Etched in Sand (30 page)

When her family was forced from their home, their pit bull, Pulga, was put in an animal shelter. According to the story, the Garvey family is as worried about Pulga’s being euthanized as they are about how they’ll find a home.

I go back to my desk and call the shelter where Pulga has been placed. I tell them confidently, “I’d like to give you my credit card to get the dog into a boarding home where it’s certain she won’t be put down, please.” She can stay in the boarding facility until we address the family’s housing needs.

By one o’clock that afternoon, a dedicated team of county employees indentifies the only vacant house the county owns and they put a plan in place for Samantha and her family to move into it within two weeks. When Steve announces that Samantha will have a home again, families, businesses, and contractors in the community contribute their energy, furniture, and labor. The county workers who work with Steve and me help us with renovations and setting the house up for the Garveys’ move-in, and my ten-year-old niece Christina accompanies me on a shopping trip to decorate the home.

I save all the news clippings that feature Samantha’s family . . . and Pulga. Christina and I pick out frames for the news clippings, a pup-inspired welcome mat, dog bowls, and a leash for Pulga. We hang the leash on a hook near the entryway and, remembering how as a child I’d push it out of my mind anytime I wished for family photos on our walls, Christina and I place the frames with the news clippings throughout the house. That afternoon, when Steve gives Samantha and her family the keys to their new home, in just one short month I see the rewards of my career and the power of government and community.

I work from January through the fall focusing primarily on Suffolk County’s budget, but one morning in September, I’m pulled away from work after I read texts sent from Camille’s second daughter.

Danielle Grace

7:13 a.m.

Aunt Gina, Mom had a stroke! She’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Please call!

7:35 a.m.

Aunt Gina, where are you? Please call!

I call her older sister, Maria.

“Aunt Gi, Mom had a massive stroke. She was paralyzed when the paramedics took her away. We’re driving behind her ambulance to the hospital. Please hurry.”

I leave home and drive the forty minutes to Stony Brook University Hospital, where Maria meets me in the doorway of the waiting room. “She’s just had a second stroke,” she says . . . and by the time Cherie arrives moments later, she’s experienced two more. Our forty-eight-year-old sister—a mother of five—has just experienced four strokes. “You’re a very lucky baby,” her doctor tells her. “No one this young has the strokes that you have and regains all their cognition and function the way you have.” Surrounded by Frank, their five kids, and Cherie and me, Camille’s body takes a few days to recover from paralysis. Just before the following weekend, she’s released and sent home.

As a birthday gift, I buy her fresh exercise clothes, sneakers, and a heart monitor so she can bein to strengthen her heart, which was weakened by the strokes.

A
FEW WEEKS
later, I take an afternoon off from work to honor the only other passion that has ever pulled me away from my career: my family, which is growing again. No longer a baby, but still full of unconditional love, Camille’s son Frankie is getting married. Cherie, Rosie, Norman, and I are there to celebrate his marriage and support Camille, who is now well enough to walk her eldest son down the aisle . . .
and
to dance at the wedding. From the dance floor she catches my eyes and waves me to join her as the DJ cues up a special request: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

Rosie, Cherie, and Norman follow me out and the five of us huddle in tight and sing to one another with all our hearts.

Epilogue

I
N LATE
O
CTOBER
, the National Weather Service forecasts a “Superstorm”—a hurricane they’re referring to as Sandy. For the first time ever, the NWS sends a representative out to Long Island to prepare us county leaders and our first responders for how serious this storm will be. “Death and devastation,” they tell us repeatedly. “Your residents have got to take this storm seriously. The devastation won’t be because of the wind or the rains, but because of the storm surge. The topography of Long Island and most likely all of greater New York City will be changed forever.”

“Do not let any of the kids leave your house,” I tell Camille. “There will be power outages and fallen trees and worse—in fact you all need to sleep in a part of the house that’s far away from trees.”

The thousands of homes along Long Island’s coastline are extremely vulnerable . . . including mine. I lock it up and say a prayer, spending the next few nights at the county’s emergency management unit in Yaphank. The center is filled with the U.S. Coast Guard, New York Army National Guard, social services, police, fire chiefs, Red Cross, and swarms of other emergency response units. With them I stay up through the night as they work to protect as many Suffolk County residents as possible. We also figure out ways to keep communication lines open to the people who are in flood zones and refused to evacuate before it was too late.

