A 2008 Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame inductee and recipient of the 1970 Oswego Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award, Luongo passed away Oct. 4 at the age of 88.

“He inspired a lot of young guys to do well in soccer and at the same time to do well in school,” said Nash, who assisted Luongo as a volunteer coach in the 1960s and became a lifelong friend. “He was a good motivator and … a kind, strict disciplinarian.”

Professor Emeritus Harry Nash, at left, and Dan Scaia ’68 stand with late Coach Emeritus Ernest B. Luongo, far right, at his Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame induction in 2008. Nash and Scaia spearheaded the creation of the Ernest B. Luongo Memorial Scholarship in the coach’s honor.

Scaia, who with Nash and the Luongo family is helping endow the scholarship, was one of those athletes. “Coach Ernie” believed in Scaia’s academic promise as strongly as his soccer skills and worked to get him admitted at Oswego despite a lackluster high school transcript.

“I don’t know where I’d be today if he hadn’t done what he did,” said Scaia, who graduated with a 3.2 grade point average and went on to a career in education and business. “He gave me the chance to focus my energy.”

The scholarship will be awarded annually to a student majoring in health and wellness or education who also has an interest in coaching or drug abuse education.

After leading the soccer program to what remains its only SUNY Athletic Conference championship in 1966, Luongo was appointed by then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to be chief of the Bureau of Professional Education for the Narcotic Addiction Control Commission in 1967.

A professor of health and physical education at Oswego until he retired in 1985, Luongo worked on drug abuse issues with parents and school administrators in local districts, Nash said.

“It’s time we begin to honor Ernie by contributing whatever we can to his scholarship,” Nash said. “If this scholarship can help a student to the point where he or she doesn’t have to worry every moment about finances, that student can spend at least a bit more time on studies that are interesting to him or her.”

Helen Luongo notes that her late husband was “very dedicated to the college and its programs” and that SUNY Oswego played an important role in the life of the entire family. Their children attended the Campus School in Sheldon Hall, just down the street from their home.

“Ernie would have been very proud and happy to know that students will benefit from the scholarship that has been set up in his name,” she said. “He was a very dedicated teacher.”

Nash, Scaia and Luongo are hoping to raise $10,000 to endow the scholarship, which is expected to provide for one award each year. For more information or to make a donation to the Ernest B. Luongo Memorial Scholarship, call 315-312-3003 or visit oswego.edu/givenow.

— Shane M. Liebler and Michele Reed

Former members of the Sodus Migrant Project gathered at Reunion 2011. They are, from left: Rita Ricardo Rodgers ’71; Nancy Jean Eick Labbe ’71, M ’95, CAS ’04; Nancy Blanchard Ibbs Soules ’69; Phil Toner ’67; Professor Emeritus Harry Nash; Lorraine B. Nash; Gail Shelton Tooker ’72; Maureen McGuire Parker ’70; Joann VanKirk Toner ’68 and Karen Visconti Holliday ’71.

The nearby Sodus Central School District found itself home to 320 migrant children, whose families worked the local farms and fruit orchards.

Few understood English, and the fluctuations in classroom size placed tremendous pressure on the regular staff.

Oswego Professor Emeritus of Elementary Education Harry Nash was contacted by his department chair with a somewhat unusual request: Recruit education majors to ride a bus to Sodus, stay the day and work with the children, and assist the full-time staff. For $25 a day, many Oswego students took Nash up on the offer.

In 1968, the program was redesigned to offer course credit and Nash was placed in charge of the newly created Sodus Migrant Project.

Nash and several of his former students in the project gathered to share some of their memories and experiences during Reunion 2011.

“With the migrant children, the classrooms were bulging at the seams,” said Nancy Jean Eick Labbe ’71, M ’95, CAS ’04, one of the dozens of elementary and secondary education majors who took part in the project from 1968 until 1972. Classrooms often had 36 or more children assigned to a single teacher.

“They would have not gotten the help they were provided if the college students weren’t there,” Nash said.

The hardest part for the students came when they developed a connection with the children for months, only to have them vanish, their families having moved on to another job.

“It was heartbreaking,” Gail Shelton Tooker ’72 said. “Around Christmastime I learned that the mother of one of the families had died when they moved back to Florida. I gathered up all these toys and sent them down. It got returned to me. I never learned what happened.”

SUNY Oswego education majors helped teach children of migrant farmworkers during the 1960s and 1970s through the Sodus Migrant Project.

After 1972, Nash left the project, in part because of the tremendous emotional ups and downs that encompassed teaching such a dedicated group of students. It continued for one more year in 1973 before disbanding.

“It was probably one of the better learning experiences I’ve ever been involved with,” Nash said.

— Keith Edelman ’10