Shirley Handwerger, 97

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Shirley Handwerger, longtime resident of Providence, where she lived very happily with her late husband, Louis, and raised my brother, Rob, and me (Alan), passed away peacefully at the HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center in Providence on Oct. 8. 

When asked over the past few days for adjectives to describe her, Shirley’s friends and family members had this to say.  She was elegant, glamorous, generous, supportive, giving, silly, and charming. Much was said about her dining table – not only the deliciousness of the holiday meals that graced that table for over half a century, but also of the love and friendships that were cemented in that setting.

Shirley was a homemaker in the truest sense of that word. There was no refrigerator on the East Side of Providence that the neighborhood kids preferred to open when they were looking for a snack.

She’ll be missed and loved forever by myself (Alan), by my wife, Lorrie, who was more a daughter to her than a daughter-in-law, by her niece, Marilyn Bergman Gralnik, also more a daughter to her than a niece, by a host of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews and their offspring, and by countless friends in the communities where she lived her 97½ years.

My mother was our matriarch, a model of womanhood at its finest, as irreplaceable as she will be loved forever.  Goodbye mom for now.  “A flight of angels send thee to thy rest.”

Donations to the HopeHealth Hulitar Hospice Center at 1085 N. Main St., Providence, RI  02906 would be greatly appreciated.

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