Julia EDNA EDNA Rocheleau

Julia EDNA Rocheleau, passed peacefully May 7th 2024 at Palm Garden of WPB, with her daughter Marie at her side. In her adventurous 96 years Edna brought humor, joy, and deep connection to work, play and daily life. A loyal daughter of Virginia Gilhauser Swartz and Alec Swartz, she was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania on April 11, 1928 and raised in nearby Clymer on Sample Run (Miner's Row) with her two cherished brothers Carl and Edward Swartz (both deceased). As a child she acquired a keen sense of the dignity of labor and was proud to be a coal miner's daughter. From an early age she walked long distances to the school and the post office and reveled in the forest and the creek and the hillslopes of home. As a young girl she was known to spend time sitting in crabapple trees with a shaker of salt, eating 'til there was no room for more.

She excelled in school, and during her high school years spent two life-changing summers in the Women's Land Army, working summers in the Connecticut tobacco camps during World War II. She said "it was like going away to college", with friends, field trips to the city and outings in the countryside as well as plenty of hard labor sewing tobacco leaves for cigars to dry in the sweltering heat of the tobacco barns. She was accepted into the Army Nurse Corps Cadet training program with a college scholarship, and was to enter college in the Fall but the program ended after VE day.

Undeterred, after the war she returned to Hartford Connecticut, gained employment as a clerical worker and lived in single women's housing where she made many friends. Through them she met Andre Joseph Rocheleau (1932-2016) and they wed in January of 1951. She was a loving wife for their 64 years together and a loving mother to their daughters throughout her life. She worked part time outside the home for most of their life together to make ends meet and a little more for simple "extras" otherwise beyond their reach. She savored their many travels and adventures as a family and later as a couple: the road trips through the Mohawk Trail, the forest and farmlands of Vermont, the Pennsylvania mountains and the Blue Ridge; the CB radio friends, boats, antique cars, their move to Boca Raton Florida in 1965 (sailboats boats and trips to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas) and subsequent moves to West Palm Beach (Captain Andy's Bait Shop) and Loxahatchee, (carpentry, wood crafts, home building, antiques, horses, dogs); their move to the Cumberland mountains of South Carolina (horses, dogs, woodcraft and antiques), their membership in various churches in their later years in South Carolina and Florida, all brought them new friends and great joy.

Throughout it all Edna made friends wherever she went, at work, at home, in the neighborhood and at church and did not hesitate to talk to people on the street, in shops and in event spaces. She formed lifelong friendships with other women, maintaining contact across decades and long distances. She was a dedicated wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother , a congenial and supportive colleague, a hardworking and competent employee and a lifelong faithful friend to many. Her home cooked dinners, baked goods, cards, letters, and long uplifting phone calls and contagious sense of humor will be fondly missed by friends, extended family, former co-workers, neighbors, care givers and church members in Hartford, CT, Worcester MA, Virginia Beach VA, Indiana PA, Seneca SC, and Palm Beach County (Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Loxahatchee, West Palm Beach) FL. She is survived by her daughters Dianne Rocheleau and husband Luis Malaret, Marie Rocheleau Graves, and husband Peter Graves, grandchildren Ramon Malaret and wife Amber Hart, Rafael Malaret and greatgrandchildren Ava and Kai Malaret. Services are pending. Family asks that in her memory you watch the full moon rise from the ocean, delight in lilacs, roses and other spring scents, walk a New England or Appalachian forest trail and marvel at the autumn leaves, call an old friend to chat, or make a new friend, remembering Edna's ("Edna-Banedna's") immortal words "We sure had some fun!"