Meet Cheryl Pula

Our featured writer for November 2014 is Cheryl Pula,  a face and presence familiar to many of us in the greater Mohawk Valley community and beyond. Your editor has known Cheryl for almost a decade and I thought I knew her well enough,  but I was still surprised by all of her accomplishments upon reading the information she provided for our "meet out writers" series. In a word: wow. This woman has had a busy, full career!

I encourage you to read Cheryl's professional 'bio" which appears in its entirety at the end of this longer than usual blog post. Meanwhile, here are some items of interest that she did not include and which I am happy to share.

Cheryl has been a contributing member of various local writing clubs, including a group in Bridgeport, * NY and the local Dunham Public Library Writers Group. You can read ten of her short prose pieces on the library's website, by clicking on this link: http://www.whitesborolibrary.org/book-groups/78  - just scroll down to "P" for Pula.

Cheryl has written a series of WWII novels that have become very popular with women as well as men. She has the knack of portraying her characters in believable and compelling ways that make you love 'em or hate 'em. Based on the excerpts I've seen, I know why.  She has a website that you can explore if you wish: http://8thmilitary.com

She has graciously provided us with two excerpts from her first military novel which you can read to get a sense of her style by following this link :http://plottersink.blogspot.com/2014/10/two-excerpts-from-childrens-crusade.html .




AUTHOR BIO as written by Cheryl Pula

A native of New York Mills, New York, Cheryl Pula is a retired Reference Librarian. She is a Regents graduate of New York Mills Jr.-Sr. High School, with a concentrate in science and mathematics. Cheryl attended Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, New York, where she received an Associate Degree in Liberal Arts, then went to SUNY Oswego, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in the Russian Language with a minor in German. She was on the Dean’s List at both schools. After substitute teaching in the New York Mills Union Free School District for five years for both foreign language and special education classes, she went back to school and received a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she is a lifetime member of the University of Michigan Alumni Association. Her first library position was as the supervisor of the Lending Department at the Mid-York Library System in Utica, where she performed all the reference work for the system’s 43 member libraries. After almost ten years, she became the Head of the Adult Services Department at the Utica Public Library in Utica, then in 1987, the Reference Librarian at the Dunham Public Library in Whitesboro. Though officially retired in August 2011, she now works part-time at the New York Mills Public Library in New York Mills, NY.

In 1988, she was awarded the New York Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award. She served on the Board of Trustees of the New York Mills Public Library. Cheryl also teaches for the Mohawk Valley Institute for Learning in Retirement at SUNYIT in Marcy, New York, teaching a variety of historical subjects to retirees who are interested continuing their education. She has taught courses on unsolved historical mysteries; the American Civil War; World War II; The Titanic and several other topics.

Cheryl was a founding member of the New York Mills Historical Society, and served as its first president in the late 1970’s. She is currently the village historian of New York Mills and President of The History Club, which she founded in Whitesboro in 1995. She is the club’s newsletter editor. She is also the founder, current secretary and newsletter editor of the General Daniel Butterfield Civil War Round Table in Whitesboro. She is a member of the American Legion Auxiliary of the Arthur Moran Post #66 in Camden, New York, as well as an honorary member of the Memphis Belle Memorial Association of Memphis, Tennessee. She is known around the central New York area for presenting a number of historical lectures (89 to be exact!) on topics from the Titanic to the first moon landing in July 1969. Cheryl was elected “Historian of the Year” by the Oneida County Historian’s Association in 2006. In 2010, she was listed in Who’s Who In America.

She is an author, having written on Irish immigrants to the Utica area in a book entitled Ethnic Utica, published in 1994 by Utica College. With her brother, she is co-author and co-editor of a book on the Civil War regiments from Oneida County, which was published by the Eugene Nassar Ethnic Studies Department of Utica College in November 2010 entitled, With Courage and Honor: Oneida County’s Role in the Civil War. She is a contributing author, co-editor and served as proofreader for The Polish-American Encyclopedia, published by McFarlane Publishers in January 2011. For her work on the Encyclopedia, she has just been awarded the Polish-American Historical Society’s Distinguished Achievement Award. She is author of a novel, the first in a proposed series about Eighth Air Force bomber crews in World War II England, titled The Children’s Crusade, was published in October 2011 by Whitehall Publishing. At this point, six more have been published: The Ragged Irregulars (April 2012); The Rookie (July 2012); A Wing and a Prayer (January 2013); Maximum Effort (July 2013); The Dogs of War (January 2014) and Above and Beyond (July 2014). The eighth in the series, Some Gave All is currently in the writing stage.

She has also written four non-fiction books on unsolved historical mysteries: It’s a Mystery: Getting Away With Murder; It’s A Mystery: Puzzles of World War II; It’s a Mystery: Where Did They Go? and It’s a Mystery: Strange Beasts and Beings.

BOOK:

Title: The Children’s Crusade: The Eighth Air Force Series, Book 1

Book Genre: Historical fiction

Publisher:Whitehall Publishing

Release Date: October 2011

Buy Link(s): www.8thmilitary.com; Amazon.com

Book Description: This is the first in a series of 7 books on the B-17 bomber crews in World War II England. All the “action sequences” are based on the actual experiences of men who flew with the 8th in the war, and were personally interviewed by the author. The story begins:

BOOK SYNPOSIS For “THE CHIDREN’S CRUSADE”:

It was February 1942 when two future B-17 pilots began their training from Primary to Advanced Flight School where they become best friends. Join Captain Jack Harrington (age 22), the pilot, a Nebraska farm boy; Lieutenant Matt Moore (age 21), the copilot who is half Cheyenne Indian; Lieutenant Dale Kennedy (22), the navigator, a high school teacher; Lieutenant Kenny Donnelly (21), the bombardier, the son of a multimillionaire; and gunners that include Sergeant Keith McNeil (24), a career Army man; Sergeant Greg Cerminaro (19), a college student until the war intervened; Sergeant Al Schulze (19), a bottle capper from a Wisconsin brewery; Sergeant Joe Angelino (21), a longshoreman; Sergeant Jim Robinson (20), a truck driver, and Sergeant Tad Furmanski (18), a Polish national who survived the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp, as they move to England and become members of the 324th Squadron of the 91st Bombardment Group (heavy), stationed at United States Army Air Force Station #121. Fly with the rookies through their first mission to bomb German airfields at Romilly-Sur-Seine, France, on December 20, 1942. Listen to their reactions to the shock of combat and relate what it is actually like to fly dangerous daylight precision bombing missions.

Oops, I got the town wrong first time around. it should be Bridgeport, not Brookfield. -ca