"hey july, i love you!"

" i love july, the summer heat. i want to relish every moment."

Giovanna Carla Coppola, resident of the island of Ischia, Italy, passed away quietly in her home on July 20, 2024 in the arms of her husband, Davide Piccolo, after a long five year journey with cancer. The above two quotes are excerpts from one of her many journals. Giovanna adored July, would post about her love for the month every year on her social media platforms. It is only appropriate that July would be the month she passed.

One of the last things Davide remembers about Giovanna before she passed is a huge smile, reassuring him that everything would be okay. And that defines Giovanna: her big, beautiful, loving smile. That smile was contagious and huge! Don't be mistaken: that smile could offer many meanings to the ones who knew her best—she did have her comedic side. But 99% of the time, that smile communicated her love for us.

Everywhere Giovanna went, that smile of hers drew people to her side. And believe us, she went everywhere! She was born on August 21, 1979 in Poughkeepsie, NY, to Maria and Joseph Coppola, and grew up in Hyde Park, NY. However, Giovanna didn't stay there long. Throughout her childhood, her parents traveled everywhere with her! Every summer, they visited her parents' hometowns in Italy. Due to these summers, Giovanna became accustomed to traveling. In her childhood and early adulthood, she visited France multiple times and ventured up and down the Italian coast. Fueled by this early exposure to adventure, she took the opportunity to study abroad at Oxford University, London. There, her contagious smile earned her many friends from around the world, which only fed her travel bug!

When Giovanna came back from Oxford, she had a good taste of independent freedom, which only escalated her zest for travel. It wasn't enough to just visit these places, she wanted to settle down to study and work in these different countries. After finishing her undergraduate degree from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, she earned Master's degrees around the globe: one from New School University in New York City for Liberal Arts, one from Sotheby's Institute of Art for Contemporary Art (with classes in Florence and Rome, Italy), and one she was working on from Universita di Napoli L'Orientale in Naples, Italy for Italian language and culture.

Not only did Giovanna have a passion for learning, but she also worked at so many fascinating jobs around the globe. She was a reporter and photographer for the Hyde Park Townsman in Hyde Park, NY; editor for Canon Magazine and archivist and researcher for Heliker and Lahotan Foundation in New York City; and public relations and marketing intern for Christie's, gallery coordinator for 43 Inverness Street, and marketing assistant, communications and client manager at CreativeConnection in London, England. Additionally, she gave English lessons to students while living in Ischia, Italy.

Giovanna Coppola was also an avid poet and writer. She wrote in journals daily, recording her private thoughts and curating collages. We found boxes and boxes of her journals while visiting her new house in Ischia, going all the way back to her high school days. Publicly, she performed at events and poetry festivals in the U.S., U.K., and Italy. She performed at the Festival of Italian Literature in London (FILL 2018), La Palabra en el Mundo Venesia (2018), and the European Poetry Festival (2018). She also often recited poetry in London with a group named Parole Parole. Her work (poems, short stories, essays) has been published in Crab Fat Magazine, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Journal 69, JSTOR Daily, and the anthologies Millets (2017, Zeno Press) and Wretched Strangers (2018, Boiler House Press).

In addition to her creativity as an artist and a writer, Giovanna had incredible musical abilities. She played piano and flute, and sang beautifully. Initially, she played and sang at school and church choir, but she also played on weekends at our family restaurant. When she was in Ischia, she played for us over FaceTime. We often asked her, "why don't you go play in the piazza?" But she insisted her music was for herself, Davide, and her six cats.

Of all these wonderful accomplishments that Giovanna left behind, the most fantastic, most jaw-dropping, most amazing, is her smile. One cannot define Giovanna without her smile. She achieved every goal she had (the most important of which was to live in Italy one day) with a conquering smile. She met every obstacle with a smile. And that smile was love. We will always remember Giovanna with a huge smile on her face.

Giovanna is survived by the love of her life, Davide Piccolo. She also leaves behind her sisters Teresa Morgan (James) and Tina Sucato (Dave), her brother Nick Coppola (Barbara), and her in-laws Paola, Federica, and Federico. She has twelve nieces and nephews, and seven great nieces and nephews. She is also survived by two uncles, five aunts, and many cousins residing in both the U.S. and Italy. Finally, she leaves behind her six cats who she rescued and loved with all her heart: Indy, Mucca, Pippo, Rose, Serpico, and Sesto.

Although she had a funeral in Ischia on July 23, 2024, we will be having a memorial service and burying her ashes in St. Peter's Cemetery on October 11, at 1:00PM. Father Michael Palazzo will officiate.

Memorial donations can be made to your choice of an Animal Rescue Foundation in her name.

We wish to close by including a quote from an interview of Giovanna from Italy Magazine in 2019: "A visiting friend once commented on the death notices that you see all over Naples, plastered on billboards, light boxes and walls. She thought it was morbid, to be faced with all of these names of people who had died, but I find it comforting that these people haven't passed away unnoticed. They were part of the community before and are still part of the community after they've passed away."