STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Michele DeStasio Ferreri of Silver Lake, a devoted wife, nurturing mother, and the cornerstone of her family, who dedicated her life to cultivating a home filled with warmth, faith and unconditional support, passed away Sunday in Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze with her husband, Anthony Ferreri by her side. She was 75.
A fifth-generation Staten Islander, her great-great grandparents settled on Staten Island in 1884.
She married Anthony Ferreri, the former president and CEO of Northwell’s Staten Island University Hospital, in 1972, several years after they met in math class during their senior year in New Dorp High School.
A cancer survivor, Mrs. Ferreri twice co-chaired the annual March of Dimes Gala and Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden’s Neptune Ball, and Tuscan Gala. She served on the cultural center’s board of directors.
Licensed by the New York State Board of Education, she began her career as an early childhood teacher at PS 54 in Willowbrook.
In 1977, Mrs. Ferreri left teaching to raise her family.
Mrs. Ferreri also served as a member of the auxiliary of Staten Island University Hospital and the advisory board of University Hospice.
She was a charter member of Wagner College’s DeVinci Society, as well as a member of the auxiliary of Labetti Post, Veterans of Foreign Wars.
In 2010, Mrs. Ferreri was honored by then-Congressman Michael McMahon as an Italian-American woman of distinction.
Along with her husband, the Ferreri’s received the St. George Theatre’s Georgie Award for their unwavering support not only to the theater — where they had their first date and where Anthony proposed marriage outside the theater’s doors — but to Staten Island and beyond.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Matthew Funeral Home in Willowbrook.
Visitors will be received on Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 11 a.m. in Our Lady Queen of Peace R.C. Church, New Dorp.
Burial will follow in Moravian Cemetery, also in New Dorp.
A full obituary on the life of Michele Ferreri will follow.