Longtime Lawrencian says goodbye

Roseann Epp could be a historian of the Lawrence School District, having spent 48 of her 59 years there, first attending school, then teaching, and finally becoming an administrator at Lawrence High School, from which she graduated in 1977.

After working in the district for 35 years, Epp, who grew up in North Lawrence and was originally known as Roseann Murello, has called it a career. “We always do a [seniority] lineup in the district, and she has long held first place, between her employment and her years as a student,” said Superintendent Dr. Ann Pedersen. “She has the longest seniority here, and she’s done wonderful things for the district. She has a phenomenal memory, and is very good at identifying students by name and greeting them. I’m wishing her the very best.”

Epp was motivated to become a special-education teacher by two people, her mother, Josephine Murello, and a girl she befriended named Linda who had Down syndrome and lived around the corner. Her mother made sure Roseann was industrious and pushed her to volunteer at the Town of Hempstead’s Camp ANCHOR (Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation), in Lido Beach, when she was 13. Her mother, who helped with the district’s bookkeeping for 28 years, died last year. Her father, Anthony, a retired aircraft mechanic, lives in Oceanside.

“When I volunteered at Camp ANCHOR, that’s when I decided I was going to a special-education teacher,” said Epp, who recalled also entertaining the idea of being an actress, singer or princess, like many young girls. “There were kids from all over Long Island that I became best friends with, including David Kerner, who taught [special education] here.” Kerner died in 2008.

Before returning to Lawrence schools as a teacher, she taught at the Bernard Fineson Development Center in Queens. “I had the last group of kids who came out of Willowbrook,” Epp said. “That was my class, five kids. They were really wards of the state. That was my first real dive into special education.”

The abuse and neglect that occurred at Willowbrook State School, on Staten Island, was uncovered in a groundbreaking report by television journalist Geraldo Rivera in 1972. The story was credited with changing the ways in which people with special needs were viewed and cared for.

Early schooling
Living on Spring Street in North Lawrence, an unincorporated area outside the Village of Lawrence, Epp attended the Number Four School in kindergarten, the Number One School (now the Regency Apartments on Central Avenue in Lawrence) in first through sixth grade, Lawrence Junior High School (now the middle school) in seventh through ninth grades, and Lawrence High.

“There were 35 to 40 kids who lived on my block, and I’m still friends with three other girls,” she said. “We’ve been friends for 55 years.”

One of those Spring Street girls is Nicki Seganti (née Romanelli), who also graduated from Lawrence High in ’77. “[Roseann] is one of the most caring people I know,” said Seganti, whose family has owned Associated Marble in Inwood since 1964. Both of her sons also graduated from the high school. “She has old-school values, and she’s always there for the kids.”

“I really wanted to come [back] to Lawrence — it’s really a big deal for me — because when I was a student here, my guidance counselor told me I wasn’t college material,” Epp said. “Most of the girls from North Lawrence were told that.”

Beginning at Nassau Community College, she moved on to Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania, which is now Bloomsburg University. She also earned a master’s in education at Adelphi University, and then taught special ed. at the Buckingham School, the Fineson Development Center and PS 140.

Community connections played a role when she made her pitch for a job in the Lawrence district in 1983. “I convinced Tony Capobianco, the principal at the middle school, and Dr. Alvin Baron, the superintendent, I was the right fit for this,” Epp recounted. How? “I used to babysit Tony Cap’s daughter, who had cerebral palsy.”

Working in Lawrence
Norah Hall is another special-education teacher who retired this year, after 30 years of teaching in Lawrence. Hall, who graduated from the high school in 1974, explained why she and Epp have been friends for decades. “When I first came here, I didn’t know anything, and she told me when she started no one would help her,” Hall recalled. “But she said, ‘I’m different.’ She came to you with open arms to help you, and that was the beginning of our friendship.” Hall lives in Inwood, and her son and daughter also graduated from Lawrence High.

Epp was a classroom teacher for 23 years and an assistant principal starting in 2006, but what stands out, she said, was serving as supervisor of Sportsnite for 20 years. The annual event, which has morphed into Battle of the Classes, was a competition for high school girls. A participant in 10th and 11th grade, she vividly remembers a Wendy Bay-led Country Bumpkins dance routine and a tumbling routine for which all the girls were dressed in Wilma Flintstone costumes.

The junior varsity and varsity cheerleading coach for nearly 20 years, Epp was also an assistant dean, a testing coordinator, a teacher in charge of summer school and the alumni reunion liaison. But her most lasting legacy will be her connection with her students and community.

“One of the best things — the secretaries were joking around about how long I’ve been here, and I said I have former students in their 50s, and they were laughing. They said, ‘no, no, no,’” Epp said. “A man came in — he was picking up his son — and I said, ‘Vinnie, how old are you?’ He said he was 53, and they just went, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, and he wasn’t one of my first ones.’”
She said she loves the students, who, in her view, “don’t see color, don’t see religion, they just all get along.” “I wouldn’t have wanted to spend [my career] anywhere else,” said Epp, who lives in Malverne, but plans to retire with her husband, Mike, to Honesdale, Pa. “It means a lot to me,” she said with a catch her in throat, “to see kids come through here who I know their parents or I know their families or I know their neighbors.”