By:JOSEPH KELLARD
Bovino, along with Sue Farrell, branch manager of Fleet Bank; Marie Frangella, program director of the Catholic Charities Senior Community Center; and the Rev. Margerite Jhonson of the United Methodist Church, were honored, in part, for the heights they've achieved in areas "formerly closed to women," said Helen Lorenz, president of the Nassau Chapter of the AAUW, who emceed the forum with library Director Ronnie Swett.
Each woman took turns talking about the relevant factors that led to her success. While Bovino spoke about how she wanted to develop the nurturing qualities exemplified by her mother, a pathologist, she stressed how she admired the strong, assertive qualities of her father, a detective with the New York City Police Department and a part-time carpenter. In school, she said, she looked up to the male classmates who were outspoken and exuded confidence.
"I thought, I really want to be like the boys in that respect," Bovino told the largely female audience.
While growing up, Bovino observed that many more men had college degrees than women, and she desired that status, too. She was among the first women to attend Williams College, where she studied both Eastern and Western religions, which her father thought ridiculously futile. Asserting her individuality, Bovino pressed on in her studies. Her mother's love of reading rubbed off on her, and Bovino sought to find role models in literature and to learn about people and places in far-off lands. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman emerged as some of her favorite writers and poets. And it was stories like those of Hellen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" that sparked her interest in special education.
After marrying and having two children, Bovino continued her education, spending 17 years at Columbia University, earning masters degrees in special education, instructional technology and educational administration. She taught in Uniondale, Lynbrook, Hong Kong and Locust Valley before coming to Island Park Schools in 2001.
"When I came to Island Park, I knew this was the place for me, because I saw there was really a mission here and a community here," she said. "I hope people perceive me here as being knowledgeable and skillful like my mother, and reflective and creative like my mother."
Like Bovino, Sue Farrell's father was also a carpenter. Farrell grew up in Bellmore and graduated from Kennedy High School, after which she married and had a daughter. It wasn't until Farrell became a single mother that she began her 15-year career in banking, starting as a teller with NatWest in West Hempstead.
Throughout her career, Farrell was inspired and encouraged by supportive co-workers to take courses and learn more about her field. Taking this advice, she graduated to senior teller within six months, and from there continued to work her way up the banking ladder, from head teller to branch manager.
"The corporation I worked for treated women equally with men," Farrell said. "Which is why I was able to get where I am." She found that through the mentoring she received from assistant managers and others, she became more determined to develop and grow by her own initiative.
In recent years, Farrell became an assistant manager with a Fleet bank in Freeport, and a branch manager at the university branch in Hempstead. This May will mark her second year as branch manager at the Fleet in Island Park. "While I don't live in this community, I love working here," Farrell said.
Following Farrell, Frangella initially spoke about how, at age 6, she moved with her parent from Genoa, Italy, to Park Slope, knowing no English. She traces her classic American dream story to the time she was awed when first walking into the library at Grand Army Plaza, which sparked her interest in books, education and, ultimately, becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree.
But while attending the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, she met her future husband, and was soon a mother of two who vowed to return to college. Before keeping this promise, she raised her children, worked in various service professions, and worked in personnel for A.C. Nielsen, the TV ratings company.
In 1968, Frangella and her family moved to Island Park, and nearly 10 years later she enrolled in Nassau Community College and Adelphi University, where she earned her degree in social work. She juggled her school work with a Meals on Wheels type of program she got involved in through Catholic Charities, and became the director of the newly created Island Park Senior Center, a position she has held for 25 years.
Operating out of the American Legion Hall on Nassau Lane, Frangella has developed the center into one where some 400 seniors take part in many diverse activities, from arts and crafts and line dancing to bingo and tai chi. "I've been doing this for many years, and I'm very happy with it," Frangella said. "I love being around people, laughing and having a good time."
Last to talk, Margerite Jhonson said that from the time she was 12 she promised she would do full-time work for the Methodist Church. Fifty years later, her sense of "social justice," she said, has sustained her involvement in the church.
After earning a degree at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, making her the first in her family to both attend and graduate college, Jhonson married a minister, with whom she had a boy and a girl. Jhonson and her family lived in Arkansas and Georgia during the 1960s, when she got involved in the civil rights movement. The injustices she saw in the South prompted her to move north, where she settled in Islip in 1969.
After an amicable divorce during the 1970s, Jhonson's commitment to "social justice" steered her away from religion and toward the feminist movement, and she became president of the South Shore National Organization for Women.
"Women assured me that I could get through this period in my life," Jhonson said about her struggles as a single parent.
She went on to earn a master's and a post-master's certificate in management of human services at Stony Brook, after which her interest in religion was renewed. She became a director of Christian education at a church in Freeport. In July she will retire as pastor of the Methodist Church.
Jhonson said that what finally steered her back to God was a poem she had read in her church's newsletter. In closing the forum, she read from the poem, which, in part, said: "The Spirit of life flowed through my blood/I said Yes, something broke/It came like a flood/Up from within, down from above/A kingdom built on the power of love."
