By Philip Jordan

Rocky Point, NY – Lillian Juliano, one of the most courageous advocates for the rights of the elderly in New York, who was herself believed to be the longest-lived quadriplegic in the nation, has died. She was 79 years old.

Although paralyzed from the chest down and unable to use her arms and legs after a tragic auto accident in 1977, Lillian managed to train as a counselor for the aging and worked at a Shoreham, NY, adult day center, at first reading to the elderly, and later leading groups in crafts and acting as an advocate for their needs, all from her own wheelchair.

The daughter of Sicilian immigrants, who herself became the mother of five children before her injury, Lillian Juliano never shrank from hard work and ran the Juliano household with a firm but loving hand.

And she was used to getting her way, even with officials who tried to prevent her from fulfilling her idea of a career helping the elderly after her own accident.

She got the idea after her husband, Vincent, a scion of another Italian immigrant family, retired from his job as a New York City special needs teacher, and because her grown children had left home to start their own lives. Quadriplegic or not, she decided boldly, she needed a new life, rather than lie in bed at home.

In 1985 she enrolled at St Joseph’s College in Patchogue, NY, where the state’s office of vocational rehabilitation used federal funds to encourage severely handicapped people to find a way back into society. The course — three hours a week in class and 5 ½ hours at the day care center — included transportation to both places, and tuition. But if she took it, she was warned by Suffolk County officials, she would be stripped of her “homebound” status as a quadriplegic and lose the $370 a week she and Vincent were paid by Medicare for home-care and nursing visits.

Eleanor Ripka, a student on a work-study program at St Joseph’s, who helped Lillian find out about courses there, wrote later to a local newspaper “(T)he only thing she had going for her was her desire to make use of her mind and what was left of her body. I encouraged her to come to the college for an interview and when she came the hearts of all who assisted her were touched by her courage. This was no lady looking for a handout; this was a lady determined to use her mind and increase her knowledge to help someone else. She wanted to counsel and support those in need of her ability and experience.”

Lillian took her determination to succeed against the odds to a lawyer’s office and won her case against the county. “It seems ludicrous,” she told her local paper at the time as she began her fight, “I don’t know what I can do but I would like to get it changed. What are you supposed to do? You are just homebound and that’s it? Roll up in a corner and die?”

After Lillian’s victory, Eleanor Ripka recalled the school moving quickly to help her achieve her dream, even making arrangements to tape all the lectures for Lillian, who could not write or hold a pencil. “With the help of an ambulette she was [also] given transportation. There was always a smile on this lady’s face”.

Vincent Juliano, who was Lillian’s husband for 56 years until she died quietly at home in Rocky Point on April 27 from pancreatic cancer, had no doubt about his wife’s determination. “There was Lillian and then there was the rest of the world. She wanted it, she got it — exactly the way she wanted it”, he recalled.

Just as determined was Lillian’s general attitude to her handicap. Her life-changing accident happened in March, 1977 when an uninsured driver ran a stop sign two blocks from her home and rammed her car sideways into a telephone pole. Although she was wearing a seat belt, her head hit a door pillar severing her spinal cord. She never walked again.

After time in hospitals and rehabilitation at the Rusk Institute in New York City, Lillian returned home and soon began to resume management of the family since her youngest son, Christopher, was only 12 years old. Her husband, while keeping up his teaching job, became her caregiver. But at first, she was unsure about getting out of the house.

Vincent recalls how she overcame her fears and eventually allowed him to take her for a short birthday drive in his car which rapidly turned into a tour of southern Connecticut and lunch out, with Lillian in her wheelchair, in a restaurant, where the staff “one at a time came over and sat with us and we had a great time. When it came time for us to go, they all came over and sang happy birthday to Lil, and gave her own cupcake birthday muffin”.

Encouraged by that first trip, Lillian began to get out of the house more and more, with Vincent’s loving help, and to start thinking about what next to do with her life. “Thanks to those people and their kindness and Lil’s trust we never had any trepidation of going any place. God, we even saw the Grand Canyon at sunrise”.

