Angela Claire Connolly, 93, of Kenosha passed away peacefully on August 5, 2024, at Willowbrook Assisted Living in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Angela was born on September 13, 1930, in one of Chicago’s oldest Italian neighborhoods on Chicago’s near north side (Grand and Ogden Avenues). She was the first child of the late John Clark Sr. and Emily (Potenza) Connolly. Though born at the beginning of the Great Depression, she was well taken care of in the large apartment building at Racine and Hubbard, owned by her grandmother and namesake, Arcangela (DeStefano) Potenza, and where her many aunts, uncles and cousins would also reside during her youth. She was surrounded by a loving family and, despite her Irish name, was immersed in Italian culture.
Her memory was always sharp and clear and she related countless stories about her family, neighbors, and characters that populated the predominantly Italian neighborhood. She often boasted that the future boss of Chicago’s underworld empire, Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo, once bounced her on his knee in front of a local storefront in the 1930s when she was a toddler.
At age 9, her parents divorced and her father moved Angela and her brother John Jr. (age 7) into the St. George School at 4545 Drexel Boulevard on Chicago’s south side. Her father, John Sr., was a salesman for industrial laundry equipment, and a man of modest means. However, the director of the school, Anne Tyskling, admired his dedication to his children’s well-being and education, and admitted Angela and John to the boarding school at a discount. He took a room at the Duncan YMCA on Ashland Avenue in order to make the payments, and visited his children every Sunday. The Connolly children excelled in scholastics and theatre, performing in many school dramatic and musical productions. They were dubbed “The Canaries” of St. George School for their exceptional singing talent.
Angela graduated from Tuley High School in 1948, and worked as a secretary after high school in Chicago, as well as Las Vegas after moving there in the late-fifties. She told many stories of the legendary era of the Rat Pack and Ocean’s Eleven, rubbing elbows with some of the biggest stars that frequented Las Vegas during its heyday of mid-century American cool.
Upon returning to Chicago, she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Education, and ultimately received a Master’s Degree in Literature from Loyola University. During the 1970s, she embarked on a career as an educator with the Chicago Public Schools. She was always active in her personal and social life, and her milieu included noted author and bookseller Paul Romaine, who was close friends with Ernest Hemingway and part of the thriving artistic community of American ex-patriates in Paris in the 1920s along with Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Josephine Baker. One of her closest friends and neighbors was Adeline Arrigo, wife of former State Senator Victor Arrigo, who served as a prosecutor for the Allied Military Government Courts in Italy during WWII. After his death, the park near his home in Chicago’s Little Italy (Taylor Street) was dedicated in his name.
Angela pursued a decades-long career with the Chicago Public Schools as a classroom teacher of multiple subjects, ultimately transitioning into special education where she worked until her retirement. She lived independently for many years after retirement, and kept a full social schedule, did her own driving, shopping, banking, and housekeeping.
In 2021 at age 90, she suffered a critical collapse in her apartment, was hospitalized and recovered. Her nephew, Michael Connolly, began to manage her affairs for her, and moved her from the apartment in Chicago to an assisted living facility in Kenosha. With this closer proximity to family, Michael and Aggie D’Alessio took on custodial duties for Angela, managing her medical appointments, finances, holiday celebrations, outings, and day-to-day needs not covered by the assisted living facility. [Michael and Aggie owe a deep and lasting gratitude to the administration and medical staff at Willowbrook Assisted Living, and the exceptional medical staff and caregivers at Hospice Alliance, who gave Angela the utmost in care and compassion every moment including until her final days.]
Angela is preceded in death by her daughter Cynthia Lynn (Jessen) Sakellariadis, her half-sister Marianne Cirrincione Cirro, and her brother John Clark Connolly, Jr. She is survived by her grandchildren Emily and Nicholas Sakellariadis, and Sammie Marie Lopiparo, as well as her cousins Patrick (Pamela) Morrison, Colleen (Kenneth) Hopkins and Ernest (Prudence) Cutro.
The family encourages you to make donations to Willowbrook Assisted Living’s “Sunshine Fund,” and to Hospice Alliance to help carry on their extraordinary work with the elderly in Southeast Wisconsin.
