Maureen & Vinny Padovano, Sister-In-Law and Brother-In-Law
Favorite Quinnie Memory or Story
This has been a hard thing for us to single out. We have so many wonderful memories, so we thought we would list a few: Sunday morning football games at Memorial Field, Sunday afternoons either at Blossoms or in our 150th Street house across from the field, numerous wonderful days playing golf and fun nights playing charades in Budd Lake (ham sandwiches), Vinny and Quinnie running in races and afterwards spending the day at Kathy & Quinnie’s apartment watching football, our children’s birthday parties, Meghan’s school plays and parties at the house afterwards, Michael’s football or baseball games and parties at the house afterwards, fun times at Eastover, sitting around Kathy and Quinnie’s kitchen table, long days at the beach where Quinnie would stand for the entire day, summer barbeques, weddings, christenings, graduations, and everything in between. With Kathy and Quinnie it was always a great time.
Favorite Quinnie Characteristic
He always made people feel good about themselves. Whether it was a comment like “Hey Vince, I like that yellow shirt” or “Moe, looking good kid”, or “You and Vince are doing a great job with Uncle Mike and Meghan”, or “I give you both so much credit”, or “Moe, your meatballs are my favorite”. We guess we thought that we were the only ones that he was handing out praise to. Even though we now know that he had nice things to say to so many of us, every word that he said still means so much to us. We miss Quinnie in so many ways and love him for the uniquely honest and wonderful person that he was.
Memorable Trips, Events, Occasions, etc.
Many of the Eastover gang are familiar with this story, but we wanted to add something to laugh about. The story goes like this. During one of our vacations at Eastover Kathy and I received the sad news that our Aunt Helen had died. Aunt Helen, our mom’s sister, was very close and dear to the both of us. Aunt Helen and Uncle Eddie were living in Florida at the time. Kathy and I made flight arrangements to leave Eastover early one morning to fly to Florida for the wake and funeral. Our husbands, being the loving and decent guys that they were woke up early that morning to help us with our luggage and to see us to our car. Vinny gave me a kiss goodbye and Quinnie gave Kathy a kiss goodbye. Well, as you can only guess, Quinnie had had a few beers the night before. Well, we were on vacation! When Quinnie kissed Kathy he must have had the smell of beer still on his breathe. Kathy kissed him and said “You stink of boose”. Quinnie and Vinny thought it was an endearing comment such as what one might say to a young child. They commented on Kathy saying goodbye to Quinnie and saying “You little stink a boose”. The four of us stood at the top of the stairs in the Mansion and tried to control our laughter so as not to wake everyone else. Even though we were leaving our vacation to go to a wake and funeral in Florida for Aunt Helen, Kathy and I laughed all the way to the airport. Once on the plane all we had to do was look at one anther and we broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Vinny and I had countless fun times with Kathy and Quinnie. We could laugh about the dumbest things for hours on end. One other funny incident was while at a party at our house. Quinnie was introduced to a friend of ours for the first time. Our friend was talking about his son and what a great athlete he was and what high aspirations they had for him. As we all know, Quinnie was not one to hold back his thoughts. When our friend took a moment after going on about his son’s playing ability, Quinnie said, “Your son’s a great looking kid, put him in modeling. HE’LL NEVER PLAY BASKETBALL! HE’S A MIDGET!” Well, thankfully our friend had a sense of humor and we all had a good laugh.
Final Thoughts and Farewell
Love you Quince. Rest in peace.
