`Gramma’ Shares Faith in Stories

c. 2006 Religion News Service CLEVELAND _ Laura Lipari is a veteran storyteller. For decades she has kept Catholic school children enthralled, sometimes telling about her adventures translating for the Allied troops and escaping the Nazis during World War II, more often relating Bible stories. Some of those children are college graduates now, and occasionally […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Laura Lipari is a veteran storyteller. For decades she has kept Catholic school children enthralled, sometimes telling about her adventures translating for the Allied troops and escaping the Nazis during World War II, more often relating Bible stories.

Some of those children are college graduates now, and occasionally they see the tiny, irresistible Lipari at Mass, her posture perfect, sitting in her usual pew at St. Dominic Church in suburban Shaker Heights.


“When will we see your book?” they ask.

“God may say wait, but he never says worry,” Lipari tells them. But privately, “I’m thinking to myself, `Look, Lord, I’m 90. I don’t have a lot of time.”’

The wait is over. At the age of 92, Lipari is a first-time author, debuting with a 63-page softcover book, “Gramma Shares Her Faith.” The book, the first in a series, tells the story of Adam and Eve from the vantage of a grandmother answering the questions of five rambunctious grandchildren. They interrupt and quarrel as the grandmother presides patiently over the tumult.

She suggests that the snake might have been beautiful and may have walked as well as talked, Dr. Dolittle-style. She tells the children that Adam and Eve were equally to blame for giving in to temptation.

The modest book recently “went national,” said John Greene of Oak Manor Publishing in Manchester, N.H. Greene, with a background in publicity, knew that his rookie was a natural feature story. He clued in the Associated Press, and it transmitted a piece headlined “Granny Author.” CNN posted the news on its Web site, picture and all.

“She looks and acts much younger than I thought she would,” Greene said.

“Gramma Shares Her Faith” is dedicated to “my sister Virginia Curro, my best friend and mentor,” and the current of love between the two is instantly detectable. When the phone rings in their stately brick residence, Lipari tends to hear it first and signals Curro, who _ at age 88 _ bounds up to answer it.

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In the family saga, Laura was rebellious; Virginia dutiful.

“My mother would say, `Virginia, take care of your sister. Remind her to be a lady,”’ Lipari remembered.

That maternal command picked up urgency after a 22-year-old Laura danced in her nightie on her uncle’s balcony while the ardent young men of St. Agata, Sicily, gazed up.


“The music, the air, the ambience _ these boys were in love with love and we were in love with love,” Lipari said, smiling and twisting her left wrist upward with a shrug.

One of those gaping below was Felice Lipari, who bribed a ticket agent to show him the young American’s passport, charmed her mother into an introduction on the train and wooed Laura across Europe.

They married the following year, 1938, at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, and the new Mrs. Lipari accompanied her husband back to Sicily. She had already earned a degree in languages at Flora Stone Mather College in Cleveland and had buffed her Spanish at the University of Mexico and her Italian at the University of Perugia in Italy. These skills became life-saving during World War II when U.S. Army intelligence hired Lipari as an interpreter.

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Fifth-grade teacher Karen Arscott invited Lipari to speak to her St. Dominic class. “She told these wonderful stories, and the children were just glued to her,” Arscott said. “They kept asking, `Is Mrs. Lipari coming back?’ At least once a year she comes in. We’ve come to expect her.”

Lipari _ mother of five, grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of six _ likes to bring a mechanical parrot to grade schools on the East Side. Cleveland Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Martin J. Amos encouraged her to write her stories.

“Laura has lived the Bible,” Amos said. “She has a wise sense of child psychology and speaks to children in a way they can understand. She has such a talent. I told her to write her stories down because someday they would be lost to the world.”


Lipari obeyed. One day Curro found the manuscript in a closet.

“What is this doing here?” she asked.

“Collecting dust,” Lipari replied.

Curro hauled out her sister’s work and they began the long labor of finding a publisher. When Lipari finally contacted Greene, he said he knew instantly that the work was good.

“I have no illusion about having any literary talent. I just write from the heart,” Lipari said.

Her next two titles, “Cain and Able” and “After the Flood” are expected in October. Lipari plans 20 books in all.

(Karen R. Long is the book editor for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

KRE/PH END LONG

Editors: To obtain photos of Lipari and her book cover, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

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