Huffington Magazine Issue 9 | Page 77

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