Beverlee Ganz, 87

Former Rockville Centre resident Beverlee Kaufman Ganz died peacefully on April 14, with her beloved daughter by her side, two weeks after celebrating her 87th birthday. She and her husband Daniel M. Ganz had lived in Boca West, Fla. since 1977, but since January 2010 she had been in New York City, either residing with her daughter or at Amsterdam House Nursing Home, where her daughter is director of physical therapy. 

To meet Beverlee was to immediately love her.  The youngest of five children (her siblings preceded her in death), she lived an amazing life, full of love and zeal. Her gentle, caring spirit was just one of the qualities that attracted her husband and led to their marriage in 1949. Daniel also preceded her in death in 2004.

An inspirational mother who devoted herself and encouraged her daughter, Dr. Sandy Ganz, in athletic pursuits and medicine, and started her son, attorney David L. Ganz in his lifelong hobby of coin collecting, Beverlee’s hobbies included furniture and house painting, needlepoint and canasta. 

With two active children, first living in Baldwin and later in Rockville Centre,she still found time to be a cub scout pack leader and a brownie troop leader, and for a time, the neighborhood chauffeur to St. Christopher’s Roman Catholic Church and the Baldwin Jewish Center, because as she explained it, she was the only mother who both drove and had a car which she made available to children in the neighborhood.

Singing was always a passion of hers.  As a young child, she appeared on the radio on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, and later sang with Rose Marie.  After retiring with Danny to Boca Raton, Fla. in 1997, she became actively involved in the Boca West Chorus. Her love of singing started at an early age, and her children remember a house filled with love and the lyrical sound of her voice.

She is survived by her two children, daughter-in-law Kathy and her grandchildren, Scott of Orlando, Fla.; Elyse of Jersey City, N.J., and Pamela of Boca Raton, Fla. She adored her grandchildren — they truly were the light of her life. 

Those who knew her will miss her very much — she has left a hole in their hearts but a soul filled with her love. The family requests that donations go to Boca West Chorus, c/o A. Perlman, 29567 Linksview Circle, Boca Raton, FL 33434.