Free Republic

No one reads about the long snapper until he flubs the snap on a critical field-goal attempt or sails one over the punter’s head in a tight game. If the starting snapper is obscure, that makes the third-teamer nearly invisible. But South Carolina’s Matthew Grooms has a story that goes beyond football. It started on a dirt road in Marlboro County, wound through the deserts of Kuwait and included a stop on the new sod at N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium, where Thursday night the 26-year-old walk-on and Iraqi War veteran stood on the sidelines for the Gamecocks’ opener. Grooms made...

It may have taken 63 years but Herman Rosenblat is finally able to celebrate being a man. Rosenblat, formerly of Bay Terrace, received his Bar Mitzvah today at Congregation Beth Sholom Chabad in Mineola. Although most Jewish boys celebrate at age 13 -- the age when the child becomes responsible for himself under Jewish law -- Rosenblat was hardly in a position for balloons and streamers: the 76-year-old Polish immigrant spent his 13th year in a concentration camp during World War II. Rosenblat celebrated with about a dozen friends and local congregants, eating cookies and dancing the Hora. But his...