CENTENNIAL GALA HELD AT
FLORAL TERRACE ON OCTOBER 17, 2008
WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!
Beautiful cake provided by Buttercooky Bakery
Mayor Guarnieri’s welcoming remarks at the Gala
I would like to welcome you to the beautiful Floral Terrace on the occasion of our momentous Gala Ball. Let me first express my most humble and heartfelt gratitude to all of you for bestowing upon me the high honor and distinct privilege of serving as your mayor during this historic Centennial Year.
Over the past 10 months, we have celebrated our rich and storied past. But we look back only so we could move forward. Every milestone, every anniversary is ultimately about renewal, rebirth, a new beginning – a fresh start.
When John Lewis Childs sowed the seeds that grew the first flowers and trees on what was a barren plain, something else took root and began to blossom: Timeless and treasured things such as laws and constitutions, schools and churches, commerce and local government, in short, a way of life.
Floral Park had come to be and with it the human and humane idea that only when we aspire to leave behind a better, richer, more culturally uplifting community than we inherited can we truly feel a sense of belonging, of being part of a place we can truly call home.
By that simple and beautiful fact, Floral Park had become our village, our future and our responsibility, a place where we could cultivate, in Lincoln’s words, the physical world that lies about us and the moral world that lies within us.
The challenges ahead, of course, are great. They always are. But 100 years ago when our village incorporated, we gave ourselves a priceless gift – each other. Across the years, we have been the pioneers, the guardians, the trustees and the caretakers, the patrons and the benefactors of those values and ideals that inspired a vision and built a public heritage.
In countless ways, the lives of our residents have touched the life of our village, enriching and ennobling it. They are its soul and its light, the vessel of its dreams and the bearer of its hopes. As our first century closes and the dawn of another approaches, I say to each of you, I say to all our residents, both as praise and as a prayer that God will continue to shed His grace on thee.