This is the second in a series of profiles on Babylon Town and County candidates as we head toward November's general election.

Bellone, from journalist to newsmaker

by Carolyn James

The swing set in the other yard was a great attraction to two-year-old Steve Bellone. And, even though he could only see a portion of it from the back yard of his new home, it was enough to encourage him to scale the six-foot wooden fence.

Paul Sauberer with his wife and children.

A half hour late, his mother was out looking for him and young Steve was finally taken home by his neighbor who used the opportunity to introduce herself to the new family next door.

The story is a family legend that Bellone recalls only from its being recited to him over the years.

"We moved out to North Babylon from Flushing, Queens and my mother always tells me that story," said Bellone, now a Councilman in the Town of Babylon and the Democratic candidate for Town Supervisor. "All I remember is that I always loved climbing."

In fact, his first dream was to become a mountain climber, he said. Though life handed him more alternatives, he did achieve that dream by scaling other mountains, rising through the ranks of Babylon Town politics to take his place in the number one spot of the Democratic ticket for 2001.

Steve Bellone is the son of Margaret Bellone and her husband Michael, now deceased. He attended the North Babylon School District and then Mount St. Mary College for two years. That was followed by a stint in Queens College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and communications.

"I wanted to be a journalist," said Bellone. "I was very inspired by the movie Broadcast News; the whole way of life fascinated me. I loved government and politics and decided that is what I wanted to cover."

Instead, Bellone moved in another direction. He became a politician, a decision he said he made because he believed in the democratic system and that he could offer something to his community and his country. Even today, he reenacts a childhood tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July.

Responsibility to yourself and to others was a staple in the Bellone household. He watched his father get up every morning and make the two- hour trek into New York City where he worked as a New York City Corrections officer. And, he knew that life demanded something selfless of everyone.

"Sometimes he held three jobs to support us," said Bellone, who has a sister Kim and a brother Chad. An older brother, his parent’s first son Michael, died two years before Bellone was born of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was an era in which little was known about the problem and when parents were forced to undergo the scrutiny of an extensive police investigation.

"It was a great tragedy for my mother and father," said Bellone. "My brother was a perfectly healthy nine-month-old child when my mother put him into his crib that night and he never woke up; he just stopped breathing."

But the couple’s strength and love pulled them through and eventually the family grew and moved on. Michael and Margaret Bellone continued to hold out hope for the future and maintain a sense of personal commitment to each other and the larger community.

It was that philosophy that helped Bellone make the next decision in his life following his graduation from Queens College. He knew he wanted to go to law school, but decided to take some lessons in life first. He joined the U.S. Army, and following basic training, was stationed in Ft. Leonard-wood, Missouri where he became a communications specialist with top secret clearance for processing classified information. He was attached to an EVAC unit and spent his spare time getting a master’s degree in public administration.

"I enjoyed every minute of my time in the service, including basic training," said Bellone. "It was a wonderful experience and I was a little older so I had a different perspective than the 18-year-olds."

Bellone said the service taught him that people are really part of something bigger than themselves and that everyone has an obligation to give something to their country.

"My family always believed that serving in the military was an honorable thing and I think that we should teach that to our young people in high school," said Bellone. "Not necessarily only military service, but also an obligation to some type of service."

As his time with the Army wound down, Bellone took the opportunity to travel to Hawaii and California and through the southwest and headed to Colorado and the Grand Canyon. It was standing before the enormity of the Grand Canyon that Bellone made yet another transition in his life, calling in to base and reporting that he was officially on reserve duty with the Army. He made his way home in a battered car, with a cooler at his side, and planned to live in New York city and attend law school there.

Such is the landscape of life, however, that things don’t always go according to plans, for as Bellone was settling in to civilian life, his father was diagnosed with cancer. He abandoned his plans for living in Manhattan, choosing instead to stay home and help his mother cope with the family’s loss, but did attend law school, eventually graduating from Fordham and passing the bar the first time around.

In between, he pursued his career in communications, taking a job offered to him by his longtime friend, Babylon Town Supervisor Richard Schaffer, in the Town’s Public Information Office.

"I knew Rich; we grew up together and I had gone into his office looking for some advice on what I could do next," recalls Bellone. "It just so happened that someone had left the Town’s communications office the day before and Rich offered the job to me."

That was followed by a run for Town Council and his eventual selection as Schaffer’s replacement by the Democrats. As with everything Bellone does, he’s assumed the role with enthusiasm and vigor.

"One of my strengths is that I am able to focus and put all my energies into doing what I want and what needs to be done," said Bellone in response to the question. "I learned that from my father—that you can succeed at anything with hard work and dedication."

But that can also be a weakness, Bellone acknowledges. "Sometimes I think I can get anything done if I put enough hard work into it. But that’s not always the case."

