~ Peconic Resident/Cutchogue Plumber Eli Stoneman... That's His Pen Name... He is "write-on" ~

BY DANNY McCARTHY

The Suffolk Times Reporter Bob Liepa focused on Eli Stoneman in his story dated 06.20.2022 {stet} titled "This Cuthogue Plumber is exploring passion: writing" ~ Folks... Here is my take...

JACK GISMONDI is the "owner of Cutchogue Plumbing & Heating," He is a Brooklyn native "who moved to Riverhead in 1977, "{Jack} had an undistinguished career at Riverhead High School." "But" "he read Greek mythology at {seven} years of age and {later} the complete works of Herman Melville’s 'Moby-Dick' three times and is a big fan of historian David McCullough’s work. John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger and Sinclair Lewis are also among his favorite authors." "One year after high school, {Jack} aced his high school equivalency exam. In the summer of 1979, he attended summer evening classes at Suffolk County Community College in Selden. It was there, while taking an English composition course, that he met an instructor unlike any he had before, Vince Clemente {who} "made an impact." 'He was just one of those people in your life who tell you you can be something if you believe in yourself and to this day, he’s a guy I think of who made a difference in my life, {who encouraged Jack ~ } telling him he had the talent to be a writer."

Then around 1982 ~ then "Times Review Media Group co-publisher Troy Gustavson offered him a tryout as a reporter."

"Within {five-&-a-half} years, {Jack} had earned a master plumber license. His writing dream dissipated while he worked six, seven days a week, saving money to buy a house in 1990 in Peconic, where he still resides." “The next thing you know, I’m Jack the plumber and the writing gig was like my friends who wanted to be rock stars and ended up selling shoes or working in Pergament,” he said. “Your life gets in the way and your dreams fade.”

"{Jack} spent several years acting as a caregiver for his late wife, Christine, who had health issues. They had been married for 32 years... Ms. Gismondi had written a published volume of her own, ' Poetry Emotion.' She signed it using her maiden name, Chrissy Elisabeth Rockson."

One day in 2013, while on a golf trip in Atlantic City with some buddies, {Jack} met an attractive woman wearing a hat who had a profound affect on him. He said they spoke for three hours. The experience triggered something in him. When he returned home, he felt compelled to write what became a novel, 'The Girl in the Hat,' about a man who meets a woman and 'becomes filled with the spirit of what it was to be 21 years old and feel alive.'” "{Jack} said: 'It was a cathartic experience for me. I had to get it out of my system. I was bursting with it. I was bursting with the story. It was coming out of me. Thirty years of pent-up feelings and it came out of me and suddenly here I am writing a book {of 114 pages}. I didn’t see it coming, but it happened. I was almost manic in my need to put this on paper. It just couldn’t be repressed.' {Jack} sent a copy of the book to the real 'girl in the hat.' She later told him her friend had read it and couldn’t put it down. Why didn’t she read it? 'She had a brain aneurysm when she gave birth at the age of about 27 and she couldn’t read,' he said. 'Is that not the ultimate irony? You write a book about a girl and then find out she can’t read it.'The woman wore a hat because she had a scar on her head.'"

Jack's "second book, the 184-page 'Slipping Into The Sea,' took him a couple of years to write and was published in 2021. The North Fork was the setting for that work of fiction about a man in a conflict with police. 'The second book was proving to myself that I could write another book,' {Jack} said. 'You know the old saying, everyone’s got one book in them? I had to prove to myself that I could do a second one and I did and I put a lot of work into it, a little more polish.'

Essays as well as short stories by Jack "have been displayed in art galleries. For some short stories he used the pen name J.D. Plumber." "Why the pen names? He said he wanted to keep his writing separate from his day job and not have it potentially affect his reputation as a plumber. Plumbing has been good to {Jack}, who has been in the business for 37 years. 'I give my all to my plumbing and I take it very seriously,' 'It’s an important thing. I go to bed every night and say a prayer, ‘God bless my work.’"

'My calling is Jack the plumber. It’s the one thing that I have that I can hold onto that means something to me. Being Eli, I did not want to distract from being Jack the plumber and make a clown out of me.'

Jack "said he was about 50 pages into a third novel about artificial intelligence." 'It’s a vast departure and a lot more ambitious than anything I’ve written,' he said.'"

Jack said: 'I equate myself to the guy who plays a guitar on a Friday night in a club, at a bar where everybody’s drinking and eating and not really paying attention, but he’s doing it, and I give him credit for that. Fifty-five, 60 years old and he always wanted to be a musician and he is. He’s not playing the Garden, but he’s living his dream. He’s doing what he loves.'

I met Eli Stoneman Tuesday afternoon, March 21, 2023, -{&}- it was so-terrific that I had to do my take on him. I will enjoy reading his "Slipping Into The Sea" paperback book knowing it is availABle from amazon ~ All-the-best to a winner-of-a-writer -{ !!! }-