BOCA RATON — Anne M. (Connolly) Formichella, “Nan” to her family and friends, never revealed her age, but those who knew her best say she always looked younger than her years. In high school, she looked much too young and would-be suitors kept their distance — although it wasn’t long before men lined up to date the pretty New York City girl.
Nan and her late husband, Mario, were snowbirds in Boca Raton for more than 20 years, with a winter home at Whitehall on A1A. In 2006, six years after Mario died, Nan sold their house in New Jersey and made Boca Raton her year-round home.
She died in hospice care on Aug. 5.
“She was going to doctors a lot the last few years,” said her son, Paul Formichella. “She was very feisty and full of life. Until very recently she lived at home, got up every day, had her breakfast and put on her makeup. She drove to church for 11 a.m. Mass Monday through Friday. It gave her pleasure.”
Nan Formichella was born and reared in New York City in the Clinton section of Manhattan, an Irish working class neighborhood. When she grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, Manhattan was a very special place. There was so much to do. She told her grandchildren how it was safe to ride the subways home at night returning from a dance in Queens.
She was an only child but had fun with her friends and family. Nan often went to the movies, dances at Catholic parishes, shopped at Macy’s and sometimes went to the mountains in the summer.
Like most good Irish girls, Nan attended Catholic schools from grade 1 to 12. She went to Pace College (now Pace University) in lower Manhattan, where she met Mario.
The couple didn’t get married for 10 years after they met, her son said.
“Nan was a very pretty girl, had many boyfriends and was having too much fun as a single girl in 1940s Manhattan to get married young,” he said. “Mario was not the best looking or most fun guy Nan ever dated, but he was the smartest and most determined. He graduated first in his class at Pace, passed the CPA exam and worked his way up the ladder at a major CPA firm (Ernst & Young) that recognized his business acumen. He pursued Nan for years until she agreed to marry him in 1950.”
Nan was a legal secretary with a passion for shopping. “She loved to wear hats, to shop for clothes in the famous garment district,” her son said.
Both Nan and Mario worked on Wall Street and came from devout Catholic families. She was and he was Italian-American. They married in 1950 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan.
The couple lived more than 50 years in a small suburb of New York called Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., where they raised their family. She was a stay-at-home mother,” her son said, “as soon as she got married she started to have babies.”
Her husband was a good golfer — it was his passion, though Nan could not have cared less about golf or any other sport. But they both loved to dance and both were very good dancers. They went to dinner dances at the golf/country club in New Jersey on Saturday nights with their friends.
Mario continued to move up the ladder at Ernst & Young, and eventually was promoted to the top position as senior partner in the Park Avenue home office. He worked for one firm for 46 years. His job required him to travel the world; Nan traveled with Mario some of the time while she raised the family. But as soon as the youngest child went off to college, Nan could travel as much as she wanted.
“She was the strong woman behind a very successful man,” Paul Formichella remembered.
She is survived by their three children, Susan (Thomas) Corsi of Kensington, Md., Janet (Gregory) McElroy of Potomac, Md., Paul Formichella of Hackensack, N.J, and seven grandchildren.
Funeral Masses were held at St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Deerfield Beach and in New Jersey.
The family asks that donations be sent to St. Ambrose School in Deerfield or Hospice By The Sea in Boca Raton.
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