LI Life: The year in pictures

SHALL WE DANCE? / AUG. 13

Instructors at Roll Call Wheelchair Dance Long Island teach ballroom dancing and help their students make the most of the partner dance experience. “We dance face to face, heart to heart and hand to hand,” said Patti Panebianco, the group’s founder, taking a spin with Melissa Vitiello.  

BEATING BACK A FORMIDABLE OPPONENT / MAY 21

Exercise plays a fundamental role in the treatment of Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease that erodes parts of the brain associated with motor control. Rosilind Drukker participates in the Rock Steady program at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury to help alleviate the disease's effects.

A FLOCK IN THEIR MIDST / AUG. 27

Magnolia Gardens resident Monica Yepez with a Black Frizzle Cochin chicken that resides with several other varieties on the grounds of the apartment complex for seniors in New Cassel. Yepez and her neighbors grow vegetables in a community garden and maintain an outdoor chicken coop, the only one sanctioned in the Town of North Hempstead, as part of the Fresh from the Garden program, a nutritional initiative focused on promoting wellness and healthy eating.

RESILIENT ONE / JAN. 1

Blakely Murphy’s first brain surgery was a conventional procedure, but the second operation was an innovative surgery using technology called BrainPath -- a tool made by NICO Corporation -- which allows minimally invasive access in the subcortical part of the brain. “I want to make people believe that there is always hope, even in situations where it doesn’t look like there is much,” she said.

PIANO MAN / NOV. 12

Jules Jacobs decided to finally take those piano lessons he had been thinking about when he was 67 and retired from teaching. Nearly 20 years later, he wanted lyrics to go with the hundreds of melodies he had penned and asked his daughter, a singer, for help. Several of her lyricist friends agreed and performed the tunes at a free concert in November in Jacobs' honor.

FROM CORAM TO CUBA / JAN. 8

Chris Cloonan says he has “the best job in the world.” He accompanies artists, university and high school students, even baseball fanatics, to Cuba, where baseball — not soccer as is common on other Caribbean islands and throughout Latin America — is the national sport.

SCOUT'S HONOR / JULY 23

Denzel Honoré thought about building benches in Hempstead’s Kennedy Park to earn his Eagle Scout badge until a local legislator put an old red schoolhouse with a potbelly stove on his radar. Once he saw the structure in Hempstead, he decided to try to make it a historical landmark.

SWORDS & ARMOR / APRIL 30

Greg Fasolino, left, and Peter Angello try out shield work during practice with the Long Island Historical Fencing Society. The German longswords the group uses, along with daggers, spears and martial arts moves, are part of medieval fighting techniques resurrected by Historical European Martial Arts aficionados who study and practice the fighting method.

NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM / MAY 21

Baby Howard has a lot more on his plate than dog food. The 6-year-old English bulldog helps raise funds for shelter animals, has an agent and has appeared in ad campaigns for Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, TV commercials and on stage at the Metropolitan Opera with Renee Fleming in "Der Rosenkavalier." Oh, and he also has more than 20,000 Facebook fans and Instagram followers.

AQUA MAN / APRIL 2

Patrick Durkin checks on the plants in the greenhouse at Fruit of Life Aquaponics in Manorville, where a system of farming that uses fish, plants but no soil merges hydroponics and aquaculture. He is growing fresh-picked watercress, mint and Vietnamese coriander, as well as rosemary.

VIRAL MASTER / JULY 23

Adam Schleichkorn, of East Northport, has built a reputation as a mashup-video hitmaker, with half a dozen of his creations surpassing 1 million views on YouTube in the past two years alone. In May, he won his first Webby award — presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences to honor internet content. 

MAN OF MANY HATS / OCT. 29

Lenny Achan collaborated with his fellow artist, Luis Lamboy, for the 2015 work "Onward," which features Achan's children, Lenny III and Katherine. Achan, a Bellmore resident and chief innovation officer at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, is a lifelong artist rooted in graffiti who was a former nurse and is now also an entrepreneur. 

FACE TO FACE / JUNE 25

Students at Woodward Parkway Elementary School in South Farmingdale created artwork as part of an exhibit on local veterans. Over the course of four weeks, veterans sat down before an art class and answered questions from the students as they sketched and painted the former service members. “I was really fascinated talking to them and actually meeting them in person,” said one fifth-grader. “We got to show our appreciation by telling them ‘Thank you.’ ”

AN ARTIST AND AN INSPIRATION / SEPT. 10

Creighton Berry, 94, represented WWII vets this past Veterans Day when the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts honored veterans at a benefit concert at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Berry is a nationally recognized artist and author whose ongoing body of work includes watercolor, oils, pen and ink, and acrylic to paint collages, landscapes and still lifes.

