From assisting charities to wrestling with poetry

Growing up in an orphanage, Steven H. Biondolillo learned what it was like to depend on an organization for survival.

Now, the 49-year-old Wellesley resident makes a living training nonprofit organizations, such as the American Cancer Society and Easter Seals Foundation, how to raise money for their survival. His company, Biondolillo Associates, is now advising the Packard Foundation in California on its fund drive for universal after-school day care.

Biondolillo's Wellesley office is so well organized it could easily be mistaken for a furniture showroom -- not a paper clip out of place or a book misaligned. But that's not surprising when you consider he grew up without the luxury of being allowed to have a messy room.

''There were about 30 beds lined up in one area," he recalls of his bedroom at Girard in Philadelphia, which, having opened in 1848, is the nation's oldest orphanage.

''You had to be [organized] or it would be chaos," said Biondolillo. ''We didn't have individual 'stuff' -- toys would be assigned to a section."

Biondolillo was 6 and living in New York City when his father died. His mother went on welfare but, because of ''dwindling circumstances," decided to give her two sons up three years later. ''We would see my mother during the summer, once in the fall, and once in the spring," he said.

Biondolillo says that living in such close quarters taught him to share and the value of community. What the school lacked in homey atmosphere, it made up in love and support.

''It really was a great place to live," he said.

''You come through a tough set of circumstances together and bond," he said.

Biondolillo took to the regimented life, with its many traditions. ''One of them was memorizing Shakespeare passages," he said. ''Since I was 10 years old, my head has been filled with poetry."

He remained in the orphanage until he entered Boston University, where he majored in English and studied under noted poetry critic Helen Vendler.

''The more you know about writing -- structure, metaphor, symbol, narrative line -- the more you love poetry," he said.

After graduating, he spent a year at the University of Grenoble on a scholarship to study French, then went on to a master's degree program at McGill University in Montreal, where he completed all but his thesis.

In the early '80s, he returned to Massachusetts and launched his public relations and consulting company.

His first client was the city of Boston, which hired him to figure out a way to make sure its parks stayed clean despite maintenance cuts.

Biondolillo created the Grime Fighter Program, which used federal funds to hire youths to remove graffiti, clean parks, and tend to landscaping.

To help raise the program's profile, he then organized the National Grime Fighter Games, which within five years had spread to 20 cities. In 1988, its sixth year, the games were licensed to Philadelphia, where the name was changed to the Clean City Games.

His second client was Project Bread's Walk For Hunger fund-raiser for area food pantries. Biondolillo said he more than doubled its proceeds by encouraging corporations to sponsor walkers. He worked with the program for a dozen years, and still volunteers as a consultant.

His business well established, Biondolillo returned to his early love for poetry. Writing it helped him reflect on life, he said, and reciting it entertained friends and colleagues.

''I write for the ear in meter and rhyme, one that you can dig into and make some sense of."

Biondolillo's first poetry audiences were sports teams. He coached the Boston College wrestling team from 1996 to 2001 and incorporated poetry into his speeches at banquets.

He has since gone on to mix verse with tips when he gives speeches about fund-raising.

Among his most popular poems is ''For the Athletes Unsung," which he dedicated to the last three hockey players who were cut from the 1980 US Olympic hockey team before it went on to ''Miracle on Ice" fame.

''So few people are in the last top brick in the pyramid of life. The rest of us are somewhere else," he said. ''Maybe you weren't someone who grabbed the gold ring at the absolute top rung, but does that invalidate your accomplishments and contributions to the folks that do grab the ring?"

Biondolillo's company, which has 10 employees, created the Big Cheese Reads program, which brings CEOs into Boston schools to encourage literacy and community involvement.

He spent one morning last month at the Murphy School in Dorchester, reciting several poems about self-discovery.

One of them, ''In Centerfield," includes a stanza written about his own life:

A boy without a father seeks A glade where he can grow -- A place where nothing hurts or bleeds, A place where he feels whole.

ART FOR A CAUSE: There's a love story behind the paintings Julie Schnetke is hanging at the Villa restaurant in Wayland. It's intertwined with passages of hardship, tragedy, and triumph.

The 57-year-old Framingham resident is displaying several of her works and those of 30 other local artists in a monthlong show to benefit the Lymphoma Research Foundation, with a blizzard-delayed reception to be held this afternoon.

Thanks to innovative treatments, she is in remission from her 2003 diagnosis with lymphoma.

''It was pretty miraculous," said Schnetke, ''but my type of cancer recurs; I am now tested every six months."

Schnetke said the benefit art show would not be possible without her husband, Richard, owner of the Villa, who ''went right along, never questioning the expense of spending money on new track lighting, painting the interiors, hanging all the art, and losing a profitable Sunday lunch for the reception."

Other artists participating in the show are Virginia Scott and George Morfogen of Framingham; Wendy Hodge and Barbara Levine of Natick; Jodi Colella and Elizabeth Visvis of Wellesley; Stephanie Danforth, Ford Madeira, Dick Eaton, and Rhonda Perlmutter of Sherborn; Betty Glick of Holliston; Julie Nardone and Marie Stevens of Ashland; Joanne Tarlin of Franklin; Steve Grande of Wayland; and Ken Northup of Norfolk.

Schnetke took up painting eight years ago as a way to relax from her work as a corporate lawyer, enrolling in classes at a Worcester museum, then the Danforth Museum in Framingham.

Her subjects are often people or animals.

''A blank canvas and the eyes call out to me; they are so evocative," she said.

Schnetke has had success selling her work at art shows, including Friends of Family, one of the largest art shows on Martha's Vineyard, where she and Richard have a summer home.

He is her second husband. Her first, Edward Cullinane, was killed 23 years ago in an accident as he was moving the family's belongings in a U-Haul trailer cross-country to Holliston. Schnetke and their daughter, Kyla, were visiting her parents in her native Kentucky at the time.

''He said, 'I love you, I can't wait to see you in the morning,' " Schnetke recalls of their last phone conversation.

She was 34 at the time. She had no insurance, no home, and a daughter ready to enter kindergarten.

Having worked with the Federal Trade Commission and for Kevin White when he was mayor of Boston before her marriage, she had no trouble landing a job to support herself and Kyla.

After spending a year in San Diego, she got a job at a Newton law firm and moved to Wayland. ''I used to go to the Villa with my daughter to have dinner," she said.

Like other restaurant owners, Richard Schnetke would make the rounds of the tables. In time, he and Julie were talking about more than food.

In 1991, they were married.

A reception for the ongoing art exhibition and sale will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. today at the Villa, 48 East Plain St. in Wayland. For more details, call 508-653-8570. For more information on the Lymphoma Research Foundation, visit www.lymphoma.org