Hegarty gym named for teacher, coach

John Gould had come back on Sept. 23 to the school district where he had worked for 27 years, ostensibly to listen to officials honor a former colleague of his who had recently retired.

He was “completely surprised,” he said, when school board officials began to talk about him and his long career in the district.

“I had no idea where this idea came from or why the board did this,” Gould, 78, told the Herald this week, referring to the plan to honor him by naming a school gymnasium after him. “I came for a colleague who was being honored and they honored me as well.”

Gould began teaching in Island Park in 1966, after serving as a substitute teacher while working as an emergency room technologist at South Nassau Communities Hospital for a few years.

He retired in 1993, having served the district as a teacher and coach of middle school boys’ soccer and basketball and girls’ soccer and as the administrator in charge of the physical education and sports programs at both Hegarty and Lincoln Orens Middle School.

Along the way, Gould also served as the president of the Island Park Teachers Association, the Nassau County Athletic Ethics Committee and a number of statewide committees that addressed sports and physical education.

Now, he says, he spends a lot of time with health issues, playing golf and volunteering for the local Kiwanis Club as well as the Retired Chapter of the teacher’s association.

He fondly remembers his years in the Island Park schools and was willing to reminisce about his time there.

“There were a lot more kids when I started than when I finished,” he said. “In 1966 we had nearly 200 students in each graduating class,. “By 1993, there were 100.”