Sparkill, NY - Tappan Location

Eileen McCormack
March 14, 1925 -- April 11, 2022

After a full and wonderful life, Eileen McCormack (nèe Gilroy), a New Hyde Park, Long Island resident for more than 50 years, passed away on April 11, 2022. Devoted wife of John (deceased) for 63 years, Eileen was a caring and loving Mom for her six children and their spouses: Eileen (John) Francis, Meg (Steve) Singer, John, Michael, Timothy (Maria) and Kevin (Patti). Eileen was predeceased by her only sibling Thomas Gilroy, and her parents Tom and Marguerite Gilroy. An avid tennis player well into her 80s, Eileen was very proud of her Brooklyn roots and cared deeply about her half century as a parishioner of Notre Dame RC Church on Long Island. Her 10 wonderful grandchildren Marykate, Sean, Neil, Sydney, Tim, Sarah, Mei, Teigue, Andy, and Clare will miss their biggest fan and most fearsome Scrabble opponent. Eileen spent the last six years of her life living at Dowling Gardens Independent Living complex in Sparkill, NY. She owes a debt of gratitude to the Dominican Nuns at Dowling, who looked after her and kept her laughing.

Visiting hours will be Monday, April 18th, 4-9pm at Moritz Funeral Home in Tappan. Funeral Mass will be Tuesday April 19th, 10:30am at Sacred Heart Chapel in Sparkill with burial at Gethsemane Cemetery in Valley Cottage. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation in memory of Eileen McCormack via dowlinggardens.org or by mail to Dowling Gardens Independent Living, 190 Kings Highway, Sparkill, NY 10976.

Eileen McCormack: A Life Story In Brief

As she would often tell anyone who asked, our Mom was born-and-raised in Brooklyn. She talked longingly of her childhood attending St. Rose Lima Catholic Grammar School, playing kick-the-can and other "stoop games" with the boys in the neighborhood, and going to Broad Channel each summer to swim, fueling a lifelong love of the beach. She told stories of her father, Tom Gilroy, making beer with a German neighbor during Prohibition, and how she and her cousin Marty would run the bottles up to the staircase and put them against the roof door to keep them cold. Her father had a job at the New York Telephone Company through the Depression, which enabled them to survive unscathed.

Just prior to the start of WW II she began attending St Brendan's all-girls high school, spending time after school riding bikes in Prospect Park or having "listening parties" where everyone brought their 78-records (one song per side) to play. Sometimes she would leave school early with friends like Eileen O'Toole to take the elevated subway to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers. Friday nights were spent at the movie house watching two films with a cartoon and newsreel inbetween for a quarter. She was a big movie fan and loved live music too. She saw Benny Goodman in Atlantic City and Frank Sinatra at the Paramount, though she claimed that she was not one of the screaming-fainting girls you see in the film footage. Weekends were spent going to Coney Island or sometimes Jones Beach in the family car, which her mother, Marguerite, purchased and learned to drive over her father's objections.

She graduated high school in 1943, with no senior prom because all the boys were off to war. She was one of a very few women who knew how to drive at the time, having been taught by her mother, and so she volunteered for a city restaurant called Crinler's 21 Club who were hiring drivers as part of the civilian war effort to pick up Navy officers from Floyd Bennett Field and take them to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other posts in the city. Just after the war, she attended and graduated from Hefley Business School in the Williamsburg Bank building in Brooklyn and got a job at NY Telephone at 101 Willoughby Street where she worked as a typist and secretary on the Engineering floor. That's where she met John Joseph McCormack, a draftsman, soon-to-be civil engineer on the floor who had returned from the battlefield in Europe. After an official first date at Rockefeller Center Music Hall and subsequent "sneaking out of the office for lunch" in downtown Brooklyn, and some weekend excursions taking the ferry to Breezy Point, they were engaged. Our mother always said that "she knew" from the first date that this was the one, especially after her large family of in-laws welcomed her so completely. (Our father had seven siblings.) They married on January 26, 1953 at her local church in Ozone Park and eventually moved to a residential-booming town on Long Island called New Hyde Park with only one child, Eileen, in tow.

