Huntington Alumni News
Former Huntington High School athletic star James Paci has most recently been an orthopedic surgery resident at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. But, he’s heading south after accepting a position to work with the legendary Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Alabama.
Dr. Andrews is well known as one of the top sports orthopedists in the world. Dr. Paci will be covering high school sports on Fridays, Division I college games on Saturdays and the Washington Redskins on Sundays.
Dr. Paci, who played on the Blue Devil football, basketball and baseball teams, earned his undergraduate degree at Yale University and his MD at Finch University of Medical Science/Chicago School of Medicine. He has been residing in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse.
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Steven Palacios knows what hard work is all about. One of the most successful Blue Devil wrestlers in history, the Huntington High School graduate (Class of 2002) won a pair of Suffolk mat titles as well as the state championship his senior year.
A 2007 graduate of Hofstra University, Mr. Palacios is the manager of Palacios Realty in Huntington Station. Along with his brother Xavier Palacios (Huntington 1988) he also founded Palacios Funding Group, which is expected to make its debut soon.
“I’ve been busy between mortgage consulting and real estate,” said Mr. Palacios, who has been working on both residential and commercial accounts. In addition to wrestling, Mr. Palacios also participated on the Blue Devil cross country, lacrosse and football teams.
The housing slump and mortgage crisis has severely tested the former wrestling great, who originally attended Purdue University on an athletic scholarship before returning to Long Island and Hofstra to finish his degree requirements. “In such a tough market I had to either persevere or pack it in and find a different career,” Mr. Palacios said. “I’ve been working very hard.”
Xavier Palacios earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University and obtained a law degree at the Boston University School of Law. His law office is located in Mineola and he resides in Huntington.
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Phyllis Bialow Levitt, a member of Huntington High School’s Class of 1952 is retired from Dover High School in Delaware where she served as chairperson of the English department. She earned her undergraduate degree at SUNY Albany and obtained a Master’s degree at New York University. She resides in Dover with her husband, Irving. The couple has two children, Dr. Laura Levitt and David Levitt.
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Marissa Bergmann, member of Huntington High School’s Class of 2003, is nearing graduation at Purdue University where she is majoring in elementary education. “I have been extremely busy with student teaching,” she said. “I started a few weeks ago and now I'm teaching full-time in the classrooms. It's been so much fun so far.”
. Bergmann was key player on the Blue Devil lacrosse team and she has continued with the sport in college, playing on the Boilermakers’ club team. But, right now all her attention is focused on the classroom and her young students. Recently she experienced parent-teacher conferences first hand.
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Rachel Kramer Green, a member of Huntington High School’s Class of 1986 is working as a staff scientist with Protein Data Bank in Boulder, Colorado, the single worldwide archive of structural data of biological macromolecules. Mrs. Green, who earned a Ph.D at Rutgers University, and her husband Samuel have two children, Sara and Michael. The couple resides in Denver.
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