John J. Firriello – 80, of North Reading, formerly of Wakefield and New York, passed away on Thursday, December 15, 2022, at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers.

Born in New York, New York on March 18, 1942, he was the son of the late Sebastian and Mary (Scelzi) Firriello. John was a graduate of Westinghouse Vocational School in Brooklyn, New York. He worked as a Purchasing Manager and then later worked as a Constable and a Healthcare Worker for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Family members include his loving wife Claire (Bauer) Firriello; his son Paul Firriello; his brother Michael Firriello, sisters Celeste Dew and Antoinette Muller and granddaughters Siena and Lyla Firriello.

John was a very giving, family oriented person. He always wanted and was willing to help them. He has been a resident of North Reading for the past 42 years. He has been a member of St. Michael Parish in North Andover, where he served as a Eucharistic Minister.

His Funeral Mass will be Celebrated on Wednesday, December 21 at 11:30 AM at St. Michael Parish, 196 Main Street, in North Andover. Everyone is to go directly to church. Visitation will be held on Tuesday, December 20 at the Croswell Funeral Home, 19 Bow Street, North Reading from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, interment will be in Riverside Cemetery in North Reading. Memorial donations may be made in his memory to the charity of one’s choice.

Florence A. (Duggan) Wilson – 99, of Onset, East Wareham and formerly of North Reading, passed away peacefully at her home on Thursday, December 8, 2022. She was the wife of the late Edward J. Wilson, Sr.

Born in Cambridge, MA on September 22, 1923.  She was the daughter of the late Edward “Eddie” and Alice (Breton) Duggan. She was a graduate of the L.D. Batchelder School in North Reading and Reading Memorial High School. She spent her childhood growing up on Burroughs Road and she later lived 65 years on LeClair Street in North Reading. She has spent the last six years living in Onset, East Wareham with her daughter Kathy and her husband Walter Quigg.

Before having her children, Florence worked for Liberty Mutual and was transitioned from Boston to Andover, she later worked part time in Kline’s Department Store in Wakefield, she was a volunteer Receptionist at the North Reading Town Hall and an Avon Representative salesperson for over twenty years.

Florence was very special to her family. Her husband and father had built the house in North Reading where her family grew up. At age 40 her husband died suddenly and left her with five children to raise. Somehow, she managed to keep her children all together, she fed, clothed, and guided them, nurtured and kept a roof over their heads. The house was always clean and well maintained, not an easy task with five kids running around and limited funds.

She was an avid sports fan and encouraged them to participate in after school athletics. The Red Sox and Celtics were her favorites. She strongly believed in education both religious and academic. They attended church and celebrated Easter and Christmas as a family. When it came time for college she found ways to get funding so they could attend, even though it seemed impossible at the time.

Florence loved gardening, dancing, square dancing and sewing. She was instrumental in establishing the “Burroughs Road Playground”, as a member of the Recreation Committee and helped to form the morning activity and sports program at the playground. She was one of the first Girl Scout Leaders for the Martin’s Pond side of town. As a young senior citizen, she was an advocate in keeping the tax rate for seniors in town lower. Florence was proud to have been a North Reading taxpayer that built elementary schools and the first junior high school and high school in North Reading. She was also a member of St. Mary’s Church in Onset and a former member of St. Theresa’s Church in North Reading, where she was a member of the Sodality and she taught CCD.

She lived a long life and we are blessed to have shared it with her as our mother, grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother. She will always be in our hearts and now we say, goodbye mom and thank you for being special.

Family members include her loving sons, Robert, Edward, Jr. and Dennis Wilson; daughters, Kathleen Quigg and Patricia Seluk; 11 grandchildren, Laura Carrillo, Michelle Hopping, Christine Wainwright, Walter E. Quigg, Daniel, Matthew, Michael and Katherine Seluk, Mary O’Donnell, Kara LeVan and Edward Wilson, III; 22 great grandchildren and one great great grandchild; she was the sister of the late Edward Duggan, Jr. and Alfred Duggan of North Reading and Richard Duggan of North Reading and Wilmington.

Visitation will be held on Thursday, December 15 from 9:00 to 10:30 AM at the Croswell Funeral Home, 19 Bow Street, North Reading, followed by an 11:00 AM Funeral Mass at St. Theresa’s Church, 63 Winter Street, North Reading.  Interment will be in Riverside Cemetery in North Reading. Memorial donations may be made in her memory to the charity of one’s choice. www.croswellfuneralhome.com

Edith F. “Edie” (Muller) Graham – 93, of North Reading and formerly of Dorchester, passed away peacefully on Thursday, December 1, 2022 at Care One of Wilmington. Born in Boston, MA on January 10, 1929. She was the daughter of the late Leo J. and Rose E. (Saluto) Muller.

Edie spent her childhood growing up in Dorchester, MA. She was a child of the great depression, but her parents Rose and Leo Muller did their best to provide a comfortable home and instilled a strong sense of family in her throughout her younger years. Aunts, uncles and cousins lived in nearby neighborhoods while she was growing up and were a part of her everyday life. When family members came into difficult times, they often came to stay with Edie’s family. Her parents were hard working people and Edie inherited their diligence for working hard and doing the job right. Edie passed these principles on to her four daughters letting them know that with hard work and education you could achieve anything you wanted in life and become an independent person.

