Accomplishing a lifelong dream

At 68, Susanne Giuliani publishes her first children’s book

Posted

Nearly 10 years ago, Susanne Giuliani wrote her first manuscript, a children’s story about a mouse named Musky living in New York City. Unsure what to do next, she gave it to her daughter, Kristin, a fourth-grade teacher in the Oceanside School District, who read the manuscript to her students. A hit among the kids, the children divided the pages amongst themselves, and drew illustrations as a homework assignment.

This year, Giuliani, 68, accomplished a lifelong dream by self-publishing “Musky.” The illustrations she used are the ones by the students in Oceanside’s School 5.

Giuliani, a resident at the Seasons at East Meadow, a senior community on Front Street, always loved to write. But after graduating from high school in Brooklyn in the early ’60s, she never pursued it — instead, she spent the next few decades working in diverse careers, including finance, real estate, sales, politics and religious education.

Though she never became a writer, she said she was often called upon by friends and family to write poems for special events, like birthdays and anniversaries.

Giuliani’s (then known as Susanne Boccio) first job after high school, as a secretary at McGraw-Hill, was on Wall Street in Manhattan — a stone’s throw from the World Trade Center site, which was being built at the time. Working in Manhattan, and being so near the Twin Towers in their earliest stages, she said, instilled in her a lifelong love for New York City.

After marrying her husband John Giuliani in 1973, the couple moved to Elmont for seven years, and then Wantagh for 31 years, before settling in East Meadow two years ago. Kristin (now Kristin Stea) has lived in East Meadow for 10 years, and the Giulianis’ other daughter, Aimee Oxford, is a reading specialist in the upstate Arlington School District. Susanne and John have five grandchildren, all under the age of 11.

Even after moving to Long Island, Giuliani always maintained her fascination with Manhattan. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she crafted a poem, called “The Twins,” which to this day she calls her crowning achievement.

Page 1 / 2