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Ava Marie (Donovan) Tracy
Ava Marie (Donovan) Tracy of Sag Harbor died on December 15. She was 82.
She was born on March 30, 1941, in Glendale, New York
Her big sister, Claire, was insistent on calling her new sister “Tommie,” modeled after a neighbor named Tommy McLaughlin, who pulled his older sibling around in a wagon.
She attended Sacred Heart grade school in Glendale, Queens, and Dominican Commercial High School in Jamaica, Queens. After graduating, she took a secretarial job in Manhattan.
In the 1960s, she gave birth to four wonderful children, Raymond Peter, William George, Ava Marie and Amy Claire. It immediately became her life’s mission to make sure they knew that she loved them tremendously, her family said.
She was “Aunt Tommie” to Claire’s four children, Fred, Claire, Beth and Ronnie, and spent many a summer on Long Beach in Sag Harbor with them along with her own four to make the “Great 8.”
She had eight grandchildren, Samantha, Nikole, Alexandra, Raymond, Luke, Louie, Victoria and Daniel. She had many more grandchildren and even great-grandchildren by marriage.
She loved being “Grandma,” “Grandma Blue” and “Gram,” and showered all of them with endless love and affection, her family said.
She married Bradley Vincent Tracy in 1982. Their love for each other has been enduring, strong, genuine, devoted and beautiful, according to the family.
The couple would sign letters and greeting cards to each other with the acronym “AILYS” (and I love you so). Her husband was one of the few people in her life that called her by her given name, Ava. ❤️
They were avid New York Ranger fans and even had season tickets for many years. One of her most cherished memories was attending the Rangers Stanley Cup Game 7 win.
She loved celebrating holidays, her family said, and sent beautiful, thoughtful greeting cards in abundance. Christmas was surely her favorite holiday. She loved the Christmas season and all that came with it. She was an Olympic level gift wrapper. She had all the skills: the tight, straight corners, the big bows, the ribbon going this way and that as one continuous piece made curly and frilly at the ends by a crafty technique using one side of a scissors, and the wrap was finished off with a to/from tag with handwriting fit for a king or queen. Her gift wrapping was matched only by the beauty and splendor of her Christmas decorations.
Honorable mention goes to Easter and St Patrick’s Day as favorite holidays. She loved the pomp and ceremony of Easter and was quite adept at dressing her children to the nines in quite uncomfortable but very adorable Easter outfits. She also loved celebrating St. Patrick’s day, as she was very proud of her Irish heritage. She was too much of a homebody to ever venture far enough to visit Ireland, but her family remembers fondly her “Kiss me I’m Irish” buttons, “Erin Go Bragh” shirts and leprechaun decorations and figurines.
She had an impressive collection of Hummels, Precious Moments, Norman Rockwells, lighthouses, nativities, angels, snow globes, vases, straw baskets with flowers and countless other tchotchkes.
She enjoyed sharing fond memories of her childhood. She was famous for telling everyone who would listen, over and over again, about the times she spent with her grandfather, “Pop.” They went to Ebbets field to watch Dodger games, and she described how uncomfortable it was to sit on the wood plank seats. She likely had the opportunity to see Jackie Robinson play early in his career.
She rode with Pop to Harlem to pick up meat to stock his butcher shop. She took great pride in being Pop’s favorite. She shared many fond memories of her grandmother, Nora, as well. Nora played the piano, drank lots of coffee, played cards, bet on the horses and wore Pop’s dress shoes with no socks.
She took great pride in keeping a meticulously clean, well-organized and tastefully decorated home, her family said. She had a peculiar tendency to clean the pots and pans before you were actually done cooking. Procter & Gamble likely had many quarters of windfall profits from her proclivity for Palmolive dish soap and Bounty paper towels to keep her home sparkling clean and invitingly neat.
She spent many years employed in the support of catechism programs in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties. She loved her work, built great friendships with co-workers and cherished the children that participated in the programs. She took her first job outside the home in the early 1970s as a part-time assistant to Sister Catherine for the catechism program at Sacred Heart in Glendale and was paid $36 every two weeks. She spent nine years employed as the banquet manager and then reservation manager at the Holiday Inn Hotel at LaGuardia Airport, the very distinct, architecturally round hotel off the Van Wyck expressway.
She enjoyed singing, according to her family. She listened to the music of Engelbert Humperdink, Barbara Streisand, Perry Como and Dean Martin. Whenever she knew the words, you could be sure she would be singing along. She would sing to entertain her young children on long drives to visit Grandma Ducky in Washington, D.C. Some family favorites included ‘The Army Song,” “The Bakery Song,” “Do-Re-Me,” “My Bill,” “Ave Maria,” “Once in Love with Amy,” “Downtown,” and “Roll Over.”
Staff Writer on Dec 19, 2023