‘I Love Being In Levittown’: 78-Year-Old Battling Brain Cancer Recalls Decades Of Community Service

LEVITTOWN, NY. — Carmen Greico has spent over 50 years in Levittown, taking a job at the Levittown school district as an itinerant Teacher for the Visually Impaired (TVI) in 1972 and holding that role until her 2005 retirement.

In her work at the school, Greico said she couldn’t even estimate the number of children she had taught, recounting her days at work shuttling from building to building to teach blind and low-vision students how to read braille, advocating for those students to receive audio or large print textbooks, and working to make school a more accessible, welcoming place. In her time outside school, she led the folk group at St. Bernard’s Catholic Church for 50 years. She also spearheaded the church’s shawl ministry, coordinating for over 20 years with a group of 15 people to make blankets for children christened at St. Bernard’s.

The decades of work in her community, Greico told Patch, have been mutually beneficial.

“This community, it’s been as much for me as it may have been for them. I love being here, I love being in Levittown. I love all of my years here. All the people that I met, they're incredible,” Greico said.

(Credit: Debbie Nicolay) Carmen Greico, front, with a couple of her friends.

This month, Greico’s friends and family are hoping the community can go to bat for her, setting up a GoFundMe to cover medical and transportation expenses for the 78-year-old as she lives with Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of stage-4 brain cancer with a five-year survival rate of just five percent.

Set up by her friend, Alison Truchan, the GoFundMe has raised over $4,000 so far. Truchan, now 40, described Greico as an “amazing woman,” telling Patch she has known Greico since she was 12 years-old.

“She’s just this absolutely amazing person…she does not want to ask anything of anybody,” Truchan said. “But she gives of herself to everybody and anybody, openly, without ever asking for anything for herself.”

When asked about the support the fundraiser has already achieved, Greico confirmed that she was hesitant about posting it at first.

“When Alison first approached me about the idea I said, ‘No, no, no, no, there are so many other people that need so much,’” Greico told Patch. “But to see that so many people care that much is very special to me. And I will always say thank you, and pray for them, because…it's not just hard for me, but the people who are taking care of me. And I appreciate that.”

One of the people taking care of Greico is Debbie Nicolay, who lives with her. The two met 38 years ago and became fast friends, with Nicolay starting as an in-class aid to Greico in the school district soon after.

Nicolay told Patch that they’re currently paying about $2,000 per-week for a private aid, with no insurance coverage for transportation costs. Ambulette trips cost $200 per-day, with the number of trips varying depending on medical need. When Greico went for 15 rounds of radiation treatment, insurance subsidized those trips, dropping the cost to $140 per-day, Nicolay said.

While the cancer treatments and transportation have been costly, Nicolay and Greico are the kind of friends who work hard for each other. They became fast friends after meeting 38 years ago, but grew even closer in 1988, when Greico was going through radiation treatment for a sarcoma in her leg.

It wasn’t Greico’s first cancer diagnosis, Nicolay said. Her first diagnosis came as a baby, when Greico was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a rare retinal cancer requiring surgery that left Greico blind. During the sarcoma radiation treatments, Greico and Nicolay, a single mother, began leaning on each other for support.

“I had two teenagers, and she just became an invaluable help to me. She would come over to my house every afternoon, make sure that they had dinner, had their homework done, because she was a very independent person. She owned her own house. And although she was blind, you know, like you wouldn't know it sometimes. We used to forget,” Nicolay told Patch. “We were both single, and she was helping me financially…And my kids said, ‘We should live in one house instead of going back and forth.’ Because we would sleep on her floor while she was recovering from surgery, and she would come over my house to take care of the kids.”

A couple of years later, the duo bought a house together, where they've lived since 1991.

“My kids are grown now, most of my grandchildren are grown. I have five grandchildren, we just share. They're my grandchildren, they’re hers,” Nicolay said.

While Nicolay and her children became a blended family with Carmen decades ago, they’re not the only people who felt a lasting impact from having known the 78-year-old.

“A lot of the young people that I met, you know, when I first moved to Levittown…I'm still in touch with some of them,” Greico told Patch. “There were several young people, 14, 15 years old, who helped me train my [guide] dog to the whole neighborhood, to the area, how to get to the supermarket and learn my way around. They were great.”

Among those teens was Kathy Dillon, who drove up from her home in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia and visited with Carmen and Debbie last week. Dillon met Greico through the church folk group and began helping her copy sheet music before Wednesday evening choral practice.

“She needed someone to come over and organize the music, and get all the chords and things written in for the guitars,” Dillon said. “So, a friend and I would go over Wednesday afternoon, practice was Wednesday evenings, so we’d go on our bicycles over to her apartment, and we would go over and get everything ready for the evening’s practice.”

For Dillon, it was Greico’s warmth and inclusivity that stood out from their first meeting. That inclusivity, Dillon added, shaped who she would become not only personally, but professionally.

“She’s just warm, friendly,” Dillon said. “[She was] always very inclusive. Everybody was invited, we had many people with other types of disabilities and it didn’t matter. It was always very inclusive…I’m a special education teacher as well, and I actually have my career because of her. I’m also a teacher of the blind and visually impaired. I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and I knew that I wanted to be a special education teacher, and I discovered that I really had a call for working with people with physical disabilities. I just loved all the things we did; we went on vacations together, I went on a cruise with her, we just had such a great time. Even doing grocery shopping, to me, was exciting.”

Like Nicolay, Dillon said she thinks of Greico as something beyond a friend.

“She is everything to me. I lost my mother when I was 29, and I said to her at one point, ‘I have had you in my life longer than I’ve had my mother,’” Dillon said. “I was in her wedding party, she’s my oldest child’s godmother, we are family…And she never let anybody tell her that she couldn’t do something.”

That commitment to doing what others thought she couldn’t, Greico said, was something she tried to impart on the students she taught.

“I liked teaching them things that they [thought] could be impossible for them to do. Or, sometimes, especially if they're visually impaired, that their families or the people around them [thought were] too hard for them to do,” Greico said. “Because there were so many things that people told me were impossible to do, and I did. I can’t tell you how many teachers, how many people in my life, as I got older and went through college and whatever, told me that nobody would ever hire a blind teacher.”

Undeterred, Greico earned her master’s degree in elementary education and special education before moving to Levittown. Once she joined the Levittown district, she taught students like Carly Englander, who said she looked up to Greico as a role model.

“It was definitely a good role model influence, to see someone who is also disabled living, functioning and being a normal person in a world [where] we don't really see disabled people much,” Englander said. “So, it was really powerful to see someone that I could relate to…and, I guess, she might have influenced me a bit to work in the disabled community, to be a role model to some other young folks, because I interact with a lot of young students with disabilities now. And I hope I influence them positively the way she influenced me.”

Like Dillon and Nicolay, Englander, too, said Greico meant something more to her than most friends.

“I’ve known Carmen and Debby since I was five,” Englander said. “She’s become like family to me. I don’t know how else to phrase it. She’s a very dear friend, it felt very comforting to have her as a resource in school.”

To Englander, the community support Greico has already received is an indicator of the kind of impact her teacher-turned-friend has had.

“It means that she's important to a lot of people. It means she has touched a lot of people's lives, and we want to keep her with us. And it's very heartening to see the good in people in this day and age,” Englander said.

When asked what the support meant to her, Greico said it could allow her to stay in the community she has loved for over five decades.

“It amazes me, and I’ve come to truly appreciate it, because it does cost a lot of money for my medical needs right now, and I just hope I can be able to stay here and be a part of the community,” Greico said.