Chloe Giampaolo, 84, says her philosophy in life is to “find a need and fill it,” and it’s a philosophy she has carried into her writing career.

Chloe Giampaolo Matthew Daigle/Sun Journal

A former elementary school teacher who retired in the early 1980s, Giampaolo says she has lived a life full of travel, happiness, unique experiences and volunteerism, among many other things, including writing.

Earlier this year, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep across the United States, Giampaolo published her sixth book, entitled “The Untold Story of the Alphabet.”

The book, she says, is a “culmination of my years of experience as a classroom teacher” and a resource to teach children and adults learning English as their second language about the intricacies of writing and speaking English.

Her fondest memories of teaching, she said were her years at Lewiston’s Montello Elementary School. “It was the best teaching of my entire career.”

At 84, Giampaolo says she has no intention of slowing down. “I always tell people that just because I retired from work, that doesn’t mean I retired from life.”

Name: Chloe Giampaolo

Age: 84

Hometown: Lewiston

Occupation: Retired teacher, writer

How did you get into writing? I’ve been writing basically all my life, back to when I was a teenager. I started writing seriously once I took an early retirement from teaching in the ’80s. I moved from Maine back to Maryland, which is where I was born, because in the ’80s, they were forcing teachers to teach to the test. I told them, ‘I’m sorry, but kids don’t come to school to learn how to take a test.’ I retired early and started writing again.

My philosophy in life is “find a need and fill it,” and I’ve used that in my writing. I try and find something that needs to be written about for people and I write it.

I’ve also written for newspapers and magazines, and I used to write a little bit of poetry, though I don’t do that much anymore.

You moved to Maryland after retiring. When did you decide to move back to Maine? My son had moved back to Maine from California and I was looking for a senior residence in Maryland, but he convinced me to move back to Maine. He said that if something should happen to me in Maryland, he (didn’t know) how often he would be able to visit me. So now, we’re less than two miles away from each other!

What made you decide to teach for a living?

Oh, that’s a long story. It goes back a long, long time. At one point in time, I thought I wanted to be a nurse. Then, I wanted to be a nun. I tried that out and it didn’t work for me. That’s another story though.

I’m not sure how I settled on teaching. I love children and I knew that I had certain talents that I could share with kids and I felt that there were children out there that could use a lot of help. Not just intellectually but morally.

Later in life, after I retired, I became involved with the Alternatives to Violence Project, which is a program that teaches prisoners new skills and attitudes to live a crime-free life, and you’d be surprised how my experience teaching helped with that. When I was teaching, when a child was misbehaving, I’d take them aside and say, ‘I’m not angry. I’m just a little disappointed because your behavior right now is not matching with the good person that I know you are.’ These kids would cry because nobody has spoken to them in that manner before. I’d say the same sort of thing to the prisoners and I’d get the same reaction. You should’ve seen how it affected them and the positive changes that happened as a result of it.

I taught for 35 years and in that time, I taught every grade except for sixth grade. My favorite grade to teach was fourth grade. I’m not sure why. There was just so much you could do with fourth-grade students. They were always interested in learning and trying new ways to learn. You tended to have more disciplinary and disruption problems with middle school students.

Can you explain what your latest book, “The Untold Story of the Alphabet,” is about? What made you feel like this was a need that had to be filled? That book is a culmination of all of the years of experience I had as a teacher and volunteering with elementary school students who were learning English as a second language. I noticed they were having difficulty with certain words and how to pronounce them, so I decided to write a book to help them.

The book looks at the English language compared to other languages, such as Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew, and looks at how certain letters in the alphabet have different sounds and pronunciations, depending on what word they are found in. The book also looks at consonant blends, how vowels team with consonants to make certain sounds, and homonyms.

I published the book within the last couple of months, and since then, I’ve contacted (English as second language) organizations and the Maine Department of Education to let them know that the book is available to use if they want it. We’ll see what happens with that.

With this book, and with other books I write, I’m not in it for the money. All of the royalties for the book I previously wrote, “What God Looks For In Our Lives,” I donated to charities. I just want to make sure people are receiving help.

Your name is Chloe Giampaolo, but you publish your books under the pen name “Chloe JonPaul.” Can you explain your thought process behind that? It’s the anglicized version of my given surname. My surname is Giampaolo – an Italian name – so when you Americanize it, it becomes JonPaul.

I knew that I would have to have a name that is short and sweet, and Clotilde Giampaolo, which is my given name, was too long. Nobody ever called me Clotilde except for my husband. He never called me Chloe.

Other than writing, what have you done in retirement? I do a lot of volunteer work. Right now, I can’t do anything because of the pandemic, but I did a lot of hospice work and work with veterans. I have done a lot with the Alternatives to Violence. In fact, I even did a presentation at the international conference in New Zealand. My presentation was on a workshop I had run with men who were soon to be released from prison and what they could do once they were released.

I’ve also volunteered at animal shelters, homeless shelters, served as an advisory board member for the Maryland Healthcare Commission and on the Interagency Commission for Aging Services with the Maryland Department of Aging.

I have been blessed in so many ways, and now I’m in my 84th year and my time on this planet is limited. I’m OK with that. I’m not afraid to die. I tell younger people, “The best is yet to come,” because the most interesting things I’ve done in my life, I’ve done since the age of 50.

My memory is fading, and that comes with age, so every day, without fail, I spend time doing word searches and other things that are mentally stimulating.

I follow the advice of an ancient Indian guru who said man is a house with four rooms: spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional. The only problem: people spend most of their day in just one of those rooms when they should be spending a little bit of time in each. I make sure to do that every day.