The next thing they knew, they had a car, a mortgage, and five more children: Meg, John, Michael, Tim, and Kevin, and needed an extension on the house. Our Mom held the toughest job on earth for decades: homemaker. She was a talented and always dutiful cook, nurse, taxi driver, typist of school papers, shopper, and problem solver. As my sister Meg said, our mother deserves combat pay for making our lunches everyday for school and dealing with the smell of liverwurst, peanut butter, and tuna fish before she finished her first cup of coffee.

Together, our Mom and Dad created an idyllic, American Dream childhood for us, filled with family events, beach trips, vacations to Lake Sebago, the Delaware River, and Belleayre Mountain for skiing, to name a few. But perhaps her greatest creations were the backyard parties. Her only sibling Tom Gilroy also moved to New Hyde Park, and, with his wife Anne, had eight children of their own. Having just the two families over meant 14 children for a party. But our Mom and Dad would also invite the families from my father's side, so often the backyard would be exploding with 25 or more kids running about for egg toss and three-legged races and other games. Of course these gatherings also gave our Mom a chance at adult time with her favorite in-laws, Ann and Vinne and Ed and Joan McCormack.

My mother's welcoming hospitality wasn't just for family. Any friend of any of us who crossed the threshold of Imperial avenue was fed, given a bed, and made to feel at home by mother. Most came back many times, many are here at this wake I am sure. Be sure that she remembers each of you and is so happy to see you right now.

Somehow, amid all the hospitality and work she put into her job as a parent and homemaker, our mother took up tennis again at the age of 40. After a couple hours as a short order breakfast cook, and making and packing six brown-bag lunches for her children, she would hop on her yellow folding bike with her front basket filled with a racket, three tennis balls, and her freezer-frozen water bottle to go to the local public park to play a few sets. She played with the neighborhood "tennis ladies" as she called them, often 3-4 times a week. She kept playing tennis avidly into her 80s, when bad knees finally sidelined her.

Soon enough, our mother had even more caretaking to do as her children married. She had a special place in her heart for her new in-law sons and daughters: Steve Singer, John Francis, Maria Malson and Patti Brennan. Soon, the next generation arrived. Perhaps her greatest joy in life was her 10 grandchildren: Marykate, Sean, Neil, Sydney, Tim, Sara, Mei, Teigue, Andy, and Clare. She helped care for each new addition, spending countless more hours at the playground or at school plays, communions and graduations, or walking the streets at Halloween, or in endless games of Boggle or Scrabble.

After our Dad retired, they traveled the US, visiting friends, playing golf and tennis, sightseeing, and stopping at virtually every National and State Park they could find. Often they travelled with Ray and Maureen Keyes, and Monika and Pete McCormack (not related). I am sure they are all checking out the sites in heaven now.

After those travel years, our mother resumed the role of ultimate caretaker, as she took care of our father for many years till he passed away in 2015. Soon after, we moved her to Dowling Gardens in Sparkill, so she was close to her children and grandchildren again. Even in her last years, one of our mother's most amazing character traits was her ability to remember names. You met my mother once, she remembered you forever. Even in her last days she knew the names and stories of virtually everyone in Dowling Gardens.

Our mother was a devoted Catholic. She was an active parishioner in Notre Dame Parish in New Hyde Park for more than 60 years. A mainstay at Sunday mass, she was also involved in parish events, dances, and the bible study group. All of her children attended Notre Dame as well, and our mother volunteered in the lunchroom. Our mother believed strongly not just in the story of Christ, but in carrying out the bible's goodwill into the world.

Our mother was a great admirer of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because she was from Brooklyn of course, but also because she was tough, full of life, and did her job so well, and because she was eloquent and smart, but also because she didn't take herself too seriously and had a sense of humor. All attributes that could be applied to our Mom too.

Whether Eileen was your host at Imperial Ave., your aunt, your friend, your in-law, or your grandma, it is certain that she is looking down on you right now, providing the sustenance you need, and wishing you well.