Lucille Justine Roth Meltzer, age 89, peacefully passed away on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015.
Born on Mar. 20, 1926, in Flushing, N.Y., she was the daughter of the late Walter F. and Jeannette (Canney) Roth.
Lucille lived most of her life in the Queensborough Hill section of Flushing. After graduating from Newtown High School at age 16, she worked for Atlantic Telegraph and Telephone for 20 years in the teletype division. She was a member of the Telephone Pioneers. She retired after the birth of her daughters to be a stay-at-home mother and volunteered as a Girl Scout leader and as a tutor at St. Ann’s School in Flushing. Lucille was a loving wife to her husband, Ernest, who died in 1993, and was a bookkeeper for his business. Throughout her life, Lucille loved books, libraries and animals, especially dogs.
Lucille moved to Cold Spring in 2002 and said it reminded her of “how Flushing used to be.” She loved to spend her time with her grandchildren and was a member of the Highland Garden Club, the Butterfield Quilting Guild and a parishioner at Our Lady of Loretto Church. Most recently, she was a resident of Camphill Ghent and, finally, Whittier Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Ghent, N.Y.
Lucille is survived by her daughters and sons-in-law, Maureen (Meltzer) McGrath and John McGrath of Cold Spring and Lisa (Meltzer) Caproni and Julian Caproni of Chatham, N.Y., and by her grandchildren, Mae Justine McGrath and Graeme Martin McGrath, of Cold Spring, as well as her nieces Patricia (Roth) Buckley of Huntsville, Alabama and Joanne (Roth) Schmidt of Mount Dora, Florida. She was predeceased by her brother Walter T. Roth.
A memorial mass will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 18, at St. James Roman Catholic Church in Chatham, N.Y. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her name to the Humane Society.