HUFFINGTON
08.12.12
school district closed the fields.
(They are still closed today, and
will remain so until all of the soil
under the fields is remediated). It
also was in 2010 that many Briarcliff Manor residents learned
for the first time, they say, about
the nature of the materials that
had been sitting underneath the
school fields for twelve years.
By that point, many former Briarcliff students were already sick.
Chip, Chip, Chip
The curved drive that leads to the
Briarcliff Manor middle and high
school campus is flanked with state
championship signs in the schools’
colors, blue and orange. Out front,
adjacent to the parking lot, is what
remains of one of the practice fields.
Today, it’s waist-high brush with
a rope strung around its perimeter.
Back when the field was operational, it was the place that kids played
while they waited for their parents
to pick them up after school.
“The practice field looked like
a state fair parking lot,” says Paul
Mazzilli, a former analyst for an
investment bank and a father of
two, who lives in Briarcliff.
Mazzilli’s wife, Sharon Pickett,
remembers trying to track down
her son Nicholas, now 20, after
school. Sometimes he was tossing
around a football with friends,
other times, he was chipping golf
balls on the field.
“Chip, chip, chip,” Pickett says,
raising her arms to depict the dust
that would fly up with each swing.
“He would come home and literally, he’d be picking stuff out of his
teeth, picking stuff out of his ears,
and God knows even where else.”
Mazzilli and Pickett have lived
in Briarcliff since 1980 when they
fell in love with a two-acre piece of
land behind Sleepy Hollow Country
Club. They raised their two children
in a beautiful home on a winding
private drive. From one of their living room windows, you can catch a
glimpse of the Hudson River.
Pickett wouldn’t call herself
a Ra-Ra-Go-Briarcliff type of
mom, but she took on the role of
class parent, led field trips to the
Bronx Zoo and attended all her
son’s sporting events.
“We never missed one,” Pickett says, seated barefoot in her
living room, her hair tied back
and not a trace of make-up on
her face. Despite her involvement with the school, Pickett
too says she knew nothing about
the contaminated fill, until 2010.
SUDDEN
DEATH