It’s a night of heavyheartedness that I’m certain will stay with me forever—we’re witness to the flooding that causes complete neighborhoods to be destroyed. It’s a harsh reality check as I hope that these citizens’ homes will be the worst thing that they lose.

In the light of day, I join the team of emergency responders and leaders whose job it is to find emergency shelter, food, and supplies for the hundreds in the county who are suddenly homeless or without power. Now I’m working to put the lights back on for the very same community that, decades ago, did the best it could to keep mine from dimming.

The National Weather Service’s dire warnings to our emergency responders were not overstated. Sandy stretched almost two thousand miles as it traveled up the Atlantic coastline. Adding to the depth of the storm was a disastrously timed high tide in a full moon cycle, resulting in tremendous storm surges. Sandy brought parts of the Northeast to a standstill and resulted in extensive flooding in Manhattan and the shorelines of both New York and New Jersey. And sadly, as predicted, Sandy brought many untimely deaths and utter devastation to some of our communities.

At one point during the storm, electric service was lost to several million customers in New York alone. The loss of power crippled hospitals, fuel ports, fuel terminals and gas stations, mass transportation, and telecommunications. The impact this had on the region led New York’s Governor Cuomo to issue an executive order creating what is referred to as the Moreland Commission on Utility Storm Preparation and Response that was charged with investigating the emergency preparedness and storm response of utilities within the state, with recommendations for stricter oversight of utilities and to assist in determining how best to restructure the Long Island Power Authority to provide safer transmission and distribution to its customers going forward—in emergencies and fair weather. On November 13, 2012, he appointed a panel of esteemed commissioners to preside over this investigation . . . and on November 20, Governor Cuomo appointed me as the Commission’s executive director.

As I write this epilogue, I am a few weeks into the Commission’s vital tasks. My sister Camille is still working to build up her strength from multiple consecutive strokes, and her doctors still have not concluded what caused them on that cloudy September day. It was while Camille’s entire family was huddled around her hospital bed that I suggested we change the topic and try, as a family, to select a title for this story. Considering the main events I’d detailed in the manuscript, we reflected on our countless homes—fragile, temporary sand castles that we were forced to create in the most resourceful ways, only for them to be knocked down by the rising tides and uncontrollable elements around us. Thus, we decided together that my book should be titled
Etched in Sand
.

I am also writing this on December 16, a day which I acknowledge is the anniversary of Cookie’s death—but I much prefer to remember it as Aunt Julia’s birthday. This is the first year since 1999 that I have not called nor visited Julia for her birthday: She passed in April 2012, one day before the passing of my uncle Sonny.

That simple, beautiful message that Rosie wrote almost three years ago has closed that gaping hole in my heart that was ripped open on that dark November day in 1980 when I revealed to the social worker that indeed we were being abused. Further healing came when Cherie moved from Pennsylvania back to Suffolk County this past spring. Her fiftieth birthday celebration this past September brought all five of us together again in one place . . . for the second time in thirty-two years.

Despite the challenging seas we had to navigate and the limited beacons of light that were available to guide us on our journey, we all landed safely. We pushed ourselves up through the riptides. Through our journey, my siblings blessed me with plenty of nieces and nephews, who through
Etched in Sand
will be learning our story for the very first time. We created a whole generation of children that will never suffer intense poverty, homelessness, or abuse. Together, we stopped the cycle.

Through his strength of character, stoicism, and love of family (and my pets), Todd has guided me and for the first time in my life provided me the consistency and stability that I actually welcome.

Today, I have my own happy home.

However, every year in the United States, forty thousand children in foster care will age out of the system and have nowhere to go and no one to help them. It is still a generally accepted policy to deem older foster children unadoptable. So rather than working toward finding older foster children forever homes, they are provided brief instruction on how to live independently and are sent out to find their own way at the age of eighteen or twenty-one. When a young adult ages out with limited resources and no safety net, they risk becoming homeless and the cycle starts again. With the opportunity to benefit from the unconditional love of a forever home, a foster child can eventually pay it forward. In my commitment to this belief, I rejoined the board of You Gotta Believe to ensure that more foster children will also one day have their own happy home. If there’s one thing I want every foster child to know, it’s that.

