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Diana Pillsworth
Diana S. (Sikorski) Pillsworth died from pancreatic cancer on January 22, 2020. She was 74.
Born at Southampton Hospital on May 15, 1945, to Chester and Alice (Wolinski) Sikorski, she spent her childhood days playing on the family potato farm with her siblings and dreaming of having a horse one day.
After graduating from Southampton High School in 1963, she attended SUNY Albany where she studied French. One of her fondest memories, survivors said, was a trip to France made possible by the generosity of her parents.
She taught high school French for several years before marrying Robert Pillsworth and having two children, Valerie and Andrew. To support her family, she took a job at a nursing home in upstate New York and worked long hours caring for the sick at night and her children during the day. In 1980, she moved with her children back to Water Mill, and began a career working for the Dominican Sisters, caring for the sick and those in need. It was a job that she enjoyed deeply and did well, and she cherished her time spent with patients and their families, survivors said.
Ms. Pillsworth was a woman who gave everything to her work and was a devoted, loving mother to her family. Survivors said she was a woman whose life was marked by the sacrifices she made caring for those she loved. She was, above all else, a woman of great faith and was a devoted parishioner of both Our Lady of Poland Church and, in recent years, the Basilica Parish of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Survivors said she treasured her reading groups at Rogers Memorial Library, playing bridge, her membership in the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons and the trips and time she spent with other members, working the Christmas Sale at Our Lady of the Hamptons School where she could watch her grandchildren learn and grow, the hours spent walking the track at SYS and her Bible study groups at the Basilica Parish of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. She lived life to its fullest, survivors said, until it was cut short by illness.
Her memory will live on in the notes she left behind in books she lent to friends and family, and in the blooms of plants she passed on to other plant lovers. Survivors said they will remember the many times she was standing ringside at horse shows watching her granddaughter live out her dream of riding, sitting in the stands watching her grandson play basketball or lacrosse, and as a woman who loved yard sales, and as a someone who joyfully spent the last week of August enjoying all the sights and excitement of the Hampton Classic year after year.
In 2010, she retired and started a new chapter of her life, one that was filled with travel, gardening, book clubs, bridge games, and time doting on her two grandchildren, Harrison and Evelyn Hanley.
She is survived by her two children, Andrew Pillsworth and Valerie (Pillsworth) Hanley and husband James; two grandchildren, Harrison and Evelyn; two sisters, Irene Sikorski and Loretta Gaston; a brother-in-law, Jerry Gaston; and niece and nephew Maria Cawley and Jerry Gaston Jr. She was predeceased by her parents, Chester and Alice Sikorski; and brother Russell, all of Water Mill.
Visitation was at O’Connell-Rothwell Funeral Home in Southampton on January 24. A funeral Mass was held on January 25 at the Basilica Parish of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Roman Catholic Church on Hill Street. Interment followed at the church cemetery.
Memorial donations may be made to the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, Rogers Memorial Library or Our Lady of the Hamptons School.
on Jan 28, 2020