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JANE ELLEN BAESZLER: Staten Island Tapestry

 

Jane Ellen Baeszler grew up in the shadow of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the Randall Manor neighborhood in Staten Island. She went to Catholic schools and earned an associate's degree in business from the College of Staten Island. She never left Randall Manor, even after she got a job as a municipal bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Her mother, Rita, lived close by and said Ms. Baeszler was attentive to her nephew, Patrick, 10, and nieces, Annie-Laurie, 13, and Molly, 12, who were the perfect age to share secrets with an aunt that they would not tell their mother.

Ms. Baeszler, 43, relaxed by doing needlepoint. She had perfected it. She gave a needlepoint tapestry of a horse's head to a childhood friend, who is an equestrian. She made a cocoa pot for an aunt who collects them. She liked Americana. She made a tapestry of a Harper's Bazaar cover, with a woman in a long coat with a fur collar reminiscent of the Roaring 20's. On Sept. 10, she attended a class to work on a tapestry of a teapot for her sister-in-law's 40th birthday on Oct. 10.

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From "Profiles in Grief" of The New York Times