Michele Roy and her husband left their full-time jobs to open Day 2 Night Fashion Apparel, 319 Cattell Street, in August. She says her faith has helped lead her to wonderful discoveries about herself and has helped her in business and personal decisions. Here she talks about her unceasing desire to succeed and loving what she does. "I was a teenage mother. At eighteen, I was selected as a debutante; I was seeded number two in track, accepted to college, and then I got a positive pregnancy result and I decided to keep the baby. I was told I ruined my life, I made the wrong decision. In my lifespan, I've done well. I had a P.R. company, I worked with Patti LaBelle, Eric Benet, Halle Berry. I've done wonderful things in my life, and now, in addition, I have my own business. I worked at Chubb Insurance Company, and I had sixteen staff members. I mean, I've done well in my life and it's all about hard work. You can't let someone else decide who you are."
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"Back home I worked for an organization called MEVO, it's the Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization and we did a lot of setting up of organic farms for different charities, homeless shelters and that's where it started for me, about a year-and-a-half ago. I loved it, and I did it three days a week. I still had time for myself but I was still doing something good and helping people out." "People have been keeping bees since the Roman times and it never changed. Every country's the same. And it's all good honey no matter where you go. And people oughta leave 'em go and not use all the poisons they're using. Everybody's using poisons. Everybody. Right here there should be dandelions, but there ain't a dandelion here in the spring." "Which is better: bee society or human society?" "Our society is the best, but everything has its place in the world. Everything. Even yella jackets. Everybody hates 'em, but they eat insects in the beginning of the spring. They eat fleas, mosquitos, flies. Now, they eat grasshoppers. I seen 'em." Him: "If you're suffering from depression, don't hold out: go get meds. I have a problem with depression since back in high school in the early '70s, but I didn't start any meds until 2003." Me: "How do you see the world differently since taking the medication?" Him (Laughs): "Other drivers on the road don't bother me so much anymore!" "What do you see in your future?" "I want to play basketball overseas because I like to travel a lot, and playing with new people gets to be really exciting. I've been to a couple of N.B.A. games--my cousin plays." "Where overseas do you want to go?" "I'd probably say Spain because it's very different and there's a lot of attractions over there. It'd be very cool to play." "I'm a nurse anesthetist. Probably the most intense things I got to do in that job was when I did my children's rotations at St. Chris's in Philly, and we did the anesthesia for liver transplants, which would be like eighteen hour procedures. Amazing. And, you know, the kid would be on his deathbed from hepatitis, have the transplant, and the next day he's sitting up in bed watching cartoons. Just amazing." Him: "The secret to a good relationship is to make each other laugh. Kinda making fun of each others' quirks." Me: "So, at the risk of being nosy, what do you make fun of?" Him: "Should we really say?" Her: "He just said to me I have a pumpkin head." Him: "She puts her head on my shoulder and, I'm like, 'Your head weighs so much, It's so heavy, it feels like a pumpkin.'" Both of them laugh really hard, and when I tell them this will be seen by a lot of people, as I walk away, they laugh even harder... "What are you deeply passionate about? What makes you tick?" "Believe it or not, science. I'm in love with it. I have a chemistry degree, and actually I'm kinda sad that it's chemistry because I really enjoy physics and biology; those are my two favorite subjects. You can find me with my Kindle, and that's all I read about." "What is it about science that attracts you?" "It's the black-and-white of it. I mean everything: the universe, life, planets, rocks, chemistry, the ground we're standing on: it's all explained by science and I just find it fascinating. I mean, I'm 52 years old, and it's as it I'm learning anew every day. I also play chess, and the way i look at it, you could play chess for a lifetime--you'll learn the moves, but you'll never get really that great. Well, with science, you'll learn as much as you can but there's more being discovered, more to learn daily and that's what I just love about it." "I had to stay strong when my mother passed away very suddenly. She had a massive heart attack. That was over 20 years ago and my sister's just facing the same thing. I almost lost my sister twice. She was in the hospital; we never realized it, but the doctors felt she wasn't making it through the night, but she still pulled through." "So how do you stay strong?" "Mostly family and support. They're there for us--if we're down, someone's there to help us get up." "The Peanut Butter Project is an awareness organization on hunger and we have morphed into a hunger coalition. So in the community we're asking all groups like Peanut Butter Project, congregations, agencies that have food banks, to come together and work together solving hunger, not just giving out emergency food but coming up with solutions. So we're showing kids how you can eat fairly, locally, sustainably, using solar ovens. How to eat more healthy, nutritious food which is an important part of the hunger piece, because there's a lot of issues with nutrition in our schools and childhood obesity. So the hunger coalition addresses all of this because all of the agencies work together, rather than each one on their own dealing with their piece of the poverty issue." -"So how did you personally get involved? What drew you to this?" "I've always been involved with ProJeCt's Interfaith Food Pantry. I used to work at ProJeCt in the 1990s as their literacy director. So through my church, I maintained a relationship being the food donation person, Safe Harbor meals, all that stuff, and in 2012 I found out there was not peanut butter at the food pantry. They were saying, 'We really could use peanut butter' and I thought 'This is crazy: what do you mean peanut butter? This is protein! You can use