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JEAN ANDRUCKI: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

 

Why waste time on TV when you could read or bike or help somebody out? Jean Andrucki did not even own a set. Instead, she played on two Irish women's teams: soccer on one and Gaelic football on the other. She kayaked with her 3-year- old nephew. "She's paddling," said Laura Andrucki-Izzo, her younger sister. "And he's belting out `Row, row, row your boat.' That says it all about Jean."

Her job was doing risk assessment for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. After hours, Ms. Andrucki, 43, was usually either helping to care for developmentally disabled children or elderly neighbors in Hoboken, N.J., or she was jogging or hiking. Her passions were nature and animals --the wildlife of South Africa and Peru, which she visited, and of Hoboken, which she fed. "The squirrels would climb seven floors to her terrace," Ms. Andrucki- Izzo said.

"She loved animals and gardens and writing and poetry," she continued. "She had a British heart. But it was more Oscar Wilde than Jane Austen. More a smart, tough American woman with a soft spot."

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times