Tuesday, January 14, 2025
It was one of the Valley Stream Historical Society’s biggest nights — its 50th anniversary celebration. Yet members tempered their expectations about whether the event’s organizer, Karen Vitale Selah, would show.
Selah was a stickler about showing up, Billy Florio, the society’s president, noted, but “we knew she was sick.” Selah was caught in the throes of intense chemotherapy treatment for leukemia, facing extraordinary physical strain.
“We didn’t expect her to show up,” he said.
Yet she came.
“She had done her hair that day because she wanted to look her best,” Florio recalled. Her presence at the celebration was a delightful surprise for her fellow members and an encouraging sign of progress toward her recovery. However, as fate would have it, this was Selah’s final public appearance. On Oct. 9, just over two weeks later, she died at 76.
Selah’s attendance at the anniversary celebration rounded off decades of service to a local institution whose members considered her a pillar. She leaves behind a vacuum of leadership — and an emotional absence — that Florio says will be impossible to fill.
“Frankly, I don’t think anybody was really prepared for her to be leaving us this soon,” he said. “They’ll never be a replacement for Karen. She’s too important to the society. She’s too important to everything there.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1948 to John and Dorothy Vitale, Karen moved to Valley Stream as a child. She attended Clear Stream Avenue Elementary School, and Memorial Junior High School, and graduated from Valley Stream Central High School with the Class of 1966.
While attending C.W. Post, she met Henry “Hank” Selah of Floral Park. The two married in 1970 and shared more than 50 years together before he died in 2023, having battled a series of chronic health challenges. Karen often remarked that her husband didn’t march to a different drum, he marched to a different orchestra, according to media reports. Nevertheless, the two were an inseparable duo in the village’s civic and political life.
Selah was an active committee member of the Nassau County Democratic Party and deeply involved in the Valley Stream Democrats, where her husband served as vice president. “She always worked across political aisles,” said Florio. “She was not an ideologue.”
Selah was a committed member of the Valley Stream Historical Society, where she and her husband each served as president.
“Along with Valerie Esposito, Karen was our event chair,” said Florio. “She ran the gingerbread house, LEGO contests, and the Halloween event. She loved having the children there and tried to bring younger people in.”
Outside of the society, Selah taught religious education as a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine teacher at Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church.
“She was my dear darling girl,” said Eleanor Sciglibaglio, Selah’s best friend and longtime neighbor who would be a tireless companion throughout Selah’s health ordeal.
Selah, said Sciglibaglio, was unfailingly kind and rarely spoke ill of others.
“She always saw the good in people and could not say anything negative about a person, even if there was negative, which was frustrating,” she jested.
Selah is survived by her cousins Carol, Arlene, Bob, and Ken; her brother-in-law Joe; her niece Coleen; her goddaughter Sharon; and many other relatives, friends, and members of the community.
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