whoa long island new york america's fastest growing community place of business playground for the millions who live in nassau and suffolk counties but long island wasn't always like this not many years ago it was a quiet semi rural community just a place where things were going to happen and this is our story who make things happen because men who take the promise of a place and make it grow and it's an exceptional place is likely to attract exceptional men men to write poems when lilacs last in the dooryard gloom and a great star only drooped men to build castles mentally to strenuous life and to lead the nation this is long island a place where things it happened i happening are going to happen mr california something is bringing people on long island if you ever lived in the city you'd know what attracts people to line island they all come for the same reason out here there's room to break you can afford your own home but the there's room for the boys to grow among the trees and open spaces the way i did not surrounded by all the concrete and there's plenty of room for the father likes him beautiful parks and recreational areas and i find part ways make it easy to get there you couldn't drag me back to the crowded city i've got everything excellent schools for the children from elementary through high school even colleges where modern out here that we haven't forgotten our heritage we have a knack of preserving the traditional alongside the new most of us work right here on the island back in one nine hundred forty it was one out of three most of us were commuters but now the situation is reversed and more than toronto three work here where we l seems there are a lot of reasons people come to long island and they've been coming since as far back as the early sixteen hundreds the oldest state's one so typical of the island are disappearing or being broken into smaller developments where once a single mansions two and now twenty people own their own small castles long island is a place of to montauk point at four hundred miles and is filled with the greatest variety of things and people you're likely to find anywhere suppose you want to sharpen your favorite stores where miles away or suppose you want to deliver a political idea to all the people on the island when they don't even have one government just separate counties townships and villages and what's needed is a communications medium that not only reports the news of the nation and the world but one that reports and interprets and takes part in local happening is when the interest of a leading citizen is kind of communication that wells hundreds of different communities into the nation's fourth largest city in nassau and suffolk today news day staff numbers more than a thousand and its circulation is approaching four hundred thousand world war two changed the face of long island it brought over one hundred thousand defense workers to the area and the end of the fighting overseas release millions of g i s divided home for someplace to long island and imagine the building concerned levitt and sons had an idea about this problem a new kind of long island home or society a quality house but one that could be rented for sixty dollars a month the key was assembly line construction of homes without cellars built on radiant heated concrete slabs this was not a sales promotion gimmick it was a guarantee of two thousand rental homes to return servicemen there was nothing to rent in those days the veterans were doubled up in attics and some most of them couldn't afford to buy homes so rental homes were necessities unfortunately other people had different ideas our sources told us that the hempstead town board might block the project because of an archaic building code requiring basements so newsday jumped into the fight on the side of the veterans our job was to campaign for changing the local building code for the leavitt homes could be construct we dug into the facts we found there was nothing technically wrong with this new type of construction the main battle was to be fought on may twenty seventh the day the town board met to decide whether to change the code none of us will ever forget that meeting thousands of veterans answered no days call they jam the town hall ready to stay until i got the decision they wanted the long awaited battle was over in twenty minutes the code was revised clearing the way to build eleven town levittown said of the explosive postwar growth of long island it was the beginning of the island's tremendous building built homes ranging from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars getting those building restrictions change brought a great of people more business came to the island and this in turn brought more people thus began a cycle that never has ended the managing editor of news day at the readers that our readers cannot buy for themselves a good newspaper is a good team it takes a lot of people working together to do what newsday must do every day it means reporters activities here at home it means editorial writers who pinpoint the significance of the news and help readers to form constructive opinions and editorial cartoonist to drive these points home it means photographers columnists and sports writers by barry and and it means carry your boys who bring the paper to your do