Every one of St. John resident Mary Bartolucci’s siblings suffered from cancer, one of the reasons why she got involved in raising money to help those with the disease.
She twice spearheaded efforts to raise money through the island’s annual Relay for Life. When some of the organizers branched out to form the St. John Cancer Fund, she became the mover and shaker in that organization.
“I’ve always been community oriented,” she said.
She’s proud of the work the St. John Cancer Fund has done in just one year of operation. The small group raised $49,572 through donations as well as numerous small fundraisers. The biggest was the annual Woody’s Save Second Base fundraiser last October. It brought in $13,796 for the fund. This year’s Save Second Base block party is scheduled for 6 to 11 p.m. Oct. 18.
Bartolucci said the money raised goes to help people with cancer who live on St. John. Without the restrictions of a larger organization, it can do things like pay for groceries, transportation, lodging, and whatever the person with cancer needs.
“No one has ever been turned down,” she said.
She said that as of February, St. John Cancer fund had helped 17 residents with cancer-related expenses. Some of the money went for items as small as part of a cell phone bill to paying medical bills.
Bartolucci brings her event organizing skills to raising money for those with cancer. She’s the owner of Island Style Weddings, a St. John-based business that does wedding and other related events.
At 60, she’s spent many years honing her skills. After attending Miami-Dade College, she spent five years in the Bahamas while her then-husband worked there. It whetted her appetite for island life.
She bounced around from there to Winter Haven, Fla., where she and her husband owned a restaurant, then to Las Vegas to work as a midwife assistant, as a bartender, and running a dinner party service.
Returning to Baltimore, she got a job as director of catering at a private men’s club. Jobs at more than a half dozen hotels followed, including 16 years in sales and marketing at Baltimore’s posh Admiral Fell Inn.
A headhunter called with a job in Seattle.
“I told him find me an island and I’ll go,” Bartolucci said.
In 1997, a job at Marriott Frenchman’s Reef beckoned, so she hopped a plane to St. Thomas. It was just two years after Hurricane Marilyn devastated the island. There were still blue Federal Emergency Management Agency tarps everywhere and the island was in the middle of a drought so everything looked brown. She rented a car, drove to Red Hook and saw St. John in the distance.
“I was hooked,” she said.
Bartolucci took the Frenchman’s Reef job, and worked there a couple of years before moving on the Westin Resort and Villas on St. John.
“I was so burned out with hotels. It came to me I should be doing weddings,” she said.
That was a dozen years ago, and Island Style weddings was launched.
Along the way, she had three daughters. Sabrina Castle is an architect who works on St. John, Leslie Castle is also an architect, and Grace Bartolucci is at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Fla.
The wedding business and the St. John Cancer Fund keep her busy, but she still has time for paddle boarding.
“And I go to the beach,” she said.