Meet Your Neighbor
Diane Cabral Jim Perelman Phyllis Slattery
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
You read about islanders who are in the public eye all the time, but what do you know about your neighbors - those you see at the supermarket, the gas station, at school or just in passing on the street? Everybody has a story about how they came to be here, what they have done and how their experiences have shaped and perhaps changed their lives and added to the fabric of Nantucket's unique character.

From left: Jim Perelman once owned The Boarding House but gave it up for a simpler vocation. Diane Cabral has had many jobs PHOTOS BY MICHAEL GALVIN/The Independent since childhood but has worked in Dr. Diane Pearl's office 20 years. Phyllis Slattery has spent most of her life trying to improve the lives of others.

This week The Nantucket Independent begins a new feature highlighting island residents in the hope that their stories will help to bring islanders closer in this increasingly busy and sometimes impersonal world.

PHYLLIS SLATTERY Fulfilled mother and counselor Phyllis Slattery wore a bright pink patterned top sitting in her airy living room overlooking Madaket Harbor explaining how she almost led a cloistered existence. Slattery was born and raised in Quincy, Mass. and attended Catholic schools throughout her youth where students were encouraged to give themselves to the church. After high school, she attended Boston College for one year.

"Then I decided, not through any angels speaking to me, that I wanted to be a nun, using my life giving to others," she said.

Slattery joined the order of Sisters of Charity in Kentucky because they were an order who took great joy in holy work but also "played basketball." After six months as a postulant she received her habit and chose the name Mary Xavier. But at the end of her third year as a novice nun, Slattery was told she and the other novices were preparing for their final vows. Slattery started laughing.

"I said, 'Excuse me - did you say final?' It was then that I decided to leave the convent, I think because I realized I did not want to dedicate my life to that ideal and that I may want to have children someday," she said. On her walls are inspirational decorative sayings.

Slattery said she was told she would be reaccepted into the order if she changed her mind, and that perhaps her decision was preparing her for something in her future. She returned to Boston College to complete her studies in elementary education became a first grade teacher in Scituate and got married.

"After my second year of teaching I became pregnant and that was the beginning of five kids," she said. "That was what God was preparing me for."

However, Slattery was teaching at a time when children were not innoculated for German measles, and there was an epidemic at her school. Although she never showed overt signs of the virus she became infected and, tragically, her first child, Jimmy, was born with severe brain damage. He was only expected to live a year or two but survived 17 years with Slattery as his primary caregiver.

"His death was the major tragedy of my life," she said, pointing outside to a commemorative garden of angel statues. "We keep his memory alive, and I believe this made my other children compassionate adults, especially toward the handicapped."

Slattery's husband, who now lives on the mainland, owned his own insurance agency and the couple came to Nantucket 30 years ago for an insurance convention at the Harbor House. She fell in love with the island and they rented a house near the beach so she could bring her son to the shore. Two days before they were to move in for their first summer he died. Later, the couple built the home Slattery still lives in. Before that, however, she had become involved with massage therapy to help Jimmy.

While having her hair done one summer she was invited by Teresa Davis to offer evening massages to Davis' clients at Tresses, starting a new professional career. Then, because of the stress Slattery felt over her son's death, she attended a talk by Harvard professor and cardiologist Herbert Benson, a personal friend of the Dalai Lama, who suggested she take a workshop series he was holding. At the conclusion of those 13 weeks she also took clinical training at Benson's new Institute for Behavioral Medicine affiliated with Boston's Deaconess Hospital and went on to run her own stress counseling workshops in the New England area. She is in Boston again this week for further studies with Benson.

Eleven years ago, when Slattery and her beloved Siamese cat, Kalie, moved permanently to Nantucket, she began offering her workshops to groups to deal with stress in the workplace and has presented them for town employees, Nantucket Bank and at the hospital, and until recently also did neck and shoulder massage for companies and has used both techniques as a Hospice volunteer.

"I have a passion for teaching this program because I think it's changed my own life and because of the stressful world we live in," said Slattery. "In teaching it I continue to remind myself of the beneficial practices I need in my own life. One of the best techniques for managing stress is to have a sense of gratitude for what we do have and to be mindfully present of the moment we live in as well as giving to others. I'm grateful I'm on Nantucket, I'm grateful my children love me, I'm grateful for my friends and I'm grateful for my belief system so I can go out and help other people."

DIANE CABRAL She is the always cheerful face greeting everyone coming to see Dr. Diane Pearl and a person who has long been visible in the community, but islander Diane Cabral was actually born on the mainland when her father, the late Robert Haley, was with the state police in Hingham, Mass. Haley and his wife, Anne, were transferred to Nantucket when Cabral was five months old and she has remained here ever since. The transfer came in the 1950s when Cabral said Nantucket was not an attractive destination.

"Nobody wanted to come here - it was so quiet and didn't have cachet," she said, adding that the family spent many years living at the North Liberty Street state police barracks. "Every two years the captain would call my father and say, 'Can you stick it out a couple more years?' My parents loved it. There was no crime."

