“Weitzman's illness puts politics in its place”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, January 30, 2011
He lost the election and won his life back.
Last time we checked on Howard Weitzman, he was being swept out of office as Nassau County comptroller by voters in a decidedly anti-incumbent mood.
But defeat at the polls wasn’t the only challenge Weitzman had to face in 2009 – not even his toughest one.
As he was raising campaign funds and gathering endorsements, he’d been diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening blood disorder called amyloidosis. Doctors describe it as a progressive, metabolic disease characterized by abnormal deposits of protein in the major organs.
Now that’ll put a tough re-election campaign into perspective!
“I’m feeling great,” Weitzman said at week’s end. “It’s been 18 months since I was diagnosed. The disease is under control, and I’ve really been able to rebuild my health.”
A big part of the credit, he said, goes to his doctors at Boston University Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering, who unlike many physicians were actually familiar with the rare condition and knew how to treat it.
"It’s too soon to be planning a return to politics," he said, although he’s keeping up with the news.
“So sad,” Weitzman says of the state takeover of county finances. “You can’t promise huge tax cuts then refuse to cut services to make that up.”
But the former pol is out raising money again – this time to support the hospitals that treated him and to fight the disease that nearly took his life.
“Thursday, February 10th,” he said. “Leonard’s of Great Neck. I’m organizing a fund-raiser for amyloidosis research. 
Just as important as the money, we need to increase awareness of the disease. It’s not easy raising money for something most people have never heard of. But that’s exactly what we’re doing here.”
Weitzman promises big-name entertainment and lots of old friends and supporters from in and out of politics.
Details at 516-684-9839 or amyloidosisfundraiser.com
“This is something I need to do now,” he said. “These people really did save my life.”
STATE OF OUR UNION
2. Endless snow
3. Alleged serial killer
4. Stubborn unemployment
5. But wait, there is some good news too: MTV’s “Jersey Shore” really might be coming to Long Island.
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
The snow is a joke, right? Somebody’s sick idea of a joke?...In this age of digital phone records and caller ID, how dumb does a suspected serial killer have to be to make prank phone calls to the sister of an alleged victim? Dumb -- or secretly hoping to get caught?...7,000 J.C. Penney coupons? Is that all that a Westbury mail
carrier lifted from residents’ mailboxes? That’s all Tommy Tang is charged with – for now…How soon ’til the first bumper sticker appears in state-controlled Nassau County: “Vote the New Bums out”? You know they’re coming...And wasn’t this inevitable too: The ‘tip-of-a-lifetime’ headlines when Long Beach waitress Patricia Eisel won $21.5 million in Lotto?
….What kind of woman would run down her cousin with a minivan – twice? Doesn’t the “twice” make it more than twice as bad?...What is it about Labrador Retrievers that make the breed AKC’s number one on Long Island again? Don’t ask a Labrador owner unless you have two hours for the explanation. But in fairness, owners of Yorkies 4th on this year’s list) and Shih Tzus (5th) are just as head-over-paws for their breeds…Now that Republicans and Democrats sat together for the State of the Union, they’re all getting along great. Right?
LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK
PETE AND HELENE MONTANA : Pizza missionaries
Their Montana Pizzeria was a long-time favorite in Freeport. But let’s be honest. There’s lots of good pizza around here. It wasn’t until Pete and Helene Montana opened an honest-to-goodness Long Island-style pizza shop, Basilicos,
in the tiny Northeast Pennsylvania town of Dickson City, that they truly understood how powerful a brick-oven pie can be. Northeastern Pennsylvanians keep showing up as if to a shrine. “I've got about 250 recipes in my recipe book," Pete told a wide-eyed reporter from the local Times-Tribune the other day. "We've got it down to a science." That sort of thing may not sound so amazing in Nassau County. But it carries real weight in huge swaths of America. "I gotta have my hands in everything,” Pete went on, spreading the pizza gospel. “I guess I’m old-school like that.”
E-mail [email protected]. Follow him at twitter.com/henican
