Doris Elizabeth DiSavino

Doris Terhune DiSavino died on October 1, 2019. She was 92 years old. Doris Terhune was born in Paterson, NJ. The granddaughter of a Methodist minister, and the daughter of a church organist, she grew up in Midland Park, NJ and attended Pompton Plains High School. She was a WAC during World War II, and after the war, worked at NBC Radio in New York City, where she crossed paths with such luminaries as Arturo Toscanini, Gordon MacCrae and Lucille Ball. She married Paul DiSavino in 1951. She and her husband built their own house (“Ridgemeade”) in the peaceful farm town of Towaco, New Jersey (Montville Township) where they resided for fifty years. Doris was active in the Montville Township PTA and the Whitehall Methodist Church. She and her husband ran three businesses: Paulson Electronics, Paulson Broadcasting and Professional Audio Video. They also owned and operated WLAE FM, an early pioneer in easy listening radio, which was located on historic Radio Hill in Meriden, CT. The couple retired to Willow Valley Retirement Community in 2008. Doris was an award-winning poet, and among her accolades were awards from the New Jersey Poetry Society, the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, Georgia Poetry Competition as well as the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award. Doris leaves behind her husband of 68 years Paul Carmine DiSavino of Willow Valley; son David Paul DiSavino and daughter-in-law Cynthia Haynes DiSavino of Lancaster, PA; daughter Elizabeth Chiara DiSavino and son-in-law Arpad Imre Bodnar of Berea, KY; and granddaughter Katherine Vera DiSavino Mead and her husband Kevin Mead of Los Angeles, California. THE PASSING OF QUEENS by Doris Elizabeth Terhune DiSavino From “Lamentations for My Sister” Old Parr was an old, old, old, old, very old man. He was the oldest man in England. He claimed He was the oldest man in the World! boasted He had tolled the passing bells for five Queens From young Nan Bullen to old Bess Tudor, one Doleful peal for every year of each Queen’s life. The Great World took but little note The while my Sister walked this earth, less When she left – no grand procession, no Pronouncement of the mourning days, no Multitudity of solemn bells to mark her years They should have rung. Rung and rung And rung again, a sorrowful Annunciatorum, Tolling out her goodly life, rung and rung out Yet again, loud and clear, over her mountain, Across her valley, telling to a poorer World how, Work well done, she went like that ancient Carthaginian Queen, glad and fearless To her grave, no ordinary clay.