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Week of Friday, 06 November 2009
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Teresa Joan O'Boyle
Having celebrated 82 summers, Teresa Joan O'Boyle, Joanie, to her many friends, died quietly of natural causes on October 26, 2009 at the home of her son and daughter-in-law in Key West, Florida.
Joanie was born in 1928, the third of five children in Scranton, Pennsylvania to Elizabeth and Thomas Moran, the former manager of the Scranton Times. She grew up spiritually and literally in the shadow of Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in the Moran home on Jackson Street, where her sister Jean still lives today.
The Morans lived so close to the church that the ringing of the great bell hushed conversation and invariably drew from Grandma Elizabeth a whispered, and always mysterious, "Hark, hark, the dogs all bark." The habit became a quirky reflex to ringing church bells that Joanie passed down through generations.
Joanie attended West Side High School and Marywood College in Scranton. She eloped with her high school sweetheart, Claude J. O’Boyle in 1949, a union that lasted until Claude’s death nearly 50 years later.
Claude and Joan left Scranton for Brockton, Massachusetts, in the early 60s with their first five children. They would have one more in New England.
In the 1970s Claude left the corporate world and the family moved to Cape Cod where they owned and operated the Whydah Restaurant in South Yarmouth. Joanie charmed the customers with her unique brand of cheerful abuse, while Claude provided memorably tasty fare in the Sicilian style of his mother, the formidable culinary mistress, Grandma Ruth. After they sold the Whydah, Joanie learned graphic arts from scratch to produce the advertising publication that she and Claude owned until retiring in the 90s to Naples, Florida.
After Claude’s passing in 1998, Joanie devoted her extraordinary skills as a seamstress, crochet artist, and craftswoman to benefit the Saint Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Naples.
Joanie’s later years illustrated her often repeated words, “Just because there’s snow on the roof, doesn’t mean the fire’s out inside.” She drove her yellow Mustang convertible, her snowy hair flying in the breeze, until she realized fellow drivers were “just too damn slow for their own good,” and reluctantly left the driving to others.
She outlived her husband of 49 years, Claude; her daughter, Megan; and her brother Thomas.
She is survived by her children: Harold O’Boyle and his wife, Sally, San Jose, Costa Rica; Larry O’Boyle, West Dennis, MA; Bridgid and her husband George Webster, Diamond Head, MI; Brian O’Boyle and his wife Margaret, Key West, FL; Molly Ann Murphy and her husband Steve Moore, South Yarmouth, MA; Ed Johnson, the widower of daughter Megan, Smithfield, UT; three sisters: Elizabeth Vournakes, of Chambersburg, PA; Jean Rhue and Sally Kearney, of Scranton, PA; eleven grandchildren, and a bright yellow Mustang convertible.
A service will be held and announced at a later date in Scranton, PA, where Joanie’s ashes will be interred beside those of her husband.
The family would like to express our gratitude for the kind help of Hospice Visiting Nurses Association of the Florida Keys, where donations may be sent in lieu of flowers in the name of Joan O’Boyle, C/O Hospice Care of Southeast Florida, 91256 Overseas Highway, Tavernier Towne Center #11, Tavernier, FL 33070.
We also want to thank Joan’s sister, Sally Kearney, whose irrepressible good cheer and loving companionship brightened the last years of Joanie’s life immeasurably, and Joan’s son Brian and his wife, Peggy, who cared for her in her final months with the kindness and love we can all only hope for as our own lives come to a close.
“The song is ended but the melody lingers on.”
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