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Diving into life: Island girl seeking underwater enlightenment

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Jill Calabro in a momentary lull during a summer of waitressing, scuba diving and connecting with friends and family.
CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Jill Calabro in a momentary lull during a summer of waitressing, scuba diving and connecting with friends and family.

Jill Calabro is a 21-year-old college junior and Shelter Island native who defies the stereotype of screen-worshipping, hyper-communicating, wireless youth.

Apologizing for being unreachable for a couple of days, she admitted, “I’m not very attached to my phone at all. My friends get mad, but I tell them, ‘I’m sorry it was dead, I haven’t charged it for a couple of days.’”

Jill, who decided last spring to major in marine biology, can’t charge her phone when she’s underwater anyway, and that’s where she’s been spending more and more of her time lately. A young woman with a face-to-face, experiential way of living, Jill describes herself as an avid letter-writer and reluctant texter.

Danny and Joanne Calabro raised Jill on the Island, along with her brother, Jack, in a home near Dickerson Creek. Her father was also born and raised on the Island and her mother is from Putnam County. Jill’s much older sister and brother, Jennifer and Don, from Joanne’s previous marriage, live upstate — Don in Lake George, and Jen in Watertown, where she works as a forest ranger.

Jill called the Island “a nurturing environment that you don’t appreciate when you are here, especially the teachers at the school.” She singled out retired science teacher AnnMarie Galasso and Dan Williams, who kindled her love for marine biology.

“Teaching is such a hard job,” she said, lamenting the little respect afforded the best teachers, compared to elite athletes. “Teachers are so much more important than sports figures,” she said.

Waitressing at The Islander during her high school years, Jill became close to Clarissa Williams, a beloved figure who had worked there for many years and whose untimely death this past spring left the Island in mourning. A dedicated letter writer, Jill carries with her a treasured letter from Clarissa.

“She had all the right answers in any tough situation,” Jill said.

This year the Shelter Island School had 11 graduates, but the year Jill graduated, she was one of 23. She went on to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, the farthest-flung of her senior class. She said she picked Eckerd because it emphasized study abroad and because she noticed in the parking lot, “All the license plates were from different states.”

Jill finds her way back to Shelter Island every summer to earn money waitressing and reconnect with the people she loves. “Perspective is what I’m striving for by leaving,” she said. “I’m itching to get away, but every summer excited to get back.”

Perspective on her safe and happy childhood comes from Jill’s work with the Sallie House, a group home and haven for children in St. Petersburg who have been removed from their own homes to stay until they are placed in a long-term home. Jill and the other volunteers, who work every Sunday during the school year, provide activities and play with the kids.

“Nothing makes me realize how privileged I am than going to an orphanage and seeing how these kids grow up,” she said. “They are so much more mature for their age because they have to be.”

Although she is quick to say she hasn’t faced real crisis in her own life, Jill’s work with the Emergency Response Team (ERT) at Eckerd has put her at the scene of the crises of others. A team of first responders, the ERT is a group of about 25 students, many pre-med, operating transportation that is dispatched when a student calls for help on campus.

Life-threatening emergencies go to 911, but many calls to ERT involve drugs and underage drinking — since students in this kind of trouble are more likely to call another student for help. Jill enjoys the challenge.

“You’ll never do another job where someone’s life is on the line,” she said.

She participated in a school trip to Costa Rica in December to hone her Spanish and then over the 2015 spring break went to Panama with an Eckerd program called Helping Hands. There she worked for 10 days at an orphanage in an impoverished section of a suburb of Panama City. “Conditions were tough,” she said. “But I love to get to know cultures and broaden my perspective.”

Jill said she called her mom on the eve of sophomore year final exams to ask for help with a particular academic challenge. “Mom, I decided to switch back to marine biology and I need to be scuba-certified,” she said. “In a month.”

Jill had been accepted into a program that involved multiple dives in waters off Cuba. Not only did she have to be certified for scuba before she was scheduled to leave, she also had to learn to identify 200 species of fish. With her mom’s fast work, Jill was able to get certified by the Hampton Dive Center near Riverhead in time for her trip.

The trip included several days aboard the Filipe Poey, a research vessel named for the great Cuban naturalist, and a trip to an area of mangroves where they captured, tagged and released a baby manatee as part of an initiative to prevent poaching of these marine mammals. Jill administered a shot of anasthetic to the tail of the manatee in preparation for the tagging.

Prior to the trip, Jill wrote a term paper entitled “Sequential Hermaphroditism of the Bluehead Wrasse,” which made her expert on the sex life of this fish. She said it was both delightful and embarrassing to swim with the fish she knew so intimately.

Jill’s interest in marine biology is centered on marine environments. “More than just saving dolphins,” her interests extend to factors like weather patterns, red tide, brown tide and fertilizer use. Her dream is to continue to work and study marine biology in South America.

Jill described an experience she had underwater during a dive when she and another woman were separated from the group while gathering data. Trying to find the others, they mistakenly swam into deeper and deeper ocean. Low on air at a depth of 25 meters, “We were surrounded by blue,” she said.

She felt terror, euphoria and finally, “How insignificant we were in comparison to the never-ending body of water and all it held.” The experience helped convince her that work in marine biology is the right path for her.

“Enlightening,” said Jill. “That’s what I keep doing these trips for, that’s how you grow, how you become enlightened.”