Bringing Rockville Centre together, digitally

Two good friends have grown their Rockville Centre-themed Facebook page by leaps and bounds in recent years, with membership now nearing almost 1,100 people.

And they did it all with only having met a handful of times.

The two creators — Richard Gottlieb and Doug Marlowe — were introduced to each other by Ann Krinsky-Rolison, a mutual friend. They met at a reunion event in 2009 and hit it off. In 2010, they decided to create the Facebook page, “What Happened to Rockville Centre?”

“I missed the hometown dearly,” said Gottlieb, who lived in Rockville Centre until his early 20s and now resides in Rhode Island. “And I wanted to find a way to get people to talk and rekindle friendships.”

The two took to Facebook because they had experience with the platform and knew it would bring people together.

“We didn’t want to just have a bunch of friends on our wall,” Marlowe, who now lives in Florida, said. “So we decided to make a private group and start inviting people, and then it spread like wildfire. We were excited when we got to 100 [members]. And then all of a sudden we were 500. And then we broke 1,000.”

The group is a way for Rockville Centre residents, both past and present, to connect and share memories about the village. People share articles and news about the village, photographs and memories of the past and much more.

“Our goal is to stay young,” said Marlowe. “We want to keep reliving our youth and making connections with people we knew the best, our childhood friends. By reconnecting with our childhood friends, we have tendency to think like we did when we were younger.”

People can join by messaging either Gottlieb or Marlowe on Facebook, or by emailing Marlowe at dougmarlowe@icloud.com.

“I like hearing the stories of people I went to school with, or what’s going on in somebody’s life,” said Gottlieb. “They got married and have kids now. We swap stories of our children, or what our lives are like now compared to what they were 40 or 50 years ago.”