever the individual child needs.

“It’s more than just getting ballet lessons, the whole child is addressed,” said the New Jersey native. LIFT also has a year-round Study Program. “We address the needs of a child on an individual basis. And the children are integrated into our regular classes, there isn’t a special class for scholarship students.”

Byer said that she sees a lot of talented young people come through her program and is currently working on raising money to send a 12-year-old boy to private school. “He’s extraordinarily talented,” she said. Because of the scholarship program, Byer said Ballet School NY is able to give talented kids the right tools to make it in dance.

“And there is a lot of talent out there. The children and the parents can’t begin to address their future because dancing lessons and music lessons and art lessons, all those things, are very expensive,” she said. “So we’re able to offer this program for talented dancers.”

Other programs include one-hour shows for children and family audiences and the company shows new and classic works by choreographers such as Antony Tudor, Richard Alston and Jerome Robbins. Performances are held at Florence Gould Hall on 55 East 59th Street. “We also identify emerging young choreographers and produce their ballets as well, we call it Legends and Visionaries,” she said.

Byer attended Julliard and received her principal dance training from Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske. While Craske trained her, Craske asked Byer to help with fellow students who were having difficulties, which led to Byer’s teaching.

However, she still dances in walk-on and acting roles to what she refers to as the “old lady roles.” She appears in Antony Tudor’s Judgment of Paris and she plays the wicked fairy Caraboss in their Sleeping Beauty performance.

Byer is on the board of directors for the Dance Notation Bureau and she has been a guest faculty instructor at institutions such as Cornell University, New York University and the Cecchetti Society of Canada in Toronto.

Though the New York Theatre Ballet has been around for an impressive 33 years, Byer hopes for improved funding to continue expanding the program for many more years to come. Lately Byer said it’s been difficult to get people to come to shows since many are distracted by technology or limited money. But with her commitment, the show will go on.

“Ballet will never go away, it’s one of the universal art forms,” she said. “It will always be here.”

Beck has been a member of the Vanderbilt YMCA’s board since 1999 and is currently serving his third non-consecutive, two-year term as chairman.

While Beck enjoys his position on the board, his true passion lies with initiating the younger generations.

“The goal is really for me to bring some of our younger board members up to speed to make them managers of the board,” says Beck. “It’s exciting for me to mentor young people to assume these positions.”

While the board has grown strong over the years, 2012 was a particularly notable year for the Vanderbilt “Y”. Last year, the location was awarded for having the highest net operating income of YMCAs in the greater New York area.

“This is an accomplishment as far as chairing and being a board member,” explains Beck, “but the pay back for us is to see the staff witnessing their success.”

He adds, as the YMCA is a nonprofit, all the funds go back to subsidizing things like childcare and sharing financially with other locations which may not be doing as well.

The Vanderbilt “Y” and its other affiliated establishments have seen some setbacks in recent years as well. The biggest, according to Beck, was the recession and subsequent drop in membership. Competition became more strenuous between the “Y” and other health clubs in the city.

“People think about the ‘Y’ as being just about health but we have so many programs for youths and teens and senior citizens,” says Beck. “Besides just being a place to workout, there are classes of all types and childcare and Vanderbilt is one of the few afterschool programs for K-6.”

Beck says the “Y” also focuses heavily on its mentorship programs.

“I was there a few weeks ago mentoring the kids on what it is to be a CFO, what my passions were and I spoke to the kids for two hours,” he says.

“What we would like our legacy to be is mentoring the youth and teens about opportunities they have,” explains Beck. “We’re very actively trying to help inner city kids—for a lot of them the only place they can go is the ‘Y’ or school, their parents just don’t have time.”

Beck adds the group’s mission is not necessarily pushing college, but teaching kids to pursue their passions and what they want to do.

The “Y” does however help students who are interested in college. Beck says he hopes to continue the mentoring program that helps college-bound kids with essays, applications, personal budgeting and making them aware of what they will face in college.

