At least eight Briarcliff students have had cancer. Here, Jenny
shows off her tattooed “D.” in rememberance of Demetri.
DEC that there was still a softball
field right behind the school that
was also built on Whitney fill.
By 2007, Briarcliff parents
were starting to complain about
the fields. The athletes at Briarcliff were coming across strange
things on the field during practice; a six or eight-inch nail here,
a shard of glass there. One time,
they found some wire.
“We would just pull that stuff off
and throw it over the fence,” says
Andrew Paulmeno, 21, who played
several seasons of football at Briar-
HUFFINGTON
08.12.12
cliff and now attends the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.
While debris was a mere annoyance, dust made the field almost
unbearable. Grass was dying on
the field and as the season wore
on, Paulmeno says it was like
playing on dirt.
“You’d come back from practice,
you’d pick your nose and you’d be
pulling out solid black,” he recalls.
“There was a permanent dust in
the air. You couldn’t breathe without getting it in every part of your
face or head. It was caked into
your skin when you were done. It
was everywhere.”
Some of the athletes said they
had trouble breathing, and ac-
SUDDEN
DEATH