Helen J. Formica
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Helen J. "Pinky" (Staniszewski) Formica, aged 83, of South Glastonbury passed away suddenly but peacefully, on Tuesday, August 2.
She was born in Meriden and spent her grade school years living on Olive Street, where she made lifelong friends. While in high school, she helped by swinging a hammer as her father, Walter Staniszewski and mother, Helen Staniszewski, built a home on Paddock Avenue in Meriden, where her parents lived and held countless family gatherings until their respective passings in 1989 and 2005.
Helen attended St. Stanislaus School for grade school, graduating from Meriden High School in 1957. She then attended Becker Junior College (later Becker College) in Worcester, MA, where she met the love of her life, Joseph (Joe) Formica, on a blind date. Their meeting, as it's said, was history, and they were married in January of 1961. Joe survives her.
They raised two daughters, Marcia Formica, now of South Glastonbury, and Pamela Formica, now of Burlington, Vermont. They also survive her, along with their respective spouses, Timothy Fieweger and Victor Arballo, Marcia and Tim's two sons, James and Owen, and Pamela's and Victor's step-daughter/daughter, Eve Moeykens-Arballo.
Also surviving Helen are many wonderful and loving cousins with whom she had been delighted to have reconnected through family reunions in recent years.
She loved the outdoors, fishing, and gardening. She was an adventurous cook, and the first mom her children knew to buy one of the earliest microwave ovens when the family lived in North Carolina in the early 1970s, even taking a special class in microwave cooking, coming out of it with a mean recipe for pineapple upside-down cake. She routinely bought live Maine lobsters, fearlessly preparing them in her and Joe's favorite way: split, baked and stuffed. She did the "splitting" of the lobsters herself ("so they wouldn't suffer" in boiling water), a skill neither of her daughters ever managed to master.
She was highly creative, also taking art lessons and advanced sewing classes, the latter of which augmented her already strong abilities as a seamstress. As a result, as young children, Marcia and Pamela often had the most inventive Halloween costumes in the neighborhood, and they invariably sported matching dresses for holidays. Helen's crowning achievement as a seamstress was an elaborate antebellum-style pink taffeta gown, complete with pickups, for Pamela's high school senior prom.
Helen was an animal lover and previous pet-owner, more recently taking special joy watching birds of all kinds, especially the hummingbirds at her feeders and planters.
A memorial service will be held at Meriden Memorial Funeral Home, 450 Broad Street, Meriden on Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 12 p.m. Calling hours will begin at 11:00 a.m. followed by the service at noon. For online condolences visit: www.meridenmemorialfh.com
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Connecticut Humane Society (https://cthumane.org, 701 Russell Road, Newington, CT 06111).