Introduction 

Anna Orfei (Favreau), age 102, passed on March 26, 2024 at home in Manchester, Missouri with family by her side. She was predeceased by her husband John Orfei and grandchild Christopher William Hentchel. Survived by her two children, Donna Patacchiola and Melody Orfei (husband David Hentchel) also by grandchildren, Amy Sideris, Shaun Hentchel and Dylan Hentchel, plus two great-grandchildren Sophie and Elliot. Besides Anna, the family included two other centenarians, her late husband John’s twin sisters, Edith and Norma who were both 102 at the time of her death. 

Born in Brunswick, Maine, on August 23, 1921, Anna was the daughter of Antonio and Emma Favreau and raised in Brunswick, Maine. Anna was the youngest of six, Lionel (Nel) Favreau of Malden, Massachusetts, died at age 64; Lorraine (Larry) Favreau of Brunswick, Maine, age 59; Robert of Brunswick, Maine, age 72; Mary Jane, age 84; Annette of Brunswick, Maine, age 32. 

Anna lived an active life raising her two children. She was a Girl Scout assistant leader in Brunswick, Maine and a Girl Scout Leader for both her daughters in Saugus, Massachusetts. She was a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW ) Ladies Auxiliary. She loved socializing and celebrating with her family and close friends. She enjoyed cooking and would host holiday dinners for large family gatherings,presented at an elegant table. 

Anna had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure in February and her daughter Melody and husband David cared for her in her final months. She peacefully died, looking forward to being reunited with her beloved husband John, grandson Chris and the rest of her family. 

Anna’s personal gifts 

Anna was a very caring, positive, and down-to-earth person who loved to socialize with family, neighbors and friends. She was a hard worker, accepting of people, thoughtful and kind. Her strong inner strength carried her through family challenges, financial struggles and health issues with constant faith in God and supporting love for all she knew. She was forthright in her opinions, but seldom complained and then only with good cause. Anna was a great cook and was renowned for her Chewies (brown sugar walnut bars) and her gravy (Italian sauce). 

Anna made a lifetime project of keeping family and friends close together. Her greeting cards went out for all important occasions. She loved giving gifts, especially for Christmas. She attended, and alwys helped out at all the family events, joyful and sad,

and made a point of getting around to all the people at the event and catching up on news. Her mental facilities and memory were strong to the end and she could talk with a friend she hadn’t seen in years and ask about what is happening in their life and family, just as if it was yesterday. She even spoke to a friend in French three months before passing away, when she hadn’t spoken French in over 15 years. Anna always showed that she knew and cared about the people in her life. She loved her family and friends and in return she was one of the main reasons this incredible extended family stayed close to each other. It’s as if she was the matriarch of a dozen otherwise separate family groups. She was a second mother to many, including Denis and Philip DeOliveira (MA), Janice Pappas (FL), Dominic Testa (MA), and Linda Golden (MA). She was dear to many of her cousins and husband John’s family. 

Anna’s faith in God was quiet, but constant. She was raised Catholic and practiced that faith regularly at Saint Margaret’s (Saugus, Massachusetts) and Saint Mary’s (Revere, Massachusetts). In later years, she also attended protestant churches, including Grace Chapel evangelical (Lexington, Massachusetts) and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church 

(Manchester, Missiour). As her Christian friends put it, “Her Joy in Jesus was beyond comparison. There is going to be some rejoicing in heaven when she gets there!” 

Childhood in Maine 

Among Anna’s early memories were her gardening chores. Her father strongly asserted it was not a farm, just a garden to feed his family. When the kids were sent out to plant potatoes exactly one foot apart down the furrow, she was jealous that her brothers could use their shoes to measure the spacing – so when they were done, she borrowed her brother’s boots, put them on her tiny feet and clomped along using the same technique. 