PRIDE OF PLACE / JAN. 29

Longtime Gordon Heights resident and former firefighter Leonard Gibbs. The hamlet in Brookhaven Town has a population of about 4,000 residents and celebrated its 90th anniversary this year. The community was settled by African-Americans who were given the opportunity to migrate eastward from the five boroughs and buy land and build homes for as low as $10 a month.

SPACE MAKER / JULY 16

Sam Koeppel worked as the editor of the proposal that won Grumman Aerospace Corp. the project for the Lunar Excursion Module in the 1960s. Grumman tasked 70 employees in Bethpage with helping ensure astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin could make the trip to outer space.

A HIDDEN TREASURE / APRIL 16

A long-ignored wooden chest in the basement of a Malverne building contained an assortment of maps, one of which was a detailed, 11-foot-long rendering of Long Island from 1908, the year the Long Island Motor Parkway -- the world’s first highway built exclusively for automobiles -- was opened.

HOOP DREAMS / AUG. 6

Youngsters participate in the Timmy Gilroy Summer Basketball League in Bellmore for six weeks every summer. The parking lot off Bedford Avenue becomes a hoops heaven for players in second grade to 12th grade. The League is named for Timmy, who died in 1993 just shy of his eighth birthday. His family started the league a year later to honor his memory.

CANINE KNOWS BEST / OCT. 22

Adam Braun, of Locust Valley, can thank the family German shepherd, Roxie, if he earns his Eagle Scout badge. On a walk this past spring, Roxie detoured from their usual path and pulled Braun toward thick underbrush that had obscured a family cemetery dating to the 1700s. Braun restored it with help from his Scout troop.

WORK OF ART / DEC. 3

Josephine Smith, of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, is responsible for the beadwork on this Indian headdress featuring an eagle feather bustle and a whale. The Nation has about 1,500 members and an 800-acre reservation in Southampton. It received federal recognition in 2010.

CHAOS, CANOES, CALM / FEB. 12

Trent Preszler, CEO of Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue, taught himself to build canoes in his spare time in his Mattituck workshop. The patience and concentration required helped him cope with the December 2014 death of his father, Leon, whose tools he used to craft his first vessel. "They’re works of art, something people will keep for a lifetime and pass on,” Preszler said. “When I built the first canoe I didn’t have that in mind, but I enjoyed it so much it became something much bigger.”

ALL ABUZZ / JULY 2

A female mason bee returns from a foraging trip carrying mud to make a partition to protect the eggs laid inside the tubes of a bee cottage at Blossom Meadow Farm in Southold. Though not as well known as honeybees and bumblebees, the blue, native American mason bee is well-regarded for its pollinating prowess and nonaggressive disposition.

GRADUATION, TAKE 1 / JULY 9

Chloe Muth, 5, could barely contain her excitement about graduating in June from kindergarten at St. Mary's in Manhasset. Joining her for the pomp and circumstance were Lily Montemarano, 5, from left, Valentina Vennera, 6, Jourdyn Taylor, 6, and Sarafina Amato, 5.

LABORING WITH LOVE / SEPT. 3

"I love the owners of the company so I want to do my best. And also, I like having money to spend.” So said Canan Kizufgun, 57, a dishwasher at Ephesus restaurant in Massapequa Park, as Labor Day -- a "working" holiday for many -- approached.

THREE FOR ALL / AUG. 20

Pittaro siblings Gianvanna, 7, from left, Ronnie, 11, and Lilyana, 9, of Farmingville, splished, splashed and snorkeled at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead during the Snorkel Adventure. Mom Shari deemed it a successful summer outing: "We go every year, but this was the first time that the three of them were able to do [it] together."

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE / FEB. 5

Bakithi Kumalo, the bassist for Paul Simon’s “Graceland” masterpiece, has worked with Mickey Hart (formerly of the Grateful Dead), Alicia Keys, John Legend, opera singer Kathleen Battle and other music legends, produced five albums as a solo artist and recorded three award-winning children’s albums. The self-proclaimed student of music lent his expertise to pupils participating in the East End Arts’ Music Masters Mentorship Program in Riverhead. And for his adult fans, he held a free jam session and workshop.