Sunday, March 22, 1942 – Monday, Nov. 25, 2024
Grafton – MaryEllen “Peter” Petro Angell passed away on November 25th, 2024 in the company of family at the age of 82. Born on March 22, 1942, in Lackawanna, New York, she was the daughter of Joseph Petro and Hedwig Sprute.
Peter spent her childhood in Orchard Park, New York, graduating from Orchard Park High, class of 1960. In high school, she was a member of her local swim team and enjoyed synchronized swimming and skiing. She attended St. Lawrence University, majoring in math and minoring in art. It was here that she met the love of her life, William “Bill” James Angell II, while playing tennis in her first year PE class. She and Bill were married in the Spring of 1964, just before graduation.
Peter and Bill loved living in beautiful places, enjoying the seasons in Vermont as well as the coastal life of Florida. Along with their children, Alison and Bill, they loved traveling, having philosophical conversations over dinner, and spending weekends boating and water skiing. Peter had a varied work-life ranging from government analytics during the Vietnam war, running a successful family insurance business with her husband, Bill, owning her own art gallery, to building a marketing business.
In her later years, she was an involved grandmother, providing daycare for Sage when she was a toddler to attending soccer games, band concerts, and dance recitals for Lily and Taylor. Peter loved playing tennis, cooking, gardening, her cats and dogs, crafts with her grandchildren, visits with family, Hershey’s chocolate, and a good Vodka martini. Her boundless energy and optimism will be dearly missed.
Peter Angell is predeceased by her parents, her husband, and by her two brothers, Louis Petro and Francis Petro. She is survived by her two children, Alison S. Angell and William J. Angell II, her brother, Joseph Petro, her sister, Nancy Dowrey, as well as her two sisters-in-law, Judith Josephson and Marni Hennessey, who were true sisters indeed. Additionally, Peter is succeeded by son-in-law, Matthew Volckmann, daughter-in-law, Bex Angell, three grandchildren, Sage Angell, Lily Volckmann and Taylor Volckmann, as well as many nieces and nephews.
A Celebration of Life for Peter will be scheduled at later date so that her family members and friends from around the country will be able to attend.
In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Peter may be made to one of her favorite charities, World Wildlife Fund: https://gifts.worldwildlife.org/gift-center/one-time-donation.
Tribute
How to encompass a life? Those who know her might find it difficult to choose what fundamentally marked Peter. Personal qualities, professional achievements, family relationships, celebrations, crushing defeats, burdens overcome, great joys. She was a fierce and complex woman, ever and always true to herself, and maybe that is the best place to begin.
Peter had a smile that beamed. She entered your presence with a force, an electric, yet positive energy. She awakened people, challenged them. “The most important thing, I was an optimist,” she said. She believed we should all feel this way, in our deepest waters, urging, even expecting you to return the same. She would call you out. “Who gives a rat’s ass, don’t let the turkeys get you down!”
She was smart, quirkily intelligent and great with math. There was no fooling Peter. This is a woman who noticed the details, wrote code for computers at a time when one laptop filled an entire room. She was an achiever and loved to use her drive to awaken it in others. Noticing strategies naturally, Peter often figured things out and knew the score long before the rest of us.
She loved passionately. Her children felt that every day, cooking, cheerleading, assisting, educating, shepherding and challenging. The two great families of her life had a welcome home with Peter, her vivacious and hilarious siblings, and the ever-loving clan into which she married. And evident to all who knew her, was the intensity of her marriage to Bill. Frank, open and intimate, it was a relationship whose depth and passion few failed to notice. Their devotion spanned a quarter century, and when it was tragically cut short, she was forced to rediscover herself.
Peter was a survivor. She understood what it took to make, and fight, your way through the world. Lessons learned guided her, and when life tilted and dipped, she regained her balance. Experience was often a harsh instructor, but she always stuck to her guns. She advocated against injustice, particularly on behalf of women, championing her own rights in the workplace. She would make her own way in the world, “Your family falls into a pile of manure and come out smelling like roses,” her father would say, proud of the Hungarian immigrant will, as strong in her as it was in him.
What does it come to describing a human life? Christmases, love letters, the smell of garlic heating in butter, all the songs and games, or just a familiar aged coaster. Too many things and not enough, perhaps. Peter might say this, “Life is worth living. Through tragedy, through loneliness, through time. Find your people and protect them, and never, ever let your passion be dimmed.”