Edie attended Boston Public neighborhood schools and graduated from Girls High School in Boston in 1946. She then attended Burdett College School of Business and Shorthand. She found work at a local company called Boston Gas as an audit clerk where she met her future husband Henry (Hap) Graham.

Edie lived on Willard Road in North Reading for the last 67 years, but her connection to the town began when she was a young girl. She spent many summer days with family at her maternal grandfather’s summer camp on Willard Road with her parents, brother Fred and sister Jean escaping the heat of the city in Boston. Her grandfather, Thomas Saluto owned the land, built the camp and spent summers there gardening and tending to the fruit trees and lilac bushes on the property. Edie’s parents built a small four room house on a section of the land and gifted it to Edie and Hap once they married in 1953. Hap and Edie moved from Mill Street in Dorchester into 5 Willard Road in 1954 when their first daughter was 6 months old. This became and still is the family home. As the family grew, so did the original four room house with several additions. When Edie’s sister Jean got married, Jean and husband Joe Gigante moved into a small home next door to Edie and Hap’s where the original summer camp was located. This is where the next generation of the family began their lifetime with aunts, uncles and cousins sharing many memories. Edie was involved in her girl’s lives growing up. Many summer days she and her sister Jean would pack up the picnic baskets and load the car up with chairs and blankets and head to Crane Beach in Ipswich, Ma. They would hit the road by 8 AM and hope that the green head flies were not biting on those days. She was a Girl Scout Leader, volunteered many hours at St. Theresa’s annual fairs and at the elementary schools her kids attended. She eventually got a job as a teacher aid at the E. Ethel Little School when her youngest daughter started school. Once her children where older, she went back to her original line of work doing bookkeeping at Interstate Electric Services in Burlington, MA. In her free time away from work Edie was still family oriented.

Every Sunday after going to church there were family dinners. On summer holiday weekends Edie and her sister Jean would throw big backyard cookouts with aunts, uncles and cousins from the Boston areas attending, making for fun times, good eating and many happy memories. Edie loved to sew and made many dresses for herself and 4 daughters throughout their childhood lives. For fun Edie and Hap would go to the dances on Saturday nights at the Knights of Columbus Hall with their friends.

When Edie retired, she went to work in the Town Hall with Town Clerk Barbara Stats doing senior hours to earn credit on her property taxes. She also worked the Town elections counting votes into the wee hours of the morning. As Edie aged and her girls moved out on their own, she continued to live those values of hard work and being independent. She enjoyed reading, working outside tending to her flower beds and the yard, always taking pride in maintaining her home. Edie’s five grandchildren loved her dearly and always knew that she would be present to witness their life milestones and celebrations with appreciation and support.

Family members include her loving daughters, Jeanne M. McHale and her husband John of South Yarmouth, Cheryl A. Condon and her late husband Michael of Methuen, Mary F. Graham and her husband John Delapa of Westwood and Paula R. Graham-Dwyer and her husband Chris of North Reading; her sister Jean M. Gigante of North Reading and 5 grandchildren, Gregory, Christopher, James, Emily and Agnes. She was the sister of the late Frederick L. Muller. She was also survived by several cousins, nieces and nephews.

Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend her Funeral Mass that will be Celebrated on Saturday, December 10 at Noon at St. Theresa’s Church, 63 Winter Street, North Reading. Visitation and burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to MSA Coalition for research to find a cure at (www.multiplesystematrophy.org) in honor of her son-in-law John Delapa.

Greta J. Barresi – 91, formerly of North Reading, died on Friday, November 18, in Andover, Massachusetts. She was the only child of Martin R. Anderson (born Oscar Martin Rasmusson), an immigrant from Sweden, and Elizabeth (“Bess”) O’Brien, an immigrant from Newfoundland. Soon after Greta’s birth in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1931, probably in the home of a midwife, her mother was admitted to a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, a disease that was both common and fatal at the time, where she died three years later. Soon after her mother’s admission to the sanatorium, Greta and her father were taken in as boarders by Hilda Kristina (Hylander) Andresen, an immigrant from Sweden, and her husband Sonik (“Sam”) Peter Andresen, a Danish immigrant from an island that had been conquered by imperial Germany, with whom they lived for the next 13 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then Belmont, Massachusetts, until Greta’s father remarried. Hilda and Sam, who had no children of their own, loved Greta unconditionally and became like second parents to her. She remained close to them for the rest of their lives. In 1944, Greta moved out of the Andresens’ home with her father and new stepmother to Arlington, Massachusetts. Greta graduated from Arlington High School in 1948.

