Noteworthy grads

Joshua Freeman is a professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of numerous books and articles on the history of labor unions and the sociology of working-class people.

Marisa Tomei shot to national attention in 1992 in “My Cousin Vinny,” in which she played brash, foul-mouthed New York mechanic Mona Lisa Vito, a longtime fiancee (with her biological clock ticking) who is called to testify as an expert witness in a murder case in Alabama. She won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for that comedic tour de force and hasn’t slowed down since, appearing on Broadway and in TV shows and other movies.

His rank — Second Mate Unlimited Tonnage Upon the Oceans — entitles merchant mariner Scott Adler to ship out on any size vessel anywhere in the world, as long as his union, the Marine Engineers Benevolent Association, approves the job and clears it with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Antonio Fargas, who graduated from Manhattan’s HS of Fashion Industries in 1965, helped raised close to $10,000 for a scholarship fund at the school. His career has spanned more than 40 years, including a host of roles in film (“Shaft,” “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” and “Car Wash”) on stage and on television, including “Everybody Hates Chris” and as Huggy Bear on “Starsky & Hutch.” 

He wears black, lives and has a studio in the Bowery, has shot films in Europe, has more than a dozen edgy films to his name and many film festival awards to his credit — yet Ken Kobland just can’t escape his Bronx roots. Not that he’s trying to anymore.

Jordan’s river “is deep and wide,” as the African-American spiritual goes. Pastor Horace Michael’s roots in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant are also deep and wide, touching many families and several generations. A student at PS 93, then at JHS 194, Michael graduated from Boys and Girls HS in 1979 and won a UFT Shanker Scholarship award.

Living out many dreams in his long career, Scott Ian, the lead and rhythm guitarist of Anthrax, has sold over 10 million albums, received multiple Grammy nominations, played for audiences worldwide and hosted shows on VH1. But in September, 30 years after founding the seminal heavy metal band, Ian got to fulfill a childhood fantasy when he took the stage at Yankee Stadium for a homecoming concert in front of 50,000 fans.

Well-known and highly-regarded writer Edwidge Danticat arrived in East Flatbush from Port-Au-Prince in 1981, starting 8th grade at IS 320. Despite hardship and culture shock, she excelled at Clara Barton HS. “I grasped everything but English composition. I was writing so badly. But I had good teacher-angels along the way.”

Queens County’s first woman to be sent to the state Senate, Toby Ann Stavisky (D/WFP-16th District), may also be the first elected official to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald at the launching of a redevelopment project. The daughter of a public school teacher, Stavisky would grow up to marry a state senator and be elected to the senate herself in 1999, succeeding her late husband.