Beck also hopes the board will see a rise in membership soon.

“We’re about 16 strong right now,” he says. “We’re very focused, we’re trying to figure out what it is that people can bring to the board to help achieve its growth.”

When he’s not actively serving the youth at Vanderbilt’s YMCA—which he does for about 70 hours a week—Beck enjoys going on cruises. He just completed his 23rd cruise and is already planning the next.

“I have to go into relaxation mode in order to re-energize,” he says.

Still, kids are never far from his mind.

“My outside activity is just about kids, it’s all about kids,” he says. “Youths and teens and senior citizens…sometimes we tend to forget about our seniors.”

Beck adds: “My passion is people.”

Dr. Steven Corwin went into medicine to help people, focusing on cardiology because his mother’s father and his father’s father both suffered from heart disease.

“You have somebody in your family that has a disease, you want to help them,” he said. “Even though I couldn’t help my two grandparents, there are other people who have this type of problem who I can help. And I think that the knowledge you get gives you a sense of not being powerless.”

Corwin went to medical school at Northwestern and trained in cardiology and internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

Over time, he took the administrative route, something he said he didn’t expect. He also didn’t expect to be appointed as Chief Executive Officer of NewYork-Presbyterian in 2011.

“But life has its twists and turns and so you never can quite know what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s a busy but a very exciting job.”

Another unexpected turn was Hurricane Sandy’s effect in New York City. Corwin said NewYork-Presbyterian took in patients from neighboring institutions that had closed. Corwin said over 1,000 patients were staying the night, and that included NewYork-Presbyterian employees as well.

“We’re very proud of the way our hospital responded. Our employees wouldn’t leave because they were afraid that if they left they wouldn’t be able to get back to work,” he said. “It was very heartwarming to see the response from our employees and we felt that was part of what we had to do for our city, was be here.”

Corwin said he was hoping the flu season would be mild after the overwhelming surge of displaced patients that came in because of Sandy.

According to Corwin, NewYork-Presbyterian started seeing a lot of flu patients around Christmas time and that extended through the month of January to February.

“The flu epidemic this year was pretty pronounced,” he said. “We’re crossing our fingers now, we’ve seen it dissipate a little bit but it’s still pretty prevalent.”

As the CEO, Corwin said he misses the personal one-on-one time he had with patients when he was a doctor. However, he still gets the satisfaction of helping patients, on a larger scale.

Some of that includes community work in Washington Heights and Inwood where they have school-based clinics, community clinics, outreach to homes and free medical screenings. Corwin said buildings are going through renovations and they are looking at putting up new buildings.

Corwin also spends time sharing information across hospitals and handles policy questions on how to get better health care for New Yorkers. He also focuses on making sure NewYork-Presbyterian has a great staff and administration that delivers excellent care.

“There’s nothing that can replace the joy that you get when you’re taking care of individual patients and you’re making somebody better,” he said. “That being said the joy in doing this job is we can help the city.”

Corwin said he thinks the nation is going through a lot of controversy when it comes to expanding health care. Regardless, Corwin’s message to his 20,000 employees and the New Yorkers he sees is plain and simple.

“We’re going to be here, NewYork-Presbyterian is going to be here and we’re going to be the very best hospital and that’s something we’re not going to deviate from regardless of what the financial challenges may be at the state and the Washington level,” he said. “That’s what we’re here to do, give the best care to New Yorkers.”

Photo by Steve Friedman

When it comes to designing luxury homes in Manhattan, Gary Jacob keeps New Yorkers in mind by always including the essentials. He wants to create homes that are as useful as they are beautiful.

“We want to build the best living environment so that people come home to their apartments happy,” said Jacob, Executive Vice President of Glenwood Management Corp., one of the city’s largest owners and builders of luxury rental apartments.

Glenwood properties are found in the Upper East and Upper West Side, Midtown East and Midtown West, Gracie Point and downtown Manhattan. Some features include fitness centers, swimming pools and granite counter tops in the kitchens.

