Mrs. Marie Gallay is not only a Babylon alumnus but also a former Babylon elementary school and grade-school teacher. During her time at Babylon she partook in numerous sports, including field hockey, basketball, and softball. She also enjoyed the drama club and even participated in the plays and musicals. Her years at Babylon really influenced her drive to become a teacher.

Mrs. Gallay was the only female that achieved a “Gold Key” award her senior year for the amount of physical education activities she participated in. She even performed the star-spangled banner senior year at her graduation. “I think that [Babylon] being a small community was something that I was very comfortable with, I had wonderful teachers… I think they really helped form the person I became and inspired me more to want to become a teacher,” explained Mrs. Gallay. Her favorite subject was chorus because she loved to sing, and she saw it as an outlet.

Mrs. Gallay also shared with me some of the interesting aspects of Babylon when she attended. In 6th grade they had an experimental program where they moved her class to the junior-senior high school; she explained that it was interesting but also intimidating as a child. She was also able to go out for lunch just as a first grader! Imagine that? Another impressive moment for her was receiving a special award at graduation from the congressmen. She went to Oswego college, and it was a real eye opener seeing how large a school it was. Mrs. Gallay saw the small community as a family.

“You should embrace all the opportunities that you can get, try to look at the positive…it doesn’t always pan out the way you want it to pan out…support the people that are important to you and maybe even the people that aren’t important to you” is the advice that Mrs. Gallay emphasized in a recent interview. Mrs. Gallay is full of memories and gratitude for her years attending and teaching at Babylon, and she looks back so very fondly at all of them.