DIANE DOWNEY

DOWNEY--Diane. Diane (Adele) Horowitz Downey, born July 21, 1932, devoted wife to Christopher Downey and loving mother to Hilary Dworkin, Steven Lipin (Amy) and Nancy Lipin (Michael O'Brien), passed away peacefully on April 24, 2022 in New Haven. Diane's last supper was a wonderful Passover dinner on April 16. She was drinking a white burgundy premier cru, having Zabar's matzoh balls and gefilte fish, Amy's brisket, and was surrounded by family singing Dayenue. It is fitting that the last supper was Passover, when the prophet Elijah enters everyone's home as an unknown guest. Mom's door was always open. Diane Adele Horowitz was born to Bea and Samuel Horowitz from the Bronx. She went to public high school in the Bronx and became a proud City College graduate. Neither poor nor middle class, they grew up in a warm and rich household filled with political and intellectual debates. Rockaways in the summer when the wives and kids would stay out and the husbands would commute from the Bronx. Her life spanned the arch of two centuries, coming of age in post-World War II suburbia and the first generation of women to enter the workforce, lasting through the age of Instagram, where she thought each Instagram story she saw of a grandchild was personally sent to her. She was part of the first generation of women who went into the workforce in the 1970s and she worked her whole life and indeed commuted into New York CIty for many years. She worked at American Red Cross, Journal of Neurosurgery and St Luke's Roosevelt. She was fabulously well-read, always two books plus the New Yorker; Sunday Review of Books, London Review of Books, New Republic when it was still read, the Atlantic before it was popular. Be prepared to discuss the topics of the day if you're joining for dinner. She was cool, she went to Grateful Dead concerts (before everyone at Grateful Dead concerts became old), she was active and was lucky enough to marry a man 11 years her junior. Besides her husband, children and grandchildren, mom had a love affair with the New York Mets. When the Mets opened Shea she became a lifelong Mets fan. From Rusty Staub to Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, RA Dickey, and her beloved Jacob de Grom, she passed down and shared that love with her son, her daughter-in- law and her grandson. The most important thing that happened in mom's life was Christopher. They loved nothing more than going out to Montauk in the barren wind swept winter with a cozy fire and snuggling in the house. She was blessed with a long life and we were blessed to have her and Christopher in our lives for so long and become the most amazing grandparents to Emily, Anna, Madeline, Margot, Sam, and Hannah. Her influence is in each of them, the confidence she has in them, the expectations she has in all of them, the love she and Christopher have for them. A poem by Hannah Senesh: "There are stars up above, So far away that we only see their light long long after the star itself is gone. And so it is with people that we loved-- Their memories keep shining every brightly Though their time with us is done But the stars that light up the darkest night, These are the lights that guide us. As we live our days, these are the ways we remember." In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Yale Medical School's Smilow Center.