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Mostly Cloudy A Valentine’s Day story that couldn’t be sweeter
Paul and Roseanne Sapienza — owners of Sapienza Bake Shop — grew from neighbors to best friends, to spouses
Paul Sapienza took over Sapienza Bake Shop, on Hempstead Turnpike in Elmont, from his parents, Andrew and Angelina Sapienza, in May 1973. He’d just finished an undergraduate program in accounting, and decided he wanted to give retail management a try. It was lucky for him, because had he not been behind the store’s counter on one fateful day in 1975, he might have missed re-connecting with the love of his life, Roseanne, his wife of 37 years.
Long before Roseanne and Paul dated, he explained, they were just very good friends.
In the early 1950s, when Paul was just a toddler, a new family moved in next-door to his — Roseanne’s. The two clicked from the start, constantly playing games together, and even held hands on their way to school, when they both began attending Kindergarten at the Butler Boulevard School, now the Clara H. Carlson Elementary School. Once, a teacher scolded Roseanne for “too-frequently” holding Paul’s hand at such a young age.
When Paul entered first grade, his parents decided they wanted him to get a Catholic education and he was enrolled at the St. Boniface School in Elmont. Roseanne stayed at Butler Boulevard. The two remained close friends, and were always together, despite the difference in schools, until the early 1960s, when Paul and his family moved to Baldwin, in an attempt to enroll Paul in the St. Christopher School.
The school was so full that Paul had to attend the St. Vincent de Paul School in Elmont instead, but he and his family remained Baldwin residents. In the 1960s, Paul attended Chaminade High School in Mineola. Roseanne attended Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park, following her junior high years at the Alva T. Stanford School in Elmont.
While Paul and Roseanne still thought about each other frequently, they had drifted apart, geographically.
