Eileen Zanardi

Eileen R. Zanardi was born Eileen Mona Raia to parents Dr. Michele A. R. Raia, a prominent surgeon, and Mona Kelly Raia, a registered nurse, on May 10, 1932, in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Teachers College, Columbia University, she taught fourth and fifth graders in the New York City public schools before marrying a man from the neighborhood on whom she had had a childhood crush, Theodore J. Zanardi, a former corporate executive. She passed away on what was the 65th anniversary of their wedding, July 9, 2025. From a young age, Eileen enjoyed modern dance and other arts. She wrote plays for family and friends to perform on birthdays and at dinner parties, and she became a devoted herb gardener until the final years of her life. As a mother, she took great pride in rearing her four children and in encouraging their individual and collective aspirations. Eileen and her family lived primarily in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania. Eileen settled in the Lehigh Valley after the death of her husband in 1992 and became a long-time guide at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts in Historic Bethlehem and an avid participant of a local book group. Her interest in history, particularly her intimate knowledge of her family's history, was well documented, and she would regale her children, her grandchildren, and her nieces and nephews with detailed stories of their ancestors. She will be laid to rest beside her husband at Somerset Hills Memorial Park in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.