Of her work for the elderly, Vincent said, “When I retired, Lil felt her life was not fulfilled and she needed more … she decided she could help out at the local day care center. At first they kept her away from the clients, but as time went on she got her own groups and taught crafts and reading some other stuff … It was what she wanted or had to do”.

Vincent, 81, recalled his wife’s life fondly, and said that he fell in love with her at first sight. “I had returned from overseas service and was attending NYU in my sophomore year … I was attending summer classes under the GI Bill.  One day while walking past the student counseling office I saw ‘the girl of my dreams.’  I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. Things got a little hazy as I looked at her. She was sitting at a desk typing in the main office near the railing.  I walked over to her and asked her name.  She asked why I wanted to know and I told her the truth: ‘I'm going to marry you and I must call you something’. Not the most intelligent thing but totally honest. She stood up, looked at me like I was crazy and fled into her office and locked the door. 

“It took me about three weeks of waiting before one of the other girls gave me her home phone number and I could talk to her.  It took another two weeks before I could get a date.  From that date forward I saw her every day and dated her every chance I could.  I got a job after school at the candy and cigar store across from the university and when she took night classes I took her home.”  They married in 1953.

Lillian Juliano survived for 32 years after being injured, believed to be a national record. Typically, such patients succumb to accumulating complications arising from bedsores, owing to their immobility, and die within 10 years of becoming quadriplegic. Those close to her believe that it was her continuing interest in helping other elderly people, until quite close to her own death, that enabled Lillian to live her long life.

Lillian Juliano was born Anna Lillian LoCasto in Flushing, Queens, NY, on October 1, 1929, the daughter of Louis LoCasto and Mary LoCasto. She was the youngest of 10 children, only three of whom made it to adulthood.

She attended Bayside High School, graduating in 1947, a popular but quiet student who majored in art and had aspirations of becoming a commercial artist, but later took a commercial course to train as a secretary.

After leaving school she became secretary to the dean of counselors in the Department of Biology at New York University, where she also managed to pursue some art classes.

In 1948 she met her future husband, Vincent A. Juliano, who survives her. He is the second of four children of John and Immaculata Juliano. They married on May 31, 1953, at St Andrew Avelino Roman Catholic Church in Flushing.

In 1953 the Julianos moved to Pittsburgh, Pa. where Vincent Juliano worked as a sales representative for the Harrower Laboratories drug company.  In 1955 they moved back to Kew Gardens, Queens, where Vincent Juliano became a representative for the Alcon Laboratories drug company. He was shortly afterwards made Canadian representative and the family moved to Toronto, Ontario.

In 1965 they decided to move back to the U.S. where Vincent made a career change and became a special education teacher in New York City, while Lillian trained as a stenographer working at a local hospital, as well as continuing to be a homemaker.

They remained married for 56 years and had five children, four boys and a girl.

John Juliano (55) was born in Pittsburgh, PA; he lives in Atlanta, GA and is the worldwide sales and marketing manager for Tera Digital Publishing of Milan, Italy; Vincent Charles Juliano (54) was born in Flushing, NY, and is a contractor living in Sound Beach, NY; Linda Jane Juliano-Jack (50) was born in Toronto, Canada, and lives in Buffalo, NY, where she is the administrative head of Erie County Atoorny’s Office; Kenneth Louis Juliano (47) was born in Toronto, and is a photographer in Kittridge, CO; Christopher James Juliano (45) lives in Sound Beach, NY, and is head chef of a restaurant in Patchogue, NY.

Lillian Juliano died at her home on Tuesday, April 28, 2009. The funeral arrangements were by O B Davis Funeral Homes, 1001, Route 25A, Miller Place, NY 11764. The funeral mass was held at St Anthony of Padua Church, 614 Route 25A, Rocky Point, NY 11778, on Monday, May 4, prior to interment at Calverton National Cemetery, 210 Princeton Blvd, Calverton, NY, 11933.