Ellen A. McDonnell, a Village of Munsey Park resident and former assistant head nurse at North Shore University Hospital, died on Thursday after a more than four-year battle with breast cancer. She was 58.
Meehan was diagnosed in the spring of 2010 and underwent a double mastectomy as well as chemotherapy at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where her family has arranged for friends to make donations to the facility’s Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center.
“We had a running joke whenever she’d go to Sloan Kettering that nurses are tough patients to treat, so we had to give the nurse a head’s up because she was a nurse herself,” said McDonnell’s daughter Caitlin, who lives in New York City.
McDonnell grew up in Flushing and attended St. Kevin’s Grammar School in Flushing, Bishop Reilly High School in Fresh Meadows and later Catholic Medical Nursing School in Jamaica.
She met her husband Edward as children in Queens and began dating during their junior year of high school. They would have been married 35 years on Oct. 6.
“She and my dad would go on walks every day,” Caitlin said.
The couple had three children together, sons Ryan and Thomas and daughter Caitlin, and moved to Manhasset in 1987.
Caitlin said her mother was an avid tennis player who “didn’t miss a single lacrosse game” she and her brothers ever played.
Even when Caitlin went off to play for the University of Pennsylvania, her mother traveled to road games.
“She never missed anything we did. She was always very involved with our education and made sure we got our homework,” Caitlin said. “She was very involved in our family and in our lives.”
Ellen retired from nursing after Ryan was born, but Caitlin said she expressed interest recently in updating her certification to begin working again.
Caitlin said Ellen was also very excited about her upcoming wedding to her fiancee, Kevin, and told her to continue with it even after her passing.
But “the absolute love of her life,” Caitlin said, was her grandson, Edward “Teddy” McDonnell.
“You couldn’t mention Teddy without a smile coming across her face,” she said.
Ellen was also an avid traveler, going on annual mother-daughter trips to Key West, Fla. with Caitlin, Caitlin said.
“She used to say that when she got better, we were going to plan a trip,” Caitlin said. “She loved going away. It was almost like an escape for her. I talked to her 20 times a day. She was my best friend. I’d go home every week and see her. I miss calling home and having her pick up and listen to everything I’d say.”
McDonnell is survived by her husband Edward P. McDonnell, son Ryan, wife Molly and grandson Edward “Teddy;” son Thomas; daughter Caitlin and future son-in-law Kevin; brother James Meehan and wife Bernadette; sister Maureen Meehan; sister Elizabeth Mullervy and husband Brian Mullervy; and many nieces and nephews.
A visitation for McDonnell was held on Friday at Fairchild Sons funeral home in Manhasset. A funeral mass was held on Saturday at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church.