In an era when few women attended college, Greta paid her way through Salem State Teacher’s College (now Salem State University), where she studied Business Education. She spent two of those years as a boarding student, first in a private home and then in the Salem Home for Young Women, because there were no dorms on campus at the time. It was at Salem State that she met her future husband, Arthur A. Barresi, a World War II veteran from Lynn, Massachusetts. They married soon after graduating in 1952 and took teaching jobs at the high school in Pepperell, Massachusetts, where two of their three children were born. Greta and Arthur moved to North Reading in 1955 when Arthur was offered a job teaching business subjects in what would be the new high school. He soon became its first Assistant Principal, a post that he held until his retirement in 1987. They settled in a Cape Cod–style house on Nutter Road in what had been an apple orchard before the war, where Arthur would live for almost 45 years Greta would live for more than 63. The salary of a public school teacher only went so far for a family of four in those days, so for a time they had no telephone in their home. When Greta and Arthur moved to town, the crews building Route 93 still were making their way toward North Reading from Boston; E. Ethel Little still lived in her two houses at the corner of Park and Main Streets (a small house with central heating in the winter and a big house without central heating in the summer); and the future North Reading High School still was an empty field across the street from the little clapboard building that housed Ryer’s store (then called Molly’s).  Soon Greta was teaching in the evening school at Lynn Burdett College in Lynn, Massachusetts, which she did for several years, interrupted only by the birth of a third child in 1962. After this child started first grade, Greta worked again as a substitute teacher in the North Reading public schools for $15 a day. At about that time, she also signed up for an intensive training course offered by North Reading for tutors who were willing to work with learning-disabled children. After completing the course, Greta worked for many years with children with mild to moderate special needs, first at the Maria J. Murphy Elementary School and then at the L. D. Batchelder Elementary School. She retired in 1988.

Over the years, Greta enrolled in many adult education courses and had many hobbies as a result, including upholstery, oil painting, cake decorating, rosemaling, and the ins-and-outs of travel arranging (at a time when it was not possible to arrange trips online). She also volunteered for the Channel 2 Auction at least once. She was a charter member of Messiah Lutheran Church in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, where she was active in youth education and charitable activities for decades. She was an avid gardener—growing both flowers and vegetables—and enjoyed cooking too, especially when it came to preparing “gourmet specials” of dishes from all over the world. She also liked reading and for a time met periodically in a book club of women who lived nearby. Later in life, she was a founding member of the North Reading Recycling Committee, attended town meetings, and was active in the North Reading Senior Center. From her father she inherited a zest for travel—with her family, with her husband, and in later years sometimes by herself or with a friend. By her 80^th birthday, Greta had visited all seven continents. In the late 1990s, while serving as caregiver to her husband, who was battling Parkinson’s disease, Greta started to write her memoirs and later joined a writing group in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, to which she presented draft chapters. Later, with the help of one of her sons, she began to edit them, a project on which she continued to work until a week before her death. She also helped her husband to start writing his memoirs, and, after his passing in 2000, continued to work on them in his stead, including by compiling extensive reminiscences about her husband’s life that she solicited from family, friends, and others. She also endowed a scholarship for North Reading High School students in his name.

Greta is survived by a daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth C. Robinson and Alvin A. Robinson III of Tewksbury, Massachusetts; a son and daughter-in-law, David P. Barresi and Julia (Johnson) Barresi of Traverse City, Michigan; another son, Paul A. Barresi, and Richard S. Carbonneau of Merrimac, Massachusetts; a granddaughter and grandson-in-law, Miranda C. (Robinson) Allen and Jason Allen of Methuen, Massachusetts; another granddaughter, Marielle C. Robinson, and Scott Butova of Wilson, Wyoming; two grandsons, Joshua D. Barresi and Nicholas A. Barresi of Traverse City, Michigan; and several granddogs and greatgranddogs, whose company she always enjoyed (but could have done without the dog kisses).

Her funeral will be held on Friday, December 2, at 10:00 AM at the Croswell Funeral Home, 19 Bow Street, North Reading. Visitation will be held on Thursday, December 1 from 4:00 to 7:00 PM. Interment will be in Riverside Cemetery in North Reading. www.croswellfuneralhome.com

In lieu of sending flowers, donations may be made to the Arthur A. Barresi Memorial Scholarship for North Reading High School students. Please make the checks payable to the “Town of North Reading” and be sure to note the “Arthur A. Barresi Memorial Scholarship” on the check’s memo line. The checks should be mailed to Treasurer, North Reading Town Hall, 235 North Street, No. Reading, MA, 01864.

Frederick R. Bishop, Jr. – 81, of North Reading and formerly of Melrose, died Saturday, November 19, at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington.

Born in Everett. MA on November 28, 1940, he was the son of the late Frederick R., Sr. and Mildred (Murray) Bishop. He was a graduate of Chelsea High School.

Fred worked for many years as a Supervisor for the Xenon Corporation in Wilmington. He was a member of the National Guard. He was an avid outdoorsman, he loved hunting and fishing. He has been a resident of North Reading for the past 49 years.

Family members include his loving wife Nancy (Moorehead) Bishop; his son, Frederick R. Bishop, III; his daughters, Diana Hartmann and Julie LeBlanc and three grandchildren.

Visitation will be held on Friday, November 25 from 4 to 7 PM at the Croswell Funeral Home, 19 Bow Street, North Reading, followed by a prayer service at 7 PM. In lieu of flowers memorial donations may be made in his memory to https://www.massoutdoorheritage.org/     www.croswellfuneralhome.com