Tuesday, January 21, 2025
The Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club partnered with Angela’s House to bring joy and relief to families of medically frail children at the organization’s 12th annual holiday party last weekend at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 25 hall in Hauppauge.
The event welcomed 500 families on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, offering food, entertainment and a festive atmosphere where parents, children and their siblings could connect and celebrate.
Angela’s House, founded in 1992 by Bob Policastro, of Hauppauge, after his one-year-old daughter, Angela, died from complications of medical frailty that resulted from severe brain damage she sustained during birth, supports families caring for children with chronic illnesses or disabilities.
“He just wants every family to have … anything possible to lift any weight off of them,” Johanna Rotta, the organization’s director of development, said of Policastro, its executive director. “For some families, these are the only Christmas presents the kids will get because of the financial burden associated with taking care of medically fragile children.”
The two-day celebration included activities like face painting, balloon animal making, T-shirt airbrushing and a character parade featuring Disney princesses and costumed characters like Spider-Man and SpongeBob. Volunteers set up a “toy wall,” where children could choose gifts donated by sponsors and community members.
The Rotary Club played a critical role in making the event a success. Emily Margulis, a former member who returned to Long Island from her home in Florida to take part, described the club’s efforts.
“On Friday, we just had a few of us — about three, four of us — that helped blow up balloons and get the toys set up for the events and, you know, get the tables set up and decorated with the other volunteers there,” Margulis said. “On Saturday we arrived at 10:30 to get ready, and to find out where we were going to be stationed … and we were handing out food, cleaning up the tables, getting the dinners out.”
“Some of the parents said, ‘Oh, I remember you from last year. Thank you for helping us. Thank you for making our day so joyful,” Margulis recounted. “Seeing the kids squeal with joy — that’s what it’s all about, you know, and that really … made my heart dance, so to speak.”
Margulis added, “It’s just seeing the joy in children that are part of the Angela’s House family, the medically frail children, but also seeing their siblings … their parents have to focus on their child who is medically frail, so they don’t really have too much time for the sibling.”
For Ari Case, a Rotary member from Long Beach who volunteered, the experience was equally rewarding. “It was just amazing to see that — how little it takes to make a kid’s day,” Case said. “The parents … (are) getting to kind of relax in a community where they can share the same experience with everybody else.”
Kerry Hayde, who helped with Friday’s setup, praised the scope of the event.
“The Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club is mainly involved with setting the toys up, setting the tables up, making sure everything was ready to go on Friday,” Hayde said. “I was really blown away by how many toys they collected for these kids, and the beautiful decorations they had.”
Members of IBEW Local 25 not only offered the use of their hall at no charge, but also recruited additional volunteers.
Estee Lauder, Greystar Apartments’ Long Island Office, and the Apple Store, in Lake Grove, also supported the event.
Rotta emphasized the significance of the celebration for the families Angela’s House serves.
“It’s great for the parents, because they get to meet other families that are going through similar stories, and they share experiences and resources,” she said. “It’s great for the siblings, too … They meet other kids that have brothers or sisters that are in the same situation.”
Angela’s House provides support year-round for over 700 children across Long Island. “If anybody knows anybody that’s struggling, that isn’t sure where to turn — even if it’s not necessarily a service that we provide, we’re happy to be a referral to maybe another organization that can help them,” Rotta said.
For more information about Angela’s House and its mission to help children, visit AngelasHouse.org.
