town LHS senior named a Young Woman of Achievement

By Bill Sanservino

Lawrence High School senior LauraSimone Martin has been selected as a 2023 Mercer County Young Woman of Achievement by the Mercer County Commission on The Status of Women. She will be recognized at a reception on March 21 at Mercer Oaks Clubhouse in West Windsor..

Martin was nominated for the award based on her accomplishments during her high school career. She is the founder and president of the first LHS Black Student Union and vice president of Students for Social Activism.

Also a musician, she is a bass player and singer who has performed at prestigious venues like the Monterey Jazz Festival with the Next Generation Women in Jazz Combo and the 2021 VAIL Jazz Festival with the Vail Jazz Workshop Allstars.

In addition, Martin has performed at Dizzy’s Club, Minton’s Playhouse, Birdland Jazz Club, South Jazz Kitchen and Tribeca Film Festival.

She currently plays with Princeton University’s Creative Large Ensemble, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Youth Orchestra and the Youth Orchestra of Central Jersey. She is also part of the 2022 Carnegie Hall National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYO Jazz), and the National Association of Music Education All-National Honor Jazz Ensemble.

Martin is the founder of the Queen Amina Club, an after-school music and mentorship program at Lawrence Intermediate School for female instrumentalists in grades 4-8.

She wrote a grant proposal to acquire funding for the program, which will host six well-renowned guest artists this year, including jazz performers Tia Fuller and Camille Thurman. The club will also perform in various school and community events.

According to her grant application, the club was founded in the fall of 2021 with the purpose of creating sisterhood and bringing jazz education through weekly meetings that focus on music performance, improvisation, creativity and exposure to women composers and musicians from the past and present.

While all female composers and musicians are discussed, there is an intentional emphasis and celebration of Black women composers and instrumentalists. The club is named after the warrior queen of Zazzau of Nigeria, Queen Amina (1533-1610). interview, he noted how owners Chris and Jess D’Addario started talking about fellow food trucks “almost as best friends” or “family,” the journalist explained in a February interview with the Lawrence Gazette.

During the 2021-2022 school year, Queen Amina Music Club consisted of 28 girls (12 violins, 5 violas, 4 cellos, 1 flute, 3 alto saxes, and 3 trumpets) and focused on learning the blues, improvisation and small ensemble performance.

Martin said she specifically creates all arrangements for this instrumentation and ability level. An integral part of this curriculum is exposure to various role models and mentorship.

In 2021, Tia Fuller and Katie Thiroux volunteered their time to work with the students over zoom. The season concluded with two performances, one for our community arts festival and one during the Lawrence Intermediate School Spring Concert.

“I am supremely committed to this endeavor, the opportunity to serve my community, my school district, mentor young girls, and play the music I love, all while uplifting important issues of diversity and inclusion in music education, has been a driving force throughout my high school years,” said Martin in her grant application.

“They sometimes depend on each other, but then they also bond because they’ll see a lot of the same owners at different events,” he said, and when “everybody has their misfortune, whether their generator dies or they run out of a product or something, those [trucks], rather than being competition, [are] there to lend a helping hand,” Lombardi added.

After its successful debut, the web series would continue reporting on six food trucks per year to reach the current number, which is, as of press time, 30 total. By 2021, Lombardi was considering publishing a book about his food truck experiences when Parisi joined him, and “The Best New Jersey Food Trucks” eventually found a home at The History Press.

The book, which divides the state into four areas—south, north, central, and the Jersey Shore—includes names like Bearded One BBQ, Maddalena’s CheeseCake & Catering, Good Food = Good Mood, Five Sisters Food Co., and House of Cupcakes in Princeton, as well as Mama Dude’s and Surf and Turf Truck in Hamilton.

The personal nature of Lombardi’s interviews matches the atmosphere of the ordering process at these mobile munching spots. By simulating this amicable yet intimate environment in literary form, Lombardi invites the reader to learn more about the creative geniuses and culinary talents behind each business.

“You walk up to the window and have people from all different styles of cooking, all different cultures, all different backgrounds, coming together through food, and through this whole industry. I think it’s absolutely incredible, because it allows that opportunity,” he said.

Lombardi was born in Teaneck, lived in Nutley until he was five, and then moved with his family to Hillsborough to be closer to his father’s job. Prior to working for ADT Security Services for about 20 years, Lombardi’s father was in the telecommunications industry, while his mother is an avid cosmetologist.

Lombardi’s early memories of writing were positive. He recalled that back in elementary school, the students had one assignment a year where, to reinforce their grasp on language, they would get these blank children’s books “bound like hardcovers.”

“You have to write and draw everything,” Lombardi recalled fondly of the projects. “My parents still have them in the basement.”

This naturally transitioned into writing beyond a grade, extending from “silly short stories” like one about his pet turtle to “more mature” works as Lombardi was enthralled by novels by Stephen King and mystery writer Harlan Coben.

When he enrolled at Rider, Lombardi declared English as his major, but took on a law and justice minor with the hope of becoming an attorney. However, around his sophomore year, he changed his mind, dropping that and earning a bachelor’s degree in his original major with a concentration in writing. In classes where he felt that many others had a talent for writing “serious, dramatic” works they hoped would be worthy of an Oscar nomination, Lombardi tended to stick with his penchant for humor, peppering his writing with jokes and taking inspiration from his comedic idols David Sedaris, Brian Regan, and Kurt Vonnegut.

With these influences in mind, Lombardi self-published “Junk Sale,” his first book, on Amazon in 2018. The “collection of humorous short stories and essays” is based on “vignettes” of Lombardi’s life and/or observations—a cue from Sedaris.

Lombardi explained that Sedaris is a prolific journaler who “also keeps a little one on him to take notes during daily occurrences. Whether he’s in line at the bank or he’s out with his family, he has that on him, so he doesn’t miss opportunities.”

So Lombardi practiced similar techniques and “learned to flesh those out into actual essays, because sometimes they’re just occurrences, and it’s this funny or silly interaction, but other times you can really delve into the subject matter.”

“Junk Sale” acknowledges this in colorful ways. In “Check the Freezer,” a young Lombardi hears his Italian-born and emigrated mother referred to as “an alien,” leading him to associate the term with “intergalactic travel” rather than its intended meaning.

What added to Lombardi’s confusion is his mother’s fascination with the freezer and her frequent cooking to fill it, leading him to believe that the kitchen might actually be able to fit the secrets of the galaxy next to all the homemade food inside.

“That essay, especially, was very true and very accurate to how I grew up, where food was such a main focus,” Lombardi said, see COOKBOOK, Page 6