Thank You and Welcome!
by Dare Thompson
The annual meeting is always a time when a few board members leave and a few more come aboard. While Louise Reavis of Monroe and Kathie Bienkafner of Clintondale will be leaving the board, we are grateful that they will still be active in League work as their time allows and we thank them both for their service.
Louise has been instrumental in building our new League presence in Orange County and has worked conscientiously and cheerfully on voter registration, civics education with high schoolers, visits with legislators, and other voting- related activities. She has also been helping to educate the public about the NY ERA that will be on this fall’s ballot, and intends to continue with that.
Kathie has brought her expertise as a NYS licensed professional geologist to various environmental efforts and interests of the League and has served her community as a member of the Plattekill planning board and more recently as the board chair of the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency. We will
continue to rely on her knowledge and insights and hope to see her often at meet-ups and other social events too.
Thank you both, Louise and Kathie!
We asked our two new board members, Fay Casatuta of Wappingers Falls and Anne Sandor of Warwick, to share brief bios about themselves as we all get to know them better-
Fay Casatuta has been a member of the League since 2021, and is inspired by its mission of advocacy, education, and action. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University in Boston and before retiring enjoyed a long and rewarding career in Research and Development at IBM that took her from Austin, TX to Danbury, CT to Poughkeepsie. Fay has a strong sense of social responsibility, a desire to serve the community and work towards change. She volunteered with Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson for over 30 years, eventually serving on its Board of Directors. Fay also served on the Board of Directors for the Green Chimneys School in Brewster. She currently serves as President for the Friends of the East Fishkill Community Library. In her spare time, Fay enjoys reading, cooking, needlepoint, and is a self-professed political junkie.
Anne Sandor is a retired associate professor of English at SUNY Orange in Middletown, NY, where she taught Contemporary Novel and Creative Writing Fiction. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from Vermont College. A poet and fiction writer, her work has appeared in numerous publications. Her poem, “The Last Supper,” appeared in the anthology, Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty. It has always been her fervent belief that literature fosters understanding and empathy. This is why she values her new experiences working with the League to register young voters because it enables her to connect with students and have those very real conversations about the importance and value of voting and taking part in the democratic process.
Welcome Fay and Anne! We are glad you’ll be with us as we approach an historic fall election season and plan many efforts for the year ahead.