FALLSBURG, NY (July 16, 2014) – Joe LaRuffa, a long-standing music teacher and band director at Fallsburg Central School District (FCSD), and 
former Town of Fallsburg Councilman, became the second inductee into the Fallsburg High School Hall of Fame on June 29.
Superintendent Dr. Ivan Katz and Board of Education President Joseph Collura introduced Mr. LaRuffa to the audience present at at the Class of 2014 graduation ceremony.
Both speakers praised LaRuffa’s career as an outstanding teacher, a nationally renowned band director, a public servant, and, in Collura’s words, “a courageous military man who served his country in the treacherous three years of the Italian campaign in World War II.”
Accompanying LaRuffa were his wife Jeannette, his daughters Angela and Mary Ann, his son Frank, and Frank’s daughter Olivia.
LaRuffa’s son offered moving words of thanks on behalf of his dad and the family. Many former colleagues and students were in the audience.
Some of LaRuffa’s students had children in the graduating class.
I loved playing in the F.C.S. band with him orchestrating! I played clarinet and french horn!
Susie Ottenheimer
I am proud to have been a student of Papa Joe. I’m still playing my horn, 32 years later.
As a guest of one of the seniors graduating that afternoon, while Mr. LaRuffa clearly was worthy of such an award and recognition, I felt that the entire ceremony and related speeches took away the focus on the graduating students. Such an event should have either been cut short in time to less than 5 minutes, or should have been held on a separate occasion. It stole the spotlight from the graduates and that was disappointing.