Amelia L Malloy

Amelia Malloy was blessed with the love of family, friends, and acquaintances who admired her friendliness and will to enjoy life even into her nineties. In her final moments at home she was kept comfortable by the same warm love and care. Amelia was known for her will to be in charge of things - sometimes with the afterthought, "I should have . . ." She had intellectual interests into her nineties - including her favorite book authors, word jumbles, Scrabble, card playing with her friends, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune. Amelia loved music - including listening to her parents singing at night while she lay in bed. Amelia was born in 1925, one of seven children born to Louis Flaim, an immigrant from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire who came to Fort Lee in 1888 at age sixteen, and his wife Sabina who came to Fort Lee in 1911. Louis worked as a blue stone Mason in Fort Lee and the surrounding areas, and to relax sometimes, he, Sabina, and local friends would play cards while singing the Alpine songs of the Southern Tyrol - that became part of Italy in 1918. Amelia loved to recall the radio entertainment of her 1930s childhood - the music AND the fascinating mystery dialogue of "THE SHADOW." On her way to grammar school along Anderson Avenue she remembered passing the old barn that town lore knew to be George Washington's Fort Lee Headquarters during the American Revolution. Her daughter Maureen substantially documented the barn with historical research in 1997. In the 1940s, Amelia loved the Big Bands music. One night while watching on TV "The Glenn Miller Story" with her daughter Maureen, the movie showed the Glenn Miller Band playing at a casino in Long Island. Amelia said, "I remember that, I was there for my prom." Amelia and her husband Harry left a wonderful music record collection for their children Robert and Maureen that included George M. Cohan, the Big Bands, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belefonte, and the Strauss Waltzes. When the movie "The Sound of Music" was shown on TV, Amelia had her mother Sabina watch it. At the movie's end, Sabina quietly got up and went to her bedroom, then returned with a faded yellow envelope. In the envelope was a letter from her sister in Austria - now northern Italy - and an Edelweiss flower. Amelia explained to her mother that the movie was made by the Twentieth-Century Fox Company that began on Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee when Fort Lee was a major motion picture production center from 1909 to 1919, and many residents worked as film extras - including Sabina's five year old daughter Loretta who was in a 1917 film with Mary Pickford at the John Street Paragon Studio that later became Paramount Pictures. When her son died of cancer about two years ago, Amelia was heart broken. Yet her will to live persevered into her nineties - she would take half hour walks, using her walker, with her daughter and climb up and down her condo stairs. When a large external tumor on her arm was diagnosed as cancerous, twice, and she was not able to make five car trips for radiation treatments, Amelia was placed on home hospice. Then something happened that her doctor called a HUGE MIRACLE. In one week, her daughter Maureen watched the tumor shrink each day to the point where it completely dissolved without a trace of flesh or scar tissue. Doctors call it 'spontaneous regression of a tumor' and attribute it to a strong immune system fighting cancer cells. In her final moments when medication eased her pain and her breathing slowed, Amelia strangely would not give up her will to live. When she was advised that her daughter-in-law Kathy expressed her love, Amelia's eyes opened half way, then closed. Then her niece Pamela Flaim visited her bedside. Pam kissed her aunt and said, " Aunt Amelia, I love you, you can go home now. And say hello to my father for me" - who is Amelia's brother William Flaim. That evening, Amelia passed away at 11:30, and the hospice nurse arrived, checked her, and officially declared her death at 12:01 AM. Amelia physically passed away on the wedding anniversary of her son Robert and daughter-in-law Kathy, and was legally pronounced dead on the birthday of her brother William. Amelia was in charge, even at the end.