One woman’s story, both unique and familiar: Shelter Islander will sign her book at History Museum Farmers Market

Deborah Price Lechmanski never thought about writing a book. It  started as notes to herself, jotted down beginning almost a decade ago about memories of growing up on Shelter Island — many sweet but some painful.

“This is my life,” Ms. Lechmanski said, noting that while she had no notes written during her childhood, her book, “Growing Up On Shelter Island: Happy Times and Sad Times,” came from her memory of people and events.

“The book just sort of came together” with starts and stops along the way, the author said about her writing process. For about three years, she wrote somewhat regularly, then put it aside for about four years before resuming writing.

She hadn’t written herself a host of notes during her growing-up years, but found so much was in her memory. “It just rolled along,” she said.

When she began showing her drafts to a small circle of friends and relatives, she was getting positive feedback and finally reached a point when she decided to publish.

Of the editing process, Ms. Lechmanski said, “I thought it was never going to end.”

From the beginning of the book, Ms. Lechmanski introduces the reader to her family, primarily with loving references, especially for her father and grandparents, but many others as well. It’s not revealing too much to know from the start that she would lose her father, Earl Price, to a boating accident, compounded by heart issues that had been expected to cut short his life when he was still a teen. He was always living on borrowed time, Ms. Lechmanski said.

With sensitivity she talks about his death many years later, unfolding the story through the eyes of a young child when he died, not the woman recalling it much later in life.

Writing about Earl, we understand the link they shared and how her grandparents and her Uncle William, her dad’s brother, among others, would surround her with love.

Throughout the book, there are animals — chickens, dogs, even a small horse, and to this day, she remains the person others turn to when they know of a pet in need of a home.

She takes us through the birth of her second son, Kevin, who might well have been born at home or on South Ferry had she not been rushed to Southampton Hospital on what she describes as the fastest trip ever, and of her delight at watching her older son, Brian, embrace fatherhood, as she thrilled at being a doting grandmother.

And she writes about life with husband Larry Lechmanski — the man known to Islanders for his long leadership of the Island’s Board of Fire Commissioners. Even when he wasn’t leading the Board, his colleagues still turned to him for guidance on many issues. He’s retired from the Board of Fire Commissioners now, but still fields calls from his former colleagues when they have questions about laws needing explanations.

Ms. Lechmanski chronicles her time heading the Fire Department’s Auxiliary, a special group of women who support the Department.

Although this is a personal book about one woman and her family, you’ll find yourself immersed in her story on several levels, because some of her experiences are shared by others, but mainly because of the heart and soul Ms. Lechmanski reveals, page after page.

Has she been bitten by the writing bug? the author was asked. Probably not, she said. Her time is consumed with family, animals and crafts.

Ms. Lechmanski will be signing her book on Saturday, April 19, when the Farmers Market begins its season on the grounds of the Shelter Island History Museum.