Devastated after breast cancer took Susan Satriano's life, her husband of 29 years needed a place to put up a monument to his love, his grief, and ultimately to healing.  So he built a foundation.

Saturday at the Mineola library, former Roslyn high-school math teacher Joe Satriano explained the Susan Satriano Memorial Scholarship Foundation in a presentation he gives about three times a month at local libraries, bookstores and schools. Since 2005, the foundation Satriano established in his wife's honor has distributed $50,000 to 53 students in college scholarships.

During that time, he's also been able to mold his pain and loss into inspiration and encouragement for himself and others.  "The truth is, there's not a single person in this world who isn't scathed by something," Satriano said. "How you deal with that is what makes you, you."

Some of the foundation's proceeds come from sales of Satriano's book In Sickness and In Health, A Memoir of Love, written about his wife, their marriage and their experience with cancer.

Satriano described his marriage as the perfect match. He and Susan were both math teachers with mutual interests, despite their slightly different backgrounds. "I was a Brooklyn boy," he said. "She was a Brighton Beach girl."

It was their bond that helped them and their two sons – then four and nine – cope when Susan was diagnosed with cancer 16 years into their marriage. "I wouldn't have changed a thing," Satriano said about the intense joys and pains of those years. "Except the outcome."

Losing their bond was also what made it so hard for Satriano when Susan died in 2005. "I had no purpose or direction at that point," Satriano said, remembering getting into his car shortly thereafter without any idea where to go.  "I really needed help."

Help came from friends who gave him journals at his wife's wake and told him to start writing, but he wasn't ready. Rekindling an interest in theater, Satriano first started helping with school plays, before eventually starting the scholarship foundation and opening one of his journals. "I wrote 'The Beginning,' and suddenly things just started pouring out," he said. "Two hundred and sixty-nine pages later, there was a book."

Satriano writes under the pen name J.S. Russo - "J" for Joe, "S" for Susan, with Russo being the maiden name of Satriano's mother, whom he also wanted to honor.

Boosted by the book's publication, the foundation is growing and gaining notoriety. On October 2, the fifth anniversary of Susan's death, the foundation raised $24,000 at a benefit concert at Oceanside High School.

Also, television personality Sherri Shepherd was reportedly wearing one of the foundation's memorial pins on the October 7 episode of "The View." Satriano has tried to contact the show's producers to find out more about that, but hasn't heard anything back.

To qualify for a scholarship, a student must be a high-school senior, be accepted to an accredited college, and have a parent who's battling cancer or who has succumbed to the disease.

Satriano feels a special need to help kids under those trying circumstances because of what he understands his own sons had to face. Students dealing with cancer in the family get a double dose of adversity when the disease is combined with the already burdensome task of finishing high school and getting into college.

"These are the same kids who wouldn't be receiving any academic awards, because they're not thinking about school at that point," Satriano said. Saturday he read aloud from a letter written by a recent scholarship recipient, who wrote to thank him for his help. "Unfortunately she met the requirements (for the scholarship)."

Reading the letter made it obvious it's not easy reliving his pain. Satriano's voice thickened as he read, and by the time he was done, he was wiping away tears.

The frequent speaking engagements, which require him to grapple publicly with feelings many others would just assume leave behind, are part of his own healing process.  "You know what? This is helping me too," he said.

Satriano is working on another book, entitled After Math, Life Without Susan, a reference to the profession he and his wife shared.  He has more speaking engagements scheduled, and there's always the bittersweet reality that there will be more scholarships to award.