Changed by 9/11: Leslie Gross, Town Clerk

Town Clerk Leslie Gross imparts life philosophies. Among them: do your best to improve your corner of the world.

The reason is simple.

“There’s hope in the world for peace,” she said. "One person at a time.”

It’s an element she brings not just to her professional role, but also her work as a volunteer with the Rotary Club, Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Gift of Life.

Even after the events of Sept. 11, Gross’s faith stayed strong.

She tells the story of her work with Gift of Life, where in the spring of 2001, three children with heart defects, each with a parent, flew from the Gaza Strip to New York to receive desperately needed surgery at North Shore-LIJ Health System.

Gross met the families at the airport. She didn’t speak a word of Arabic, and they didn’t speak English, but somehow, they communicated. More often than not, she managed to find someone who spoke Arabic, whether it was someone at the Ronald McDonald House in New Hyde Park where they were staying, or someone at a store when Gross accompanied the families to get supplies.

She sat with the parents while their little ones had surgery. And she smiled with them while their children healed.

“There were angels of hope around me,” she says of the experience.

Before they left, they hugged good-bye, exchanged phone numbers, and developed a shorthand to communicate despite their language barriers. They still use that shorthand today.

Gross learned to say a phrase that phonetically sounded like “Kolo kwa-is?” The phrase was the first thing she'd ask when she spoke with the Gaza Strip families by phone, eager to learn if their babies were okay.

“Kolo kwa-is,” they would reply. Everything is fine.

When possible, they’d call with English speakers by their side, so they could have deeper conversations.

After Sept. 11, Gross saw Arabic communities celebrating the Sept. 11 attacks on TV. She later received a call. It was Nahed, one of the fathers of a child helped by Gift of Life.

This time it was he, who asked, “Kolo kwa-is?”

Nahed stood with a translator who told Gross, “We’re telling our friends, ‘Don’t dance in the streets. Don’t be happy.’” As Gross pointed out, her friends on the Gaza Strip knew that it was Americans who saved thier children. These children, she noted, hadn't learned to hate yet.

Nahed's call gave Gross hope that her work through Gift of Life, which she said has saved 10,000 children, transforms their families into "ambassadors of peace."

They help “make the world okay,” she said. “You can try to heal the world one heart at a time.”