Lost to time no more

By ALEX COSTELLO

After years of (literally) jetting between Florida and New York, among other places, as a Pan Am pilot, Victor Nitlow, a lifelong Island Park resident, decided to settle down in his other home in Naples, Fla., in 1980.

He returned to Island Park at least once a year, to visit family and friends and see how the community was changing. But even though Nitlow kept in contact with people in his hometown, he was surprised when his best friend, Lawrence Gubelli, and his niece, Lorraine Glennon, called him to tell him he had appeared in the Herald.

A photograph featured in the story “85 years of the IPFD,” in the July 30-Aug. 5 issue, showed an unidentified boy of about 5 sitting on the side of Island Park’s first fire truck. That boy, it turned out, was Nitlow.

“My son had it in the bar in TA Clarke’s on Austin Boulevard, so I knew it,” Gubelli, Nitlow’s lifelong friend, said of the photo. “I figured, let me give [Victor] a call.”

Nitlow, who’s now 89, wasn’t born in Island Park, but moved here from Summit, N.J., with his family when he was about 3. He was actually born Victor Nittolo, but his father always told him his last name was Nitlow because of anti-Italian sentiments at the time. (He didn’t know his real name until he joined the Navy and had to produce a copy of his birth certificate.)

Nitlow’s family was one of the first in Island Park. His father, Phil, worked for the Island Park-Long Beach Corporation, which had purchased the island and was dredging it and developing it in the 1930s.

“I remember living on Osten Road and seeing that great big [dredge pipe] go by the house, going over further down the south end to fill it in,” said Nitlow. His father worked not on the dredging, but on installing streets and curbs in the village. “That was during the Depression, and there were about 125 men out there working — to keep them busy, I guess,” Nitlow said.

Phil Nitlow was the second chief of the Island Park Fire Department, from 1925 to 1929, and the fire commissioner from 1931 to 1951.

Victor spent most of his summer days at the Island Park Beach, where he lifeguarded (mostly so he could spend time with his future wife, Dorothy Hendrix, whom he met in school). After graduating from high school, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the IPFD, a few months before he left for college in West Virginia on a football scholarship. From there he joined the Navy, and served as a pilot in the Pacific during World War II.

From the Navy, Nitlow moved to Florida and earned his teaching degree at the University of Miami. After a year of teaching elementary school, he decided to put his wings to good use and got a job as a pilot with Pan American World Airways. The company moved him to New York, and then Nitlow was back in Island Park.

“Pan Am got the first 707 jets,” he recalled. “I was flying those. And we got the first 747. We got 25 when they put the initial orders in with Boeing.” Nitlow was flying 747s when he retired in 1980.

He put in 20 years with the IPFD, and served as a school board trustee. His best friend, Gubelli, was a Nassau County police officer and postmaster of the Island Park post office, and a lifetime member of the IPFD as well.

“When I began, everyone wanted to be in the fire department,” Nitlow said. “Everyone loved it. Now, things have changed. From what I understand ... they’re having a difficult time getting [people to join].”

But what he remembers most is those summer days on the water. “I think my fondest memory, without a doubt, was when I was a lifeguard at the Island Park beach,” Nitlow said. “Every summer I worked there as a lifeguard, and I worked for the American Red Cross and taught lifesaving and water safety there and had a ball. That’s my fondest memory — the beach.”

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