MEET THE BAUMANN SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS
SCHOOLS
10-31-95 NY TIMES
A Parents Group in Pound Ridge Wrestles with The Devil for Halloween
POUND RIDGE, N.Y.
THIS town was built for trick or treating. It boasts all the classic fright-night ingredients. There are deep woods to run past, a few dark Victorians no one seems to live in, and more than a few monstrous mansions, cloaked by wide-limbed pin oaks and wrought-iron fences, that could be home to the likes of Count Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein.
But to Mary Ann Di Bari and Ceil Di Nozzi, raising six school-age children between them, Halloween in Pound Ridge is nothing to celebrate or take lightly. It is trouble, and trick or treating is too scary to even contemplate.
MS. DI BARI and Ms. Di Nozzi are founders of a coalition called Concerned Parents, Citizens and Professionals Against the Seduction of Children. They believe that this horsey country town of doctors, stockbrokers and Ralph Lauren holds something truly sinister.
Could it be - Satan?
"It's something,satanic," said Ms. DiBari, a lawyer who raised six children in Pound Ridge and is now raising two grandchildren. "The costumes have changed. The emphasis is on the trick, not the treat." And the trick, she said, is to make the child think of evil and the occult. " It's not the same holiday it was years ago."
Ms. Di Nozzi, who let her four children, ages 9 to 14, celebrate Halloween in years past ("I sewed their costumes"), is keeping them home from school this year. "The school is calling Halloween the Day of the Dead," she said. "We're not alone in thinking this isn't funny."
In fact, the Pound Ridge coalition is part of a national movement. Gone are the days when the biggest Halloween worries were teen-age tricks and unwrapped treats. Halloween has become spiritually incorrect, a bit of macabre mischief once a year that school districts across the country are exorcising from the calendar.
The National School Boards Association counts Halloween with the winter holidays as raising the most controversy among religious groups. The Christian Coalition has decried Halloween as a pagan celebration that glorifies black magic and red-horned devils; the coalition's founder, Pat Robertson, has made it known that right-thinking families should have nothing to do with it.
Ms. DiBari, however, says that the Pound Ridge coalition has no connection to the Christian Coalition. "We don't have a political agenda," she said.
Besides, she added, Halloween is just the tip of the skeleton rattling around this northeastern corner of Westchester. She is worried, she said, about the New Age-ish approach to learning in the schools, where Ouija boards, psychics and fantasy role-playing games with wizards and sorcerers are used as learning tools.
MS. DIBARI said she and Ms. DiNozzi formed Concerned Parents, Citizens and Professionals Against the Seduction of Children in February, after they found out that their children were playing a popular trading card game, Magic: the Gathering, in an after-school program. The two-year-old game involves a fantasy land where players use spells to fight their opponents.
"If you ask what's wrong with it, then you must not have seen it," Ms. DiBari said. "It's inherently damaging and dangerous. It's baffling why any adult would let their child near it; there are images on the cards of Leviathan and Satan with the demon pentagram on his forehead."
Bruce Dennis, the Superintendent of the Bedford School District, which includes Pound Ridge, said the game was never part of the curriculum. It was played before and after school in a program run by students and parents. After Ms. Di Bari and Ms. Di Nozzi came to him and voiced concerns about the game, he said, he put a moratorium on it until three psychologists could independently study it.
When they concluded that there was nothing Wrong with it, he reinstated the game but added a caveat that children could play only with their parents' written consent, he said.
Ms. Di Bari and Ms. Di Nozzi, he added, are a coalition of two, stirring trouble in a district where parents are so deeply involved that they would know immediately if anything untoward was happening. "If there was Satanism going on, people would never stand for it.' he said.
Ms. Di Bari said she knows some people in town think she's crazy. "The Superintendent is going around saying we're extremists," she said. "We had a meeting Sept. 28 that attracted 400 people."
DR. DENNIS said most of those attending were bused in by the Christian Coalition. "The members of the community there didn't agree with what was being said, but nobody got to ask questions," he said "I got calls days later from people still fuming."
The district plans an open meeting on Nov. 20, Dr. Dennis added, largely so parents and teachers who didn't get to speak at Ms. Di Bari and Ms. Di Nozzi's meeting could voice their opinions.
Ms. Di Bari and Ms. Di Nozzi plan to attend, too, with a group of supporters who see the "evil going on," Ms. Di Bari said.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OCTOBER 31, 1995
Evelyn Nieves