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Lions Club official, an ex-cop, tackles global problems
As a detective with the Nassau Juvenile Aid Bureau, Al Brandel got his
kicks from helping kids in trouble - runaways, teen mothers and abused or
kidnapped children. He's still into helping kids, though they now number in the
millions, including all of the children in India who need to be vaccinated
against measles.
The recently retired Nassau cop has been nominated as
second vice president of the International Association of Lions Clubs, a
service organization that tackles world problems such as blindness, drug abuse,
diabetes and childhood diseases. The post leads in two years to the presidency
of the 1.35-million-member global organization. Elections will be held at the
Lions' convention in Boston in July.
The organization, founded in
Chicago in 1917, has spread to 196 countries and offers an opportunity for
Brandel, 56, to dedicate his energy full-time to global problems.
Service with the Lions, he says, has brought him more satisfaction than he
could ever give back. Brandel has been in the thick of Lions' projects for 30
years. He traveled to New Delhi last winter to help set up the Lions'
$1.8-million measles vaccination program there.
"Measles," he says, "is
a serious problem in India."
At Ground Zero...
In 2001, after terrorists struck the World Trade Center, he was at
Ground Zero as coordinator of the Lions' recovery support efforts that included
providing shelters and warehouse supplies for police and firefighters, as well
as contributing 200 American flags used to cover the remains of the
dead.
On Shelter Island in March, the Lions will hold a retreat for 25
Nassau and Suffolk families who lost relatives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. A professional staff, including counselors, will be on hand. So will
Brandel.
"The kids are still adjusting," he says.
It's always
about kids for Brandel. He's the Lions representative to UNICEF - the United
Nations Children's Fund. The Lions partner with UNICEF to distribute "schools
in a box," kits that enable a teacher to establish a makeshift classroom for as
many as 80 children anywhere. The kits are usually distributed in areas when
disaster strikes. Though most kits go to developing countries, the Lions
delivered 23 kits this year to areas in Mississippi that were devastated by
Hurricane Katrina.
The Lions are committed to a pledge made in 1925 to
deaf-blind author Helen Keller, who challenged the organization's members to
become "knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness."
The Long
Island clubs have accepted the challenge, founding an eye bank in 1986 at North
Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. As one of its volunteer couriers,
Brandel can be called at any time to transport fragile corneas from the airport
to the eye bank or to area hospitals where the surgery is performed.
A long career…
Back in 1969, as a 20-year-old with no strong commitments, he joined a
police cadet program. At 21, he became a full-fledged Nassau County police
officer.
Brandel, at 6-foot-1, had played varsity football at Carey High
School in Franklin Square. Baseball, however, was his first love, since he
played Little League from ages 7 to 18. Later he coached the Garden City South
team. He traded in his uniform in 1982 when he became a detective assigned to
the Juvenile Aid Bureau.
His introduction to Lions Clubs came five years
after joining the cadet program. An old friend, a member of the West Hempstead
Lions, was seriously ill. Brandel ran a blood drive for him in conjunction with
the club.
"I joined, loved it and stayed with it," Brandel said. It
changed his life, he says, from the brash young police officer "partying on my
days off." The no-purpose partying ended. The Lions retained their hold on his
heart.
Over the next 20 years, he was involved with a succession of
"runaways, abused children, kids who witnessed domestic violence," he said. One
case involved a 14-year-old who tried to smother her baby. The girl responded
to hours of counseling.
His work on that case won him "Detective of the
Year" in 1998. What pleased him most, he says, was the report that mother and
baby were reunited and doing well.
And once, on Christmas Eve ...
Another memorable case broke on a Christmas Eve. "Since I had to work on
Christmas Eve I was going to do something for somebody," he recalls. Hours of
computer searching located two Merrick children, 8 and 5, who had been missing
for four years, kidnapped to Florida by their noncustodial father.
Meanwhile, Brandel was rising in Lions' ranks from club president to
district governor to international board of directors.
Brandel's days as
a bachelor cop ended in 1993 when he married Maureen Murphy, a pediatric
anesthesiologist at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola. Murphy, then a
major in the Air Force, recalled their first date. "He said he was involved
with the Lions. I said 'What's a Lion?'"
She knows now. She joined the
Melville Lions when the couple moved to that community in 1999. Four years
later she was club president. They worked together on building a Habitat for
Humanity house for a family with a disabled child.
"It feels incredibly
good to help people," she says.
Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Inc.
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