Mary C. DaPrato

1950 - 2022

Mrs. Mary C. DaPrato

Mrs. Mary Christine "Chrissy" DaPrato passed away at Miner's Memorial Medical Center, Coaldale, on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022. She will be lovingly remembered by her husband, Joseph John Paul DaPrato, with whom she shared 48 years of marriage.

Born in Pottsville in the Warren Hospital Clinic, she was a daughter of the late Paul and Mary Catherine (Kern) Kopla.

She was a 1968 graduate of Tamaqua Area High School and was proud to have attended a one-room schoolhouse in the Lewistown Valley during grade school.

She was also a proud member of the famed Tamaqua Girls Drum and Bugle Corps.

Chrissy matriculated to the Harrisburg Pennsylvania College of Medical Arts, earning her Registered Nursing degree. She trained in Harrisburg Hospital, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Camp Hill Polyclinic Hospital in Camp Hill. She worked as a surgical nurse in the operating room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hazleton.

After marrying her husband in 1974, she worked and co-managed with her husband their family's neighborhood market, the East End Market, which opened in 1948, and she and Joe ran it until retiring in 2014.

Chrissy attended the joint UCC and Lutheran Church, where she taught both Sunday school and Bible school while singing in the church choir. She was also an active member of St. John Slovak Lutheran Church, Lansford, where she belonged to the Ladies Aid Society.

For many years through the Tamaqua Elks, Chrissy organized and was credited with taking the veterans from the VA Hospital in Wilkes-Barre to the Red Barons baseball games.

A very dedicated wife and homemaker, Chrissy enjoyed cooking and was an avid reader. She and Joe loved to travel, taking many special trips together.

Surviving in addition to her husband are a brother, Paul Jon Kopla, and his wife, Theresa, of Valparaiso, IN; and a niece, Dr. Ashley Ann Kopla, also of Indiana.

A special thanks to her caregiver and friend, Samantha Gibbons.

Service: Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to the E. Franklin Griffiths Funeral Home & Cremation Services, 655 E. Broad St., Tamaqua. A celebration of Chrissy's life will be held on a later date. Interment, St. Joseph's R.C.C. Cemetery Bloomingdale. Contri-butions in her name may be made to the St. John Slovak Lutheran Church, 1 E. Abbott St., Lansford, PA 18232, or the Arbor Day Foundation, 100 Arbor Ave., Nebraska City, NE 68410. Online condolences or a fond memory of Chrissy can be expressed by visiting www.griffithsfuneralhomes.com.