For Bellone, whose personal hero is his father and his political hero Harry Truman; who is a student of history and deplores the tearing down of American democracy for political gain; who drinks coca-cola and still climbs fences and mountains, even if only his mind, time will tell.

Sauberer, ready to serve

by Carolyn James

Paul Sauberer always believed that government could not and should not do everything; that people living in a free society had to assume responsibility for their own lives.

"You give up a lot of your freedom when you rely upon government to take care of you," said Sauberer whose personal and political philosophy was tested under fire several years ago when his wife came down with a debilitating disease. Despite the personal ordeal, Sauberer, the Republican candidate for Babylon Town Supervisor, says he believes even more strongly in individual rights and limiting the power of government.

Carolyn, or Cici Sauberer, first began experiencing weakness in her arms and legs. The condition worsened, but doctors were unable to immediately diagnose her illness. At one point, she was completely paralyzed, able only to lift her head.

Finally, Carolyn Sauberer was diagnosed with paraneoplastic syndrome, an auto-immune disease that is triggered when the body begins to fight off cancerous cells. Though she is cancer free, and now recovered sufficiently to go back to work, Carolyn Sauberer must get around in a wheel chair and relies heavily on physicians and medicine and the health-care system.

Sauberer who was born in Annapolis, Maryland, has worked through the many issues involved in his wife’s illness, and together they have become stronger, he said. He’d now like to move forward and serve his community as Town Supervisor.

It was actually the issue of health care that got Sauberer involved in politics in the first place. He attended a health care seminar sponsored by then-Congressman Tom Downey and heard details about the Democrats’ single payee, government-sponsored health care program. He was appalled.

"It was a system where we were being told everyone would have all the health care they wanted and no one would have to pay for it," said Sauberer. "It wasn’t logical, but there were a lot of senior citizens there who were very worried about their health care and who were being exploited for political gain."

Sauberer responded by working for Downey’s opponent, Rick Lazio, who defeated the longtime Congressman. It began a record of community service for Sauberer based on the belief that people can make a difference. "If you get involved and work hard you can bring about change and make things better," he said.

Sauberer acknowledges that the issue of health care is not one that local officials at the town level would be asked to become involved in. But the North Babylon resident adds that his position reflects a political point of view that impacts on every aspect of government.

"Never once during this entire ordeal did I ever think that it would have been better to have some government health-care program that could have made the decisions for us," said Sauberer. "I was always relieved that the important decisions about my wife’s health care were being made by us and by the physicians, not by the people paying the bills."

Sauberer is the son of Carol and Pablo or Paul Sauberer, a Cuban Naval Academy graduate who attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis as a foreign exchange student. He met Sauberer’s mother there, they married and the couple moved to Liberia where Sauberer’s mother was diagnosed with a kidney tumor. The couple moved to the United States where she was to undergo treatment only to find out that she had been misdiagnosed. The condition turned out to be a pregnancy, and nine months later Paul Sauberer was born.

By the 1960s, his father became a U.S. citizen. His mother and father eventually divorced and Sauberer grew up in Annapolis with his mother and her family. Like her son, she loved and was involved in local politics there.

A graduate of the University of Dallas with a bachelor’s degree in politics, he also took marketing courses and got a job after graduation working for Island Recreational and then CVS Drug stores. He is now a private corporate consultant and works out of his home, helping to care for the couple’s two children, Nolan, 9 and Hope, 5. His wife works for a firm that assists in the distribution of class action lawsuit settlements.

It was during his time in college that Sauberer, a Protestant, began to seriously consider converting to Catholicism. He had attended a Catholic high school and the experience had changed him, and by the time he was in College, things just seemed to come together, he said. He eventually converted and says he is very comfortable with that decision.

"I had been exposed to the beliefs of the Catholic Church while in high school and then later at the University of Dallas in Irvin Texas, so I was very familiar with the faith," said Sauberer. "I think my desire to serve grows out of my faith and that my life is really an expression of the Catholic philosophy."

Growing up in Annapolis also offered Sauberer the opportunity to be exposed to history and government, both of which have had a big impact on his life as well. He’s currently reading a biography of John Adams and says his favorite movie is 1776.

The area also offered him the opportunity of spending time on the Chesapeake Bay and some of his fondest memories of growing up are of the times he spent with his grandfather, Bill Pike, fishing and boating. Eighty five now, his grandfather is still one of Sauberer’s strongest supporters.

When they moved to Long Island, the couple purchased a smaller home on a large plot of land in North Babylon dreaming one day of renovating and expanding it into a two-story Victorian.

"We’ve had to change that plan a bit now," said Sauberer, adding that the most practical thing with his wife’s condition is an expanded ranch with plenty of room for the family.

A baseball buff, Sauberer does research and writing for a baseball website, Fantastic. For now, however, he spends most weekends and week nights out campaigning and hoping to put up a notch in the win column in November.