The first meeting between Michael Granucci and Alison Trembly in 1999 arose out of tragedy. Their next meeting, 23 years later, in late August of this year, was pure coincidence. Mr. Granucci, who volunteers as an Ambassador and in the food pantry at the Barnabas Center in Fernandina Beach, is a retired construction project manager and manufacturing executive. Ms. Trembly (nee Lentini) is a graduate-level nurse practitioner who recently signed on at Barnabas’ medical clinic, which like the food pantry, is located at the organization’s main office on Jasmine St. in Fernandina.
Their first meeting took place in Red Bank, N.J., as Ms. Lentini, a single mother, was awarded the first-ever academic scholarship named after Mr. Granucci’s late wife, Marcia. He established the annual $2,000 award in her memory, which continues to this day, and he served on the original selection committee. “She was one of five interviewed, and she stood out,” Mr. Granucci recalled in a recent interview.
The aforementioned tragedy was the murder of Marcia Granucci, a Yale-educated psychiatric nurse killed by the son of an elderly client during a home visit in West Long Branch, N.J., in 1995. The shooter also died of a self-inflicted gunshot. Mrs. Granucci was 45 and left behind Michael and their two teenage children.
“Marcia and I early in our marriage liked to give back and volunteer where we could,” recalls Mr. Granucci. They put their organizational skills toward activities from fundraising in the schools to constructing a parish church in their native Connecticut.
By 1999, they were living on the Jersey Shore, as was Ms. Trembly. She, by then, was board-certified in community health nursing with liberal arts degrees from Princeton and a nursing bachelor’s degree with high honors from the College of New Jersey. She was pursuing a master’s in nursing at the time and applied for the scholarship through the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey.
She was, in Mr. Granucci’s words, the perfect candidate. On her part, Ms. Trembly distinctly remembers meeting him. “I will always remember meeting you,” she commented during a recent joint interview at Barnabas Center. “I was a single parent with three children working full-time to finish a master’s degree, and I could not have done it without your support.”
After the scholarship award ceremony was covered with a story and photo in a local newspaper, they parted ways over the next two decades.
Then, on August 29 of this year, they met again. “I walked into the Barnabas Center two weeks ago, and as I came through the door, I was advised that Jamie Reynolds, the Barnabas Center President and CEO, wanted to see me,” recalls Mr. Granucci. “I felt like I’d been summoned to the principal’s office and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ “She said ’sit down, and I thought, Oh, boy,” and she added, ‘I have to go get somebody else.’ “That’s when Alison walks into the office, sits down, and says, ‘Do you know me?’ I don’t think so, I replied, and she said, ‘My name is Alison, and you gave me a scholarship 23 years ago. I remembered that her last name began with ‘L.” Then it clicked. Moments before, she, as a new hire and Ms. Reynolds, had been discussing the power of nursing to transform society.
“Jamie said, ‘You have to hear about the wife of Michael Granucci.’ She didn’t know that we had a connection, and I didn’t know Michael was here. I stopped in my tracks and said could that be the Michael Granucci from New Jersey? I was overwhelmed.”
Reunited now, both share the same focus that syncs perfectly with the overall Barnabas Center mission in Nassau County. How do we reach the people in need? Ms. Trembly believes the mission is multi-dimensional — possibly a disparaging single mother, a hungry family, often homeless, or someone in need of medical care — the “invisible” people. “Michael’s whole life is summed up by the phrase “Who is my brother and who is my sister?” she believes.
As for this accomplished and consummate nurse with a doctorate degree, Alison Trembly says she is often inspired by an African proverb that reads: “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” Barnabas President and CEO Ms. Reynolds, with a BSN from Georgetown University, who then taught physical assessment post-grad, vividly recalls the August meeting.
“I’d mentioned that we had a volunteer whose late wife was a nurse practitioner 40 years ago and had transformed psychiatric nursing in New Jersey, but it’s a tragic story. Alison then finished the story and shared how she and Mike are connected. It was an incredible moment of how Marcia’s life is still impacting community health, and her spirit of helping those in need is thriving on Amelia Island many years later.” The CEO muses: “Some call it coincidence—I call it the essence of Barnabas.”
