Two From the Neighborhood

When she was in high school, Diane Giacalone, dressed in her blue-and-gray- plai d uniform, used to stroll down 101st Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens, on her way to Our Lady of Wisdom Academy. Ozone Park, then as now, was a neighborhood of two-story row houses with small, well-tended yards, awnings over the windows and crucifixes above the doors. Most of its residents were Italian and middle class. She would pass mom-and-pop stores, funeral parlors, and butcher shops that displayed an array of Italian sausages in the window. On her right, she often glanced at an inconspicuous red brick building known,...