Huntington Station Honors Mason Kraese at Blood Drive Today

The Huntington Manor Fire Department opens its station at 1650 New York Ave. today for anyone who wants to honor Mason Kraese by doing what he did regularly throughout adulthood: donate blood.

The drive runs from 2 to 8 p.m. Thursday, organized in partnership with the New York Blood Center. It falls one week after what would have been Kraese's 28th birthday and marks the first year since he died in an ATV accident in upstate New York on Aug. 30, 2025, at 27.

Kraese was a 2016 graduate of Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station who stayed close to the fire department long after graduation. He joined Huntington Manor as a junior volunteer in his teens and remained active into his mid-twenties. Former colleagues describe him as someone who arrived early, stayed late, and showed up for a 3 a.m. alarm call the same way he showed up for an afternoon drill.

For his family, the blood drive is a natural extension of something already part of their story. Kraese's father, Phil, received a kidney from a deceased donor, an experience that shaped how the family talked about giving for years afterward. Mason absorbed that conviction and acted on it consistently. Phil told Patch his son was "a big proponent of organ donation" who donated blood regularly throughout his life.

Organizers added a second station near the firehouse entrance for toiletry donations — soap, shampoo, and deodorant — to be distributed to local veterans. Anyone turned away from donating blood because of recent illness, medication, or a low iron count can still leave something behind.

Summer is one of the hardest seasons for the regional blood supply. The New York Blood Center sees donations fall each June and July as travel and disrupted routines break regular giving habits. A single whole-blood donation can support up to three patients. Demand from trauma admissions, cancer treatments, and scheduled surgeries holds steady year-round.

Huntington Manor covers an active stretch of the North Shore, responding to several hundred calls each year across residential blocks, commercial corridors along New York Avenue, and industrial areas near Route 110. Volunteers who stay for years — rather than cycling in and out — form the department's consistent response capacity. Kraese was one of those volunteers.

He came up through the junior auxiliary program, which introduces high school students to the department before they are old enough to take emergency calls. By the time he graduated Walt Whitman in 2016, he had already answered his first calls with the senior corps. He was 18.

The drive is also timed deliberately. The late-May stretch between Memorial Day and the start of summer tends to produce one of the steepest drops in blood donation of any period outside the winter holidays. Running a visible community event during that dip is one way fire departments have tried to offset the seasonal gap in the supply.

The veterans component came from a department colleague who works with a local support organization. It turned what might have been a single-purpose event into something with two donation lanes — useful for anyone who shows up and cannot give blood for medical reasons.

Walk-in donors are welcome between 2 and 8 p.m. Those who want to schedule a slot in advance can do so at nybc.org. The New York Blood Center recommends arriving well-hydrated with a full meal beforehand. The screening and collection typically takes about 45 minutes for first-time donors.

Phil Kraese said his hope is that the drive becomes an annual fixture — not just for people who knew Mason, but for anyone who wants a reason to give. "Mason would just want people to go," he told Patch. The Huntington Manor Fire Department is at 1650 New York Ave. in Huntington Station. Doors open at 2 p.m.