Mary J. Golway

Mary J. Golway, a native of Staten Island, died in her home in New Jersey on Dec. 2. She was 92.
She was born on April 20, 1931, in a long-vanished time and place. The Great Depression had brought ruin to many in the adopted land of her Irish immigrant father, Charles Kerrigan, and his wife, Elizabeth Sommers. Staten Island was nearly rural, with a population of just 150,000, some of whom made their living as farmers.
Though she later lived in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Staten Island – especially Tottenville – was the place she always called home.
She delighted in telling stories of her young adulthood, which centered on her love of the Brooklyn Dodgers and her trips to Ebbets Field from her parents’ apartment in Bushwick. She pointed out – often – that rather than pay an extra nickel for a transfer on the subway, she walked through Prospect Park on her way to Flatbush to watch her favorite team.
She and her late firefighter husband, Thomas, began their life as a family in the Berry Houses in Dongan Hills. They moved to Tottenville around 1960. They retired to the Poconos in 1987. During those Tottenville years, she was a devoted member of Our Lady Help of Christians R.C. Church. Her three sons attended the parish school. She was a member of Mary Mother of God R.C. Church in Hillsborough, N.J. at the time of her death.
She and her husband traveled frequently, including two memorable trips to Ireland, in 1983 and in 1991, during which she visited the town in which her father was born. Not long ago, she was presented with an original copy of her father’s birth certificate, which was thought to have been lost in a fire.
She was a voracious reader of mysteries, especially those written by Mary Higgins Clark and Sue Grafton. Not surprisingly, then, she also enjoyed television mysteries, especially “Murder, She Wrote” and “Midsomer Murders.”
She was an Elvis Presley fan and fondly recalled her trip to Graceland many years ago. But nothing surpassed her devotion to her Dodgers – even in her final days, she spoke about the day in the early 1950s when she and her late sister, Rita, met Dodger centerfielder Duke Snider. An old black-and-white picture of that moment was hanging in her room on the day she died.
She is survived by three sons, Terry, Tom and Mike; daughters-in-law Eileen Duggan, Elyse Golway and Laura Brown, and seven grandchildren, Mary, Andrew, William, Katie, Conor, Alexandra and Emily.