Cabral, who has a sister Patty, an island middle school teacher, sister Mary at Nantucket Bank and brother Jim in Charleston, South Carolina, wed her high school sweetheart, James, 33 years ago.

"It's easier than training someone new," she joked about the duration of their marriage.

The Cabrals have sons Shawn, a builder here, Gregory, an island electrician, Jay, also a local builder and daughter Katie who works for a South Carolina golf club.

Cabral worked from the time she was a third grader, first at the chamber of commerce putting correction stickers in its guidebook, having a paper route delivering to the old Sea Cliff Inn, in retail sales at Murray's Toggery's warehouse and Main Street store, and her favorite job as a dock girl working at the Boat Basin for three high school summers under former Dockmaster Joe Lopes. Later she did some catering and clothing alterations for Murray's Toggery before becoming their bookkeeper in 1978.

After her time at Murray's, Cabral went to work at her father's package store adjacent to the Stop & Shop and assisted him for 10 years until the store closed in 1986 when the market planned to expand. The following year, Cabral learned that Diane Pearl, who was a year ahead of her at Nantucket High School, was now Doctor Pearl and intended to open an island practice. Cabral was hired as office manager and has been there since with no plans to leave, "Unless some great offer comes along," she said laughing.

Cabral, when she has spare time, has been a hospitality coordinator at St. Mary's Church and enjoys gardening, kayaking, cooking and time at the beach. She also has a special ritual she began when her mother was dying of cancer 24 years ago and she needed respite from the caregiving.

"Every day I do an 'I love Nantucket' thing. The sunrise was beautiful this morning," she said on Friday. "It makes me think how lucky I am to live here. I might sit on a lifeguard stand in the morning or evening and read a book, climb on the Jetties rocks, which you're not supposed to do - there's always something so great that makes you happy to be here."

At Dr. Pearl's office, Cabral has to be the ultimate multi-tasker and possess the patience of a saint with all the calls and questions she deals with, but it is a job she loves, in part because she plays a vital role in the community.

"I learn something new every day, and either no one would be interested in what I've learned or I couldn't repeat it," she said, laughing again. "It's never the least bit boring. Only twice in my time there have I said, 'Oh, it's only two o'clock?'"

JIM PERELMAN If you are lucky, you have had occasion to taste Jim Perelman's delicious cuisine or attend a celebration he catered. Making good food is central to Perelman's life today and became his focus in his youth, though you may be surprised about where he received his culinary training.

Perelman, who has lived permanently on the island for 37 years, was born and raised in Burlington, Vt., but had spent parts of summers on Nantucket since he was a young child and then entire summers after his grandparents bought a house here in the early 1960s.

His first job here was in the Jetties Beach concession kitchen in 1965. Once he moved here for good after a short stint with the Air National Guard, he worked again at the Jetties stand, run at the time by the Henry Fee family, and spent the off-season working at Fee's Henry's Sandwiches when it had a winter location on Main Street. In 1971 he began baking at the Nantucket Bake Shop during the summer and the following year became employed as a cook at the Jared Coffin House, where he spent three years. From there, Perelman was cook in the kitchen of the former Mad Hatter restaurant for three years as well as having a second job baking for The Downyflake when it was on South Water Street.

Perelman, who earned his initial culinary knowledge from the Air Force cooking school and went on to be "a little fancier than that," decided with his first wife that they could and should strike out on their own. In 1978 they bought the Boarding House restaurant where Perelman was chef. Eight years after buying the business, he was on the patio taking phone reservations for dinner on the July 4 weekend of 1984 when some regular patrons approached him and asked if he would consider selling the place.

"I said I would if the offer was ridiculous, and they made a ridiculous offer so I did," he said.

After that heady experience, Perelman worked at various restaurant jobs and pumped gas at the D & B station, then people began calling him to cater events. Realizing that he liked being his own boss, from 1990 on catering became Perelman's main employment. He has provided food for everything from weddings to fancy dinners to company staff parties to cookouts. He has stayed with that commitment to this day, other than becoming a court officer about two years ago that provides a flexible schedule.

"The Boarding House was good to us while we were there, and then it was time for something else," he said.

And now, once again, it is time for something else in Perelman's life. He and his wife, Sheri, with whom he has three stepsons, bought a house in Tiverton, R.I. at the end of June. Though Perelman intends to maintain his catering business on Nantucket and spend about a third of each month here after the couple moves at the beginning of 2008, things will be different as he transitions into a commuter. He feels they will now have the best of both mainland and island worlds, and has no intention of severing his Nantucket connection.

"I think if I can spend part of the time off the island I'll appreciate the island more," said Perelman. "We've been talking about it for a couple of years and we looked at other places, but the light came on for us there. I don't know how I'll feel about it a year from now, but it's reasonably close to Nantucket and we have a house overlooking the water at a quarter of the price here. We have family here, so we're not giving up our ties, and I've spent my entire adult life

here so I can't give up entirely on Nantucket." I