In the winter her father would build a toboggan run for them and they would go ice skating. She and her siblings would put on their wooden cross-country skis to get to school. On especially cold days her mother would give each of them a baked potato fresh out of the oven to put in their coat pockets as hand warmers, then enjoy for their afternoon snack. Life was simple, but they ate well from the family garden and the fresh seafood from their fisherman relatives. The Favreau women would sit around the kitchen table shelling a barrel of fresh crabs skillfully and quickly while chatting away. Anna graduated from Brunswick High School, Brunswick, Maine in 1940. 

Anna’s Maine Jobs: 

Anna worked as a soda clerk, part time at Promrie’s Pharmacy, in downtown Brunswick, Maine in her senior year of high school. Her job title was called a “Soda jerk”, a pun on “Soda clerk”. (It was inspired by the jerking of the draft arms on old fashioned drugstore

fountains. Soda jerk, was a person who would operate the soda fountain in a drugstore, preparing and serving soda drinks and ice cream sodas). 

She worked as a shoe stitcher at the Freeport Shoe Factory in Freeport, Maine. She was selected to model their new shoes as her shoe was a size 5, which at that time was the shoe size models wore. She got to keep the shoes she modeled, and when she was married John built her a closet for all her shoes. 

She moved to Massachusetts for work and lived in Chelsea with her brother, Nel and his wife, Cornie. Anna got a job in the Boston Navy Shipyard. It was there that she met the love of her life, John at the lunch break provided by the shipyard, with a live orchestra for entertainment. John asked her to dance, then asked again in following days, and it quickly blossomed into romance. This was a problem because Anna had a beau back in Brunswick, Maine who had given her a hope chest and ring and was planning on marrying her. When she broke off that relationship and gave him back the ring and hope chest to marry John there was serious objection from her parents and concern about her passing up a local French Canadian suitor for this Italian man. 

Eventually, thanks to her sister Lorraine (Larry), John won the support of Anna’s parents and they were married in Malden, Massachusetts on September 30, 1945. The War was over and for a short time they lived with John’s mother, Ada (Tartarini) Orfei. John was working as a machinist and the two set out to make a life together. 

Married Life in Massachusetts 

Like other postwar newlyweds, John and Anna set out boldly to find work and housing. They first lived with John’s mother, Ada Orfei, in North Revere for a short time until they got their own apartment in Malden, Massachusetts in a third story walk-up. Their first daughter Donna was born there. Next they moved to a two story apartment in Everett, Massachusetts where their second daughter, Melody was born and when Melody was 3 years old they moved to North Revere in a single family house. John’s mother Ada, sister Norma, and Aunt Anita Leggeri lived nearby. They lived in Revere for over 30 years. 

Jobs in Massachusetts 

Anna was a homemaker; she liked to keep a clean and clutter free home. She enjoyed working in the food industry. She was a waitress for our father’s cousin, Eddie Fortini, in his Italian catering business, mostly on the weekends. 

Anna was a waitress at Valle SteakHouse, Saugus, Massachusetts. She was a waitress at State Street Bank, Boston in the executive dining room. In her retirement

she got a part-time job at Publix Grocery store, in Saint Petersburg, Florida demonstrating food. She worked there up to the age of 90. 

Hobbies: 

Anna was very good at sewing. She used to knit until the arthritis in her hands would no longer let her. Anna enjoyed cooking and entertaining family and friends. She loved playing cards and was always willing to learn a new card game. Once every few years she enjoyed going to the casino to play the slot machines. Our family friends Phil and Denis would take her, and sometimes she would go with the Saugus Knights of Columbus bus trips. Throughout her lifetime she enjoyed attending Bible studies and retreats. 

Snow Birds, Florida to New Hampshire 

Once John retired in November 1986, John and Anna decided it was time to move out of the house in North Revere to their summer place on Sunrise Lake in New Hampshire. It had developed into a comfortable vacation cottage, but was unsuitable for cold weather. John was fed up with snow, cold weather and New England winters, so it didn’t take much persuasion for them to follow several other relatives and buy a mobile home in St. Petersburg, Florida, near where John’s older twin sisters, Edith and Norma had retired. Late spring every year they’d drive up to the New Hampshire cottage, then as the weather turned cold they’d drive back down to Florida. John didn’t like the long drive to Florida, but they loved both their houses and it kept them close to all their children and grandchildren, friends and relatives. 

