Shrewsbury – Karen Marie (McSorley) Imbalzano, 57, of Shrewsbury, passed away peacefully on Friday, October 28, 2022, surrounded by her family, after a courageous five-year battle with metastatic leiomyosarcoma.
Karen is survived by her loving husband of 33 years; Anthony N. “Tony” Imbalzano, Jr of Shrewsbury, and the lights of her life – her children Thomas Imbalzano and his wife Kristine of Nashville, TN, Katherine Muirhead and her husband Benjamin of Washington, DC, and Julia Imbalzano and her fiance Scott Goodheart of New York, NY. She is also survived by her parents, Richard and Susan (White) McSorley of Reading, her sister and brother-in-law Ann Marie and Eric Turner of Stoneham, her brother and sister-in-law Richard and Cindy McSorley of Biddeford, ME, and her many nieces, nephews, cousins, and longtime friends whom she loved dearly.
Family was of the utmost importance; Karen and Tony rarely missed any family get-together. Karen grew up in Reading, MA and graduated from Reading Memorial High School in 1983. She attended the University of Pennsylvania where she both graduated with a B.S. in Biology and met the love of her life and future husband, Tony. She later earned an MS degree in Environmental Sciences from UMass-Boston.
She worked for many years as a research associate at UMass Chan Medical School.
Karen and Tony raised their kids in Shrewsbury, where Karen took an active role in nearly all of her children’s activities, volunteering her time in the schools, Girl Scouts, and countless other endeavors. She was an active member of the Shrewsbury Social Club, serving in various leadership roles.
She loved to travel, adored summer days at the beach, especially Roger Wheeler Beach in Narragansett, RI, and truly treasured her time with her many friends. Karen was always on the go, meeting friends for coffee, taking walks, going to workouts or classes at the Y, doing home improvement projects, and watching birds.
She had a deep and passionate love for birds of all types, but especially loved water birds; she and Tony kept a lifelog of all the birds they had seen together starting from the spring before they married. Their home, as all who ever visited knew, was a testament to this passion, with artwork, sculptures and figurines of birds from across North America. She will be missed by all who knew her,
Relatives and Friends are cordially invited to attend visiting hours at the Chiampa Funeral Home, 5 Church Road, on the Common, Shrewsbury Center, on Thursday, November 3, 2022, from 4-7 pm. Funeral mass will be held at St Anne’s Church, 130 Boston Turnpike, Shrewsbury, on Friday, November 4, 2022, at 11 am.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Sarcoma and Bone Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, https://www.dana-farber.org/sarcoma-and-bone-cancer-treatment-center the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, https://nebg.org or the Rose Monahan Hospice Home in Worcester, MA through the VNA Care portal. https://vnacare.org/donors/ways-to-give/memorial-tribute-gifts.
