By Nicole Falco
Over 1,000 attended Maione's funeral service on Tuesday morning at Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in Deer Park including family and friends as well as students, parents and colleagues from both the Deer Park and Valley Stream communities. Both schools were closed for her funeral mass.
Maione, 64, was killed in a car crash in Suffolk on April 26, just three blocks from her Stonybrook home. Maione made the decision to leave Blessed Sacrament at the end of the 2001 school year because the two and a half hour commute had become too much for her.
Born Mary McLenighan in Chicago, Maione attended Marillac College in St. Louis where she also entered the order of the Daughters of Charity Community. Maione began her teaching career at a Catholic school in Keokuk, Iowa, and later in Minnesota.
Maione eventually decided to leave the Daughters of Charity in 1971 and she moved to San Francisco where she became principal of Queen of Apostles School in San Jose in 1982. It was there that she met her husband, Orlando Maione, at a church function. The two married a year later.
Father Gregory Cappuccino of Blessed Sacrament said, "Melanie has been in education her entire life. She is well-known from California to here. She has taught in schools in abject poverty in California to schools that are affluent to everything in between. She has worked with every kind of culture."
Maione came to Long Island when Orlando, who is originally from the area, was offered a job as chief architect at Stonybrook University Hospital. At the time Blessed Sacrament was looking for a principal to replace Sr. Ruth Smith. Fr. Cappuccino interviewed Maione, but he said the decision was ultimately up to the school's search committee.
"Right from the beginning Melanie was the one I was hoping they would choose. I hoped they would have seen it the way I did," Fr. Cappuccino said.
The committee did, and in August 1995 Maione was on the job.
"[Because of Melanie] we are a school that has a tremendous spirit of being a family. We try to encourage and support one another. She helped create an enthusiasm for learning and pride that our school is not just a little Catholic grammar school, but one with an excellent reputation," Fr. Cappuccino said.
Whether it was popping by a classroom, awarding students for their natural virtues or solving a bully problem at the school, Maione was a hands-on principal, according to those who worked with her.
"I just found her to be a person who almost intellectually felt you. When she spoke to you, you were the one she was looking at and speaking to. Sometimes that's hard for a principal of a school," said Sr. Elizabeth Derricks, a math-intervention teacher at Blessed Sacrament.
"Her kindness and laughter has guided faculty and staff over many rough moments, not only in their personal lives, but during their school days also," said Maione's former secretary at Blessed Sacrament, Kathy Murphy.
Fr. Cappuccino said Maione's commitment to the education of the whole child prompted one Deer Park parent to tell Orlando, "You don't know what a difference your wife has made in my son and in our family."
A memorial is being planned at Blessed Sacrament.