However, being that it is New York City, ample closet space is another feature Jacob includes in his buildings.

“A lot of apartments in New York City have nice layouts but there’s really not enough space for storage and we really concentrate on doing that,” he said.

Aside from amenities, price is also important to Jacob when it comes to real estate. Jacob is the Vice President of Settlement Housing Fund Inc., a nonprofit affordable housing developer in New York City. Jacob said he thought this would be a great way for him to get involved with affordable housing.

“We want to have diversity in NYC,” he said. “At Glenwood now, most of the rental buildings that we develop are in the 80/20 program. Twenty percent of the units are reserved for lower income families.”

Aside from Settlement Housing Fund Inc., Jacob is Vice President of the Rent Stabilization Association, an Executive Vice President of Associated Builders and Owners of New York, co-chairman of the Housing Committee of the Real Estate Board of New York, a member of the Board of Governors, and he serves on the M&T Bank’s Mortgage Advisory Board.

His community service efforts extend to supporting Israel. He was honored by the American Jewish Committee and by the State of Israel Bonds. He is also a supporter of the Anti-Defamation League, which aims to stop defamation of Jewish people and strives for equality for all.

“I do my best to lend a hand,” he said.

Jacob credits his success with having the opportunity to have worked with Leonard Litwin in the first place. Jacob flew in to New York City after graduating from Harvard in 1973 to meet with President of Glenwood Management Corp. Leonard Litwin, who became the first lifetime honorary chairman for the Real Estate Board of New York in 2012.

Litwin asked Jacob to be his right hand man and assistant.

“Come this June I will have been working for him for 40 years,” Jacob said.  “And even though I was trained at Harvard Business School I got to learn from a master. I think it really was just a wonderful opportunity that I was given to have been able to work with Leonard Litwin.”

The rest is real estate history as Glenwood keeps developing. In the middle of 2013, Glenwood will start construction near West 70th Street and their new Crystal Green development on West 39th Street is almost 50 percent rented.

“What I like about real estate compared to other industries such as investment banking or bond trading is you’re actually creating a tangible product,” Jacob said. “I think what sets us apart is we do our own construction. We want to build our buildings to last and we have a tremendous attention to detail.”

“We’re working on a new vision statement for the congregation,” explained Hirsch. “That’s been a very gratifying project. We engage almost 200 congregants in conversation about what’s important and valuable to them as part of our synagogue’s community.”

Additionally, Hirsch indicated her time spent teaching and engaging personally with family during life cycle moments as positive and meaningful experiences over the past few years at the temple.

Hirsch is hard-pressed though to think of any challenges facing the congregation. “My congregation is a great congregation,” she said.

Personally, however, Hirsch’s official position within the congregation is undergoing a big transition.

“We’re doing a restructuring and my role will shift dramatically,” explained Hirsch. “I will assume a new position as director of congregant life.

That involves trying to bring high touch to a large congregation by being the person individuals will first have contact with when they’re looking for a synagogue.”

Hirsch will also work with congregants internally, whether it’s with regard to movement from nursery school to congregation, the B’nai Mitzvah process, helping parents with important moments in their lives or working with divinity programs to further enrich who they are.

In the coming years, Hirsch hopes to even better integrate congregants into the fabric of the congregation.

She described her mission, as the first point of contact, as making connections to the synagogue, while also helping people find their space within the synagogue structure, and making sure congregants continually receive the support of other clergy who provide services.

“Also I want to hopefully help congregants who have been there a long time feel continually engaged to the synagogue and Judaism,” added Hirsch.

Though Hirsch certainly views her congregation as a larger, close-knit family, she also enjoys spending time with her own family, including her partner Carol and her grandchildren, the thirteenth of whom was just born a few weeks ago. Hirsch also has a home in the Berkshires which she calls “a home on many levels.”

“Family is a big piece of what we have in our lives,” said Hirsch. “Family and home are two very important pieces.”