John Orfei passed away in their Florida home November 1999, at age 75, attended by Anna, Donna, Melody, his twin sisters and other relatives. Anna continued the migration between Florida and New Hampshire for a few years longer, but eventually gave up the Florida home and moved to Massachusetts permanently to be near her family. 

On her own in Massachusetts and Missouri 

Anna moved into senior housing in Saugus, Massachusetts in 2009, where she continued her active and social lifestyle. She attended bible study and went to the hairdresser every week. She always dressed up to look nice. She would walk almost a mile every day, two laps around the complex, using her Roller Walker for balance. Less active seniors (many two decades younger than she) recognized and greeted her on the way around. Well into her nineties, she celebrated every social occasion, including Halloween where she made a big hit dressed as an Indian woman, queen or French maid.

Family events consumed much of Anna’s attention at this time. She attended the birthing of all three grandsons, and was staying with Melody and Dave in Concord the night of the tragic death of grandson, Chris. There were other funerals and weddings on both sides of the family (Favreau and Tartarini). She was honored to be able to attend the wedding of her oldest granddaughter, Amy to Luke Sideris, then the happy arrival of her first great grandchild Sophie. She also was able to attend the marriage of her second oldest grandchild, Shaun to Michelle. And finally, a second great grandchild, Elliot. Anna continued to summer at the Sunrise Lake cottage and took trips to Florida and Missouri. 

In 2019, Melody and David began preparing for retirement and made plans to downsize and move to St Louis, Missouri, where David grew up, with three retired brothers and several cousins living close by. They were planning a second home near her, but Anna made that unnecessary by suggesting that she would be happy to move to Missouri with them. With a bit of planning and packing, the three were comfortably living in a house in a St Louis suburb, with a separate in-law apartment for Anna on the lower level. She loved her new apartment and having David and Melody upstairs. 

Anna enjoyed her new apartment and learned new skills during the COVID period that allowed her to visit with great-grandchildren over Zoom, and chat with daughter Donna and friends via Facebook. She also loved reviewing family photos and seeing what family and friends were doing and posting on Facebook. She came along on visits to local Missouri sites and Dave’s family events, and became very close to David’s brothers and their wives. Tim and Stephanie were particularly close and provided much support in Anna’s hospital stays and final weeks. For David, living so closely gave a rare opportunity to get to know Anna better and she filled a gap left by the early death of his own mother. 

For her first three years in Missouri Anna was very fit for her age (a “robust 101”, according to her doctor) and was able to travel back to New Hampshire to spend three months at her NH summer place. She loved seeing old friends and watching her great-grandchildren Sophie and Elliot play and grow, catching up with former neighbors and eating lobster. In August of 2021 we celebrated her 100th birthday, with 100 of her family and friends there to honor her. Later that year, she got on a plane to St Petersburg, where she joined family to celebrate the 100th birthday of her late husband’s twin sisters, Edith (Orfei) Antoncecchi & Norma (Orfei) Matthews. Three centenarians in the family, and all living independently and managing their own lives! By the end of 2023 that all changed.

In the summer of 2023 Anna made her final visit to the NH home. From that point her health steadily declined. By the start of 2024, for the first time in her life, Anna depended on loved ones for assistance. After three days with Hospice care, she passed away on March 26, 2024. 

Anna’s funeral service was celebrated on Wednesday, April 10th, 2024 at 11AM at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Manchester, Missouri, followed by a small luncheon for her local friends and David’s relatives. 

There will be a celebration of Anna’s life in Massachusetts on Saturday, November 2, 2024, starting with a Memorial Service at St. Margaret’s Church Parish, 431 Lincoln Ave., Saugus, MA 01906 at 11 am and followed by a Celebration of Life, at Rosaria Restaurant, 190 Main St. Saugus, MA, 01906 (where the old VFW Post 2346 hall was located). There will be time for family and friends to share memories and photos, with an open microphone for sharing stories.