Rosemarie Sere was born in Brooklyn, New York, September 30th, 1937. She is the daughter of third generation Italian Americans. Her father joined a guild after leaving the fourth grade and became a draftsman for the Otis elevator company. Her mother stayed home to raise the four children and did the foraging, scrimping, and saving, cooking, cleaning, and odd jobs whenever she could. Like all early immigrants, they were hard working, ambitious and glad to be in America. By many standards, she was considered to have been born into the middle class.
Rosemarie attended Erasmus Hall High School for about six months. She was not inclined toward academia. She worked at Kresge's Five and Dime as a young teenager but had dreams of becoming a beautician. She applied to the Home Making School and graduated with a certificate in Cosmetology; she secured a position with the beauty salon her mother went to for her perms. The Salon, called Buscemi's, was a block from her home on Ditmas Avenue. Life was simple back then. Ms. Sere worked as a beautician until she married her husband, Alexander Torla, and left Brooklyn to join him as a Navy wife, in Pensacola Florida. Their first daughter was born in 1957. They had five children together.
Nothing could be further from her mind than becoming an author. She raised her four children, they lost their first son shortly after his birth. She did the foraging, scrimping, saving, cooking, cleaning, and a bit of hair styling and coloring, whenever she could. When her youngest child started school, she started part-time work for Citibank. As a Teller at the bank, she was efficient and smart, and was soon promoted to Manager. Shortly thereafter, she learned that as a female manager her pay was substantially less than her male counterparts. She left Citibank and went to work for the NYC Board of Education, as a teacher's assistant.
This was a turning point for many reasons both personally and professionally for Rosemarie. Her second life began and she turned toward writing.