We all have to believe.

Acknowledgments

M
Y JOURNEY WAS
substantially smoother and sometimes purely adventurous because of my loving sister Camille, who although our paths are quite different, never stopped walking beside me as I carved out mine. Her trust in me telling our story through my perspective was vital to this book being written. My oldest sister Cherie was apprehensive at first, but after reading an early draft quickly came around to supporting the book and went further by encouraging me to share the tough aspects of her story. She is now delightfully relieved that we can finally embrace our history rather than fear its disclosure, and for her confidence I am truly thankful. Much appreciation goes to my brother Norman for supporting the book, despite his quest for peaceful solitude. Boundless love and adoration to Rosie, who has her own story to tell, which I’ll encourage her to do as she did with mine, but, of course, only when she is ready.

I am forever grateful to my companion, Todd Ciaravino, who, regardless of how unconventional my endeavors, is always along for the ride. He wholeheartedly encouraged me to write my story when it was just a seedling, and he helped me bring it to full bloom, as did his very endearing family. Also, I owe much to my confidante and closest friend, Melanie McEvoy, whose glitter makes all those around her sparkle. She shares my life with me on the North Fork—it would not be home without her nearby. You both ground me.

A significant chapter of my story would have been missing had it not been for my aunt Julia—her courage and steadfast commitment to the truth set me free. She never stopped looking out for me and I know that she still is.

There are those who prevail in their lives using instinct—understanding the pitfalls yet willing to stray from the familiar. To bring my story forward three women did just that—Lisa Sharkey, Amy Bendell, and Krissy Gasbarre. This book would not have come to fruition without Lisa Sharkey of HarperCollins. Lisa had the courage to take my story on and follow her instinct—she never wavered from her faith in me or my story. Amy Bendell, my editor, was my other early enthusiast. Her intuition and sensibilities shepherded this story throughout. She knew what we should tell more of, when less was more, and never failed to remind me of its beauty. Then there is my talented cowriter, Krissy Gasbarre. Krissy guided my story by gently unlocking memories and gave me confidence in deciding which ones should be memorialized. She diligently scrutinized my writings with precision, magically improving them with flawless ease while ensuring that my voice prevailed throughout. I also have considerable gratitude to all those at HarperCollins Publishers for willingly taking on a first-time author.

Many, many thanks to Ed Moltzen, whose thoughtful contributions are reflected throughout the book and to those who reviewed and improved the full manuscript: Dina Nelson, Bobbie and Jerome Ciaravino, Terry and Bill Gasbarre, Jennifer Culp-O’Brien, Bobbi Passalacqua, Lauren Grant, and Nancy and Tom Gleason.

There are others who collectively impacted my life that deserve acknowledgment: my foster parents who diligently worked toward providing me structure and consistency, specifically the Petermans, and all of my dear friends along the way who did not judge me based upon my circumstances and embraced me for me, and some of whose families went further by ensuring that I was fed and properly clothed: Kim and Celinda Garcia, Sheryl Williams, Tracey McMaster, Tracy Ressa, Erin DeMeo, Jeanine Illario, Cynthia Tait, Tammy Fisher, Kim Forsa, Veronica Sullivan, Monica Murray, and Beth Seltzer, and Reyne Macadaeg.

Much appreciation to Jo LoCicero, who fifteen years ago told me to start writing, and Patty Cooper and Katherine Barna for their early encouragement and guidance.

My story could have gone dark had it not been for the educators that illuminated my light even though they only had a moment in time to keep it burning before I moved on. Those educators who stood out and truly touched me include Kevin Ferry and Bob Maguire, Centereach High School; Lewis Brownstein, Nancy Kassop, and Gerald Benjamin, SUNY New Paltz; John Farmer, Seton Hall Law School; Ms. Van Dover, Saint James Elementary; and Ms. Muse, Branch Brook Elementary. The same sentiment is extended for the public library systems.

This page would not be complete if I did not express sincere gratitude to the charities and county and state government that provided us desperately needed services and the dedicated public servants whose attention kept us moving forward. We are now thriving and as a result have created a generation of independent, compassionate children, who are already giving back through church and charity.