Mary Patricia Boland, 84, passed away peacefully surrounded by her three daughters on Tuesday, March 29, 2022, at her home in Jenkintown, PA. Previously, she was a longtime resident of Rutherford, NJ, where she lived from 1970-2021.
Born on August 24th, 1937, to Julia Young (White) and Timothy Young, Mary was the beloved wife of the late Edgar J. Boland, and the loving mother of the late Daniel Thomas Boland (Eileen) of River Edge, NJ, Cathleen Boland Longo (Leonard) of Glenside, PA, Linda Boland Abraham (Magid) of Boca Raton, FL, and Maureen Boland (Scott Donahue) of Wyncote, PA.
Mary graduated from Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair, NJ, and went on to major in Elementary Education at Kean College. She began her teaching career in Kearny, NJ, before starting her family with “Eddie”, as she fondly called her husband, who was a Port Authority Engineer. Mary later taught at St. Mary’s Grammer School in Rutherford for many years and, finally, at Berkeley Terrace Elementary School in Irvington the last decade of her career.
In addition to raising four children and teaching, Mary was an active member in her church community and spent many years volunteering as a teacher of CCD at St. Mary’s in Rutherford and, later, helping to run the Food Pantry at St. Joseph’s Church in East Rutherford. She was an avid reader as well as a lover of music and the arts; she enjoyed taking the bus from the end of her street, Hackett Place, into Manhattan with her sisters, Kathy and Dorothy, daughters, and grandchildren to see Broadway plays, in particular. In her later years, Mary cherished making new friends and reconnecting with old ones at The Kip Center in Rutherford. She loved the Jersey Shore but also relished traveling the world and did so with her family to Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, and Denmark, among other places. Nothing made her happier than seeing a St. Patrick’s Day parade with her son, Dan, or sitting on her front porch in Rutherford with family, drinking tea and admiring her garden.
The daughter of an Irish immigrant, Mary was fiercely proud of her heritage as well as thankful for the opportunities American life afforded her. She had a warm, loving, generous spirit and a gift for recognizing the best parts of people; she could make conversation with anyone. Most of all, Mary cherished her family and her 11 grandchildren, Jack, Andrew, Lauren, Brendan, Matthew, Thomas, Sean, Sheila, Patrick, Julia, and Caitlin, and her great grandchildren, Christopher and Daniel. She liked to give out money not only to her grandchildren but also to strangers in need.
Friends will be received Friday evening from 7-9 p.m. at The Calhoun-Mania Funeral Home, 19 Lincoln Ave., Rutherford, NJ; Funeral Mass at St. Mary’s R.C. Church in Rutherford, NJ, at 10:30 a.m. Interment at Holy Cross Cemetery, North Arlington, NJ. In lieu of flowers, donations for the Ukranian relief effort can be made to Project C.U.R.E., (https://projectcure.org/) and the St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church Food Pantry, 120 Hoboken Rd., East Rutherford, NJ.