MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR · BABYLON VILLAGE

Some birthdays get a cake. Salvatore Calaci’s got the mayor.

On Sunday, October 11, Babylon Village Mayor Mary Adams came out to mark a special day for one of the Village’s own: Sal Calaci turned 100. The Village shared the moment in a post afterward, with a short description of the man at the center of it. Sal, it said, is a decorated World War II veteran and a self-taught painter.

State Assemblyman Mike Durso joined the mayor that morning. In his own post he wrote that Calaci served the country as an Army Ranger in World War II, and he called him “a real renaissance man and an American hero.”

A century is a lot of Babylon to have seen. The Village’s post did not say when Sal first picked up a brush, only that nobody taught him: he learned to paint on his own.

The Village closed its message the way neighbors do: “A ‘BV Happy Birthday’ to you, Salvatore Calaci and cheers to 100 years. Thank you for your service every day to our country.”

That thank-you has a date on the calendar, too. Next Wednesday, November 11, the Babylon American Legion Post #94 holds its Veterans Day parade at 10 a.m., starting at Foster Boulevard and Deer Park Avenue and heading south to the Post for the ceremony, under a permit the Village board approved on October 13. Our Veterans Day guide in this issue lists the ceremonies across the Town.

If you are on Deer Park Avenue that morning, clap a little louder for the veterans going by. One of the Village’s own just turned 100.

Know a neighbor with a story like Sal’s? Tell us, and we will chase it down.

Sources: Village of Babylon, post on Salvatore Calaci’s 100th birthday, October 2026 · Assemblyman Mike Durso, “Happy 100th Birthday to Babylon Villages own Salvatore Calaci,” October 2026 · Village of Babylon, Board of Trustees minutes, October 13, 2026

Stock photo, not Mr. Calaci or his celebration. Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash.