Felicia Connolly
Felicia Connolly
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Out of college, she worked for Northeast Airlines as a private secretary to the Purchasing Agent until she became a mother in 1963 and spent the next thirteen years raising her two sons. In 1976 she began working at the Wenham Museum as a bookkeeper until 1998 when she retired.
Felicia loved fresh cut flowers, her pets: Pie Wacket, Tigger and Lexa, "Zits" comic strip, reading a good book and spending time with dear friends. She also loved finding an Indian Pipe or Lady Slipper in the woods, cooking and counted cross stitch. But what kept her going most of all was her family and watching her grandson Jake grow!
Felicia is survived by: her son Kevin and his wife Kara of Byfield, MA; her son Marc of Lynnfield, MA; her grandson John "Jake" James Connolly; her sister Linda Bollettino of New Jersey; and her sister Carole Auth of Connecticut.
Her funeral service will be at Campbell Funeral Home, 525 Cabot Street, Beverly, on Thursday, February 1, at 11 am. Relatives and friends are invited to attend. Visiting hours prior to the service from10 to 11am. Contributions may be made in Felicia's memory to the Wenham Museum. Information, directions, condolences at www.campbellfuneral.com.
To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Felicia, please visit our floral store.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
3 Entries
Christina de Marval
February 1, 2024
I will always remember my esteemed Auntie Felicia as an uncommonly capable and consistently cheerful role model. She was a woman who improved the lives of all who knew her with a warm touch and practical wisdom.
Among my favorite childhood memories, Grampy´s silent home movie screenings with him affectionately narrating the scenes are some of the best. My first impression of Auntie Felicia was of her as a teen in the 50s driving a tractor down a bumpy country road with her twin sisters bouncing merrily alongside her. That moment captured the quality I most admired in Auntie Felicia: young at heart, she was the kind of woman who could take the wheel in any situation.
From those films still looping in my mind, I nostalgically picture my Nana´s beloved peonies. She was an accomplished horticulturist who studied botany at Cornell and grew spectacular gardens wherever she lived. I did not inherit her green thumb, but my grandmother´s gardens inspired me to grow peonies too. The blooms epitomize Haartz women - graceful and gorgeous, but also fragile and ephemeral. Feminine floral harbingers that perennially bloom in May, signaling a warmer season ahead. Reliable beauties that arrive dependably every season after dispiriting winter interludes.
During the darkest time in my life, Auntie Felicia sent me a get well card with words of comfort that planted a seed of hope in my heart. Haartz women are hearty, she wrote. By claiming me as Haartz stock like our sturdy ancestors, she bestowed an unforgettable blessing. She gave me the insight that I am descended from generations of survivors, and I got to the other side guided by this north star. Her great kindness gave me the confidence to heal and remains a beacon from above.
A lively correspondent, Auntie Felicia shared this keeper in 2009. This is her reply to a random recipe exchange in one of those group chainmails that usually land with inconvenient timing. These are her exact words:
"To somewhat redeem myself, I'm enclosing this extremely simple yet ever so crisp and tasty recipe: "Insalata di Finocchio" Fennel Salad for 4 - Using mandolin or very sharp knife, shred 2 cleaned heads of fennel bulb widthwise as thinly as possible. Soak in icy water 2-3 minutes. Drain well. Pat dry w/paper towels. Season w/medium coarse sea salt, a good drizzle of evoo and a generous grinding of black pepper. Will keep covered in fridge for several hours. So cleanly good !! Love to all, Felicia
Like her, this recipe is elegant in its simplicity and it remains as fresh and light and economical as she was.
I hope you cherish it as I do. May you rest in eternal peace dear Auntie Felicia.
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Lynne Bishop
February 1, 2024
Felicia was a godsend to me as a young mother and a surrogate grandmother to my two boys. She knew just how to talk to them and play with them and she had “the best toys” which I knew had been Marc and Kevin’s. She always had special Halloween treats for them in a neighborhood where there were no trick or treaters. I will always be grateful for her kindness and generosity and treasure those memories.
Linda Marinelli-Bollettino
January 11, 2024
For those who knew my treasured older sister Felicia during certain of but not all of her 82 years,or, perhaps, only heard of her without ever having met her, I have written a sort of obituary/eulogy which I hope will illustrate some of the verve, curiosity and thoughtfulness which she to her life.
Linda Marinelli-Bollettino
No other first-born child could delight her parents more thoroughly than Felicia Antoinette, born on July 31, 1941 to Anthony Felix and Charlotte Louise (Haartz) Marinelli. The corollary to this truth is that Felicia, named for father, will reflect his "joie de vivre," his creativity, and his artistry to the end of her days on December 21, 2023.
Photographed learning to crawl, a quicksilver Felicia guilelessly eludes "Michael O´Rourke," her mother´s fluffy fox terrier assigned to watch over the little one. At ten months of age, the sprite has managed to mesmerize Charlotte´s perennially reliable Scottish mascot with her charm and speed.
Now pictured upon her feet, Felicia, beaming more brightly than the sunlight spotlighting her, rushes headlong toward her first birthday hug. The prized peonies in the flower bed behind her at our 45 Lansing Road, Lynnfield, MA cottage relinquish their blue ribbons.
At three, the pretty, pert damsel poses for a formal portrait, decked out in the studio´s velvet bonnet and fur muff. She upstages the staging.
In 1950, Felicia is missing a tooth or three, but she still commands the scene. An eight-millimeter film documents her steering a Model A farm rig along a narrow forest dirt lane at her grandmother´s farm with one hand as she gestures to her father to move aside with the other. She is fully aware that there is risk involved in her imminent need to shift the contraption´s gimmicky gears while keeping her five-year old twin sisters, Carole and Linda, on board behind her and her father intact in front of her. He is running backward struggling to capture the event on his new camera.
The great-granddaughter of shepherds from Cocullo, Italia, Felicia knows that it generally falls to her to keep Carole and Linda, within the approximately three-quarter mile wide perimeter around the home on rural Larch Row in Wenham, MA, to which the Marinellis have moved in 1952. She and her close friend Martha Wildes seem to relish thinking up adventures that the twins, three and a half years younger, are more or less obliged to follow, sometimes to their peril.
Freed from flock duty by the time she is twelve, Felicia crosses the railroad tracks to the south and heads for town. One day, sporting her trademark false pigtails, which she has fashioned by thickly braiding plaits of brown yarn and cleverly attaching them to a headband to substantiate her own too thin hair, Felicia comes down Larch Row astride a beautiful sorrel gelding. With her best friend Rosemary Rogers in the saddle and Felicia riding bareback behind her, the two teen agers proudly guide "Rommy´s" magnificent "Copper King" over the front lawn toward Anthony Marinelli, whose speechless reaction seems unduly stricken right until the moment the huge horse´s front hooves break less than regally through the septic tank cover hidden beneath the grass.
Nonetheless, Tony the Builder and Toni the Helper are still a duo in 1955. That year, in spite of no formal training as an excavator, an architect or an engineer, Tony decides that his first-born daughter should have a bedroom of her own by the time she enters Beverly High School in 1956. Having already finished the breezeway, constructed a garage and built retaining walls and a barbecue for the family´s ranch house, Tony feels confident that he and his competent assistant are up to the task.
Continuously burrowing deep into shoulder-width tunnels beneath the foundation to bring out countless buckets of subterranean soil and then re-entering the secured tunnels to snake electrical cords into place, Felicia proves him right. Besides, she already has had ample training in adding judicious amounts of water to the mortar mix in Tony "Cement" Marinelli´s wheel barrows.
Once she has a bedroom, a dressing table and a double-door closet of her own, Felicia and her mother Charlotte share many an excursion to the North Shore Shopping Center, a mall which has just opened on Rte. 128 in Peabody on September 12, 1958. To Carole´s and Linda´s immense envy, one of Felicia´s zingiest purchases is a pair of scarlet patent leather stilettos with tiny black velvet bows attached in back. Felicia practices maintaining her balance in them by demonstrating the latest rock and roll dances from American Bandstand with one twin as the other twin awaits her turn while dutifully ironing clothes or polishing shoes.
After graduating from Beverly High School with the Class of ´59, Felicia majors in Secretarial Skills for two years at Colby Jr. College in New London, NH (now Colby Sawyer College.) Upon graduation in June, 1969, she is hired to work in the front office of Northeast Airlines, where her father has spent decades of nights, days and overtime work and study to move up the ladder from the sheet metal shop to the supremely responsible role of aircraft inspector. In much shorter order, Toni pulls off a major coup by promptly becoming the private secretary to the airline´s purchasing agent. Father and daughter make the forty-minute commute from Wenham to Logan Airport in East Boston twice a day until Felicia´s boyfriend buys her a snazzy, if drafty, used Triumph convertible.
On June 24, 1962, Felicia marries her high school beau, James Francis Connolly. Beneath sheets of unrelenting rain, they make a remarkably attractive couple. Were they to be plasticized, Jim-tall,trim, handsome and smiling broadly-and Felicia-her hair piled up into a high chignon, her full-length lace gown nipped close to her tiny waist, her sparkling eyes dramatized by Elizabeth Taylor eyebrows- could pose convincingly atop any wedding cake.
Felicia and Jim continue to complement one another for the fifty-six years of their marriage. After their first child, Marc Francis Connolly, is born on November 3, 1963, the family leaves their 50 Butman Street apartment in Beverly, MA for a home of their own on Cogswell Avenue. In 1975, the family, now including Kevin John, born on July 28, 1965, moves to 57 Larch Row. The old family home becomes their new one once Charlotte and Tony realize that his transfer to Kent, Washington will be permanent.
With Jim scrupulously grooming the grounds, the boys work out back or in the side driveway on bicycles and cars. Meanwhile, Felicia tends flower and vegetable beds, curates her prized doll collection, prepares healthy and increasingly complex dishes and perfects her sewing and counted cross-stitch techniques beneath the watchful gaze of her ancient cat "Tigger" and beside the soulful blue eyes of her new Siberian Husky, "Lexa." Felicia hones each skill through diligence and perfectionism.
Together Felicia and Jim haul home a spinning wheel and a heavy cast iron wood stove, which they disassemble, clean, and return to working order. They also become integral members of a circle of friends in Wenham, with its renowned Museum as their hub. There, Felicia works as a docent at the Claflin Richards House and then as a bookkeeper, curator and scout for the Museum itself. Once their boys have grown, the couple winters in Nevis and in Lauderdale, Florida and takes trips to Puerto Rico and China.
As age and a series of illnesses begin a sustained campaign to weaken her, Felicia declares that her innate stubbornness holds them at bay. Typically, she researches each successive malady and studies each medical procedure, oft-times as it is actually in progress. Knowing that the assaults might vary but will inevitably continue, she encourages herself with the philosophical comment, "This, too, shall pass." No drama queen, she has little patience for those who moan and groan through affliction.
After Jim dies on May 4, 2018, Felicia gazes about her at the untended Reynolds Farm fields and the Miles River outback and sighs, realizing that the time has come for her to leave her childhood home. Wisely, she elects to move to the Edgewood Retirement Community, with its lovely setting, its superb and caring staff, and its top-notch rehabilitative facility, the Meadows.
In spite of the wicked Covid-19 Lockdown, the move absolutely rejuvenates Felicia. Dividing her time between the privacy of her Zoom-expanded apartment and the society of vigorous and interesting new friends, Felicia sets up hallway displays, sets out hallway puzzles, attends conferences and films, discovers she can really write poetry and rediscovers the native dexterity and patience which enable her to fold literally hundreds of intricate origami cranes to be sold at Edgewood´s craft fairs. Until esophageal cancer no longer permits her to swallow, she joins lively, lovely brunches.
Felicia meets her terminal diagnosis with somber equanimity and resolve. Sustained by her ever-vigilant, always resourceful, heroically indefatigable support team-Marc, Phyllis, Kevin, Kara, and Sandi-Felicia takes leave on the winter solstice.
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