it at any meal, it does not need to be refrigerated, a child can serve themselves protein from a peanut butter jar without the help of an adult. It's a really critical priority staple.' So I just went on the Internet to all my friends and said, 'Please help me raise 500 jars of peanut butter for the project.' Little did I know that they were already serving over 1400 people a month and the 500 jars wasn't going to go very far. So, at that point, I started the Peanut Butter Project to raise awareness about hunger and to help people understand that there are those in need in our own communities. One in six Americans are suffering from hunger. So, it's basically me working out of my home connecting with other people and helping them get on board with understanding the hunger issue." I heard him talking to a couple about the birth of a new cow on his farm, so I asked him to tell me the story: "Well, it was great, actually, because she gave birth in the pasture, one of our lower pastures. Nobody was there, but a family came to visit the farm with their little baby, maybe a year-and-a-half or two years old, and they happened to be walking down there when they saw the baby just born, laying on the ground. So they ran up and got somebody and it was great. So we all ran down and took a look--it was very exciting. And we have a thing on the farm where the first person that sees the baby being born gets to name it. Since the family were the first people to see the baby, they got to name it, and they call their daughter, their daughter's nickname is K.C. That's her nickname. So the baby cow's name is K.C." Jim Corcoran Easton Professional Firefighters IAFF Local 713 Operation WARM "We're affiliated with Operation Warm, a non-profit organization that believes that all kids in need deserve a brand new, American-made coat in order to have warmth, a little dignity, and show that they're worth something that's brand new. We buy brand new American-made coats. We're providing jobs for Americans, they're union-made, we're a union local here with the firefighters and we support union workers. We got involved two years back, just thought it was a great thing to do and it snowballed. We're getting a lot of support from the Easton residents, Easton businesses and we hope to continue the program in the coming years." I asked them for important advice. Man on left: "Try to do something kind every day to somebody. Try to be nice to one another. For example, I'll be traveling and I'll see something that I think maybe one of the shopkeepers here would like, and I'll pick it up for them. I mean I don't even know them by name, but it's something that makes me think of them. Or I'll tell them I was thinking of them when I saw something. A handwritten note is very nice too, just to tell people you appreciate them and that you're very happy that they're there. Personal touch--real important." Man on right: "I would say emphasis on what you have in common rather than looking at what makes you different. I think you have to be open minded. That's important." Kate Petrignani (pictured) and Diane Bower (not pictured) own and run the fine art gallery "Just Around The Corner" on Bank Street, and have partnered up with the Easton Police Department to create the "Cops and Kids Christmas Capers" program. Diane told me about it: "Seven years ago I noticed the neighborhood children were afraid of the police officers, probably because many of them carted their parents off to jail. So, I went to the police chief and suggested a program where the officers would appear fully uniformed, off duty but fully uniformed, on Peace candle Lighting Night, which is the day after Thanksgiving, and we would do a craft project with the kids and they would be interacting with the officers fully uniformed. We did that the first year and it was a pretty big success; we had about a hundred kids and we were really happy. The next year we had about 150 kids and the next year we had about 650 kids. I am deeply indebted to the officers who donate their time because they come off a twelve hour shift to come here at four o'clock in the afternoon to set up and get ready to go and then make pinecone bird feeders with the kids. There's so many kids now that we couldn't afford to buy the materials--it was getting really outrageous. We used to make Christmas ornaments. Now we get big pinecones and birdseed and the kids love it and the officers love it and it's a great relationship-building program. We need the kids to not be afraid of the police department." Woman on left: "She's from Italy. This is her first trip to Easton." Me: "How is Italy different from here?" Woman on right: "Hmmmm… Maybe the simplicity, okay? But in my country, I'm from Sicily, there is the same thing, same people. But there is many cultures in U.S.A., and I've been all over the world. This place is special. I like, I like very much." Me: "How did you end up in Easton?" Woman on left: "She came to visit her friends, who are my friends and neighbors, and the husband is from Sicily. But I stole her! We went to New York yesterday; I brought her to Little Italy. She said it's more Italian than Italy (laughs). And then this morning I brought her here so she could see a different side." "Have an open mind to what everybody is thinking and wants to do. Sometimes a group of friends, like going here to the Easton Farmers' Market or to Musikfest in Bethlehem, if you all want to get together, you gotta have a game plan, you gotta have ideas of what you want to do, but be available to be spontaneous. And also know everybody's phone numbers so if you get mixed-up you can find each other really easily." Sal Panto, Jr. Easton Mayor "What are you most proud of as mayor?" "Well, I think the thing that any mayor is most proud of is an engaged community. If you have people who are engaged in your community, you have a successful community. You can have all the buildings in the world, you can have beautiful buildings and architecture, all the developers coming, but if you don't have people, all you have is an empty Hollywood set. So I think I'm most proud of the fact that on a day like today at the Farmers' Market, there'll be between four and five thousand people coming into Downtown." |
These are the stories of the people of Easton, PA Archives
August 2018
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