Thursday, October 1, 2026
Susan Corbelli remembers volunteering at the Woodmere Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Woodmere as a middle schooler in 1965, where she sang songs with the seniors and helped them pass the time. That put her on course, she said, to be a volunteer for the rest of her life.
Now 72, Corbelli is retiring from her job as an administrative assistant at the Five Towns Learning Center, in Inwood.
Corbelli was hired in 1995 in part because of her work experience. She had spent a decade painting scenery for Broadway shows before working for six years at the now-defunct Septum Printing in Oceanside printing pennysavers.
“I had experience with the software [the learning center] was using,” Corbelli said.
Pepper Robinson, the learning center’s executive director since 2004, called Corbelli her right-hand woman. Robinson said that Corbelli was a tremendous help with daily operations.
Beyond her responsibilities with insurance, and staff training and orientation, Corbelli roamed the learning center, from the kitchen to the classrooms. She helped with special events like the National Council of Jewish Women’s back-to-school store and the center’s two-day trip to Rock Hall Museum in Lawrence, where children make scarecrows.
“Susan would pick up everyone who didn’t have a car and take them to our holiday parties,” Robinson said. “She’d run errands for people who couldn’t. That’s the kind of woman she was.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, when the learning center stayed open for families in need, Corbelli helped Robinson secure grants to keep it operating. For children who aged out of the learning center and were in public school, the center opened its all-purpose room and offered staff and resources to help them do schoolwork online before going outside to play.
Whenever problems arose, Robinson knew she had someone she could count on. “Anytime there was a disaster, we did it together,” she said.
Corbelli’s warmth and dedication attracted many families, including Paola Cortez and her now 6-year-old son, Salim, who attended the learning center through kindergarten.
“Susan would always ask Salim about his day,” Cortez said. “She was always so caring.”
Growing up on Wood Lane in Woodsburgh, Corbelli had an active family life. For many years her family belonged to several beach clubs in Atlantic Beach. When she wasn’t at the beach, she played softball through junior high school, and graduated from Hewlett High School in 1971.
As she got older, Corbelli, her husband, Robert Corbelli, who owned an auto shop in Oceanside, and their child maintained a close-knit family life. Dozens of relatives gathered for barbecues on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
“My husband and I entertained our family every weekend,” Corbelli said. “We had a big house on the water in Island Park. We loved to be with our family.”
Now a grandmother, Corbelli remembers when seniors from the Five Towns Senior Center, in Woodmere, came to the learning center once a week. For more than 20 years, the seniors would pair up with students on small projects or reading, and Corbelli enjoyed watching the interactions.
“It was a beautiful program,” she said. “A lot of the kids didn’t have grandparents, and a lot of these grandparents didn’t have access to their grandchildren.”
Robinson thanked Corbelli for her dedication to the center, and noted that Corbelli always looked for ways to help where she could, and knew every child’s name, as well as the parents and grandparents she met.
“Susan was an integral part of the family,” Robinson said. “Not just for the staff, but for the families.”
As she looks toward retirement, Corbelli said she has joined the New Horizon Counseling Center’s Senior Center, in Hewlett, and has taken an interest in mahjong and canasta, as well as tai chi.
Her volunteer experience when she was a student at Woodmere Elementary — now the Woodmere Education Center — she said, was a huge factor in shaping what became her future. She had the chance to reconnect with Elinor Tannenbaum, the sixth-grade teacher she had volunteered for, at a National Council of Jewish Women’s volunteer breakfast. Volunteering, Corbelli said, taught her to be involved in the community, and how vital that role is.
“That was another thing that married me to the center,” Corbelli said, adding of Tannenbaum, “She made a lasting impression on my life.
Susan Corbelli's name was spelt incorrectly in the 5/7 edition of the Nassau Herald. The Herald regrets the error.
