Obituary of Rosemarie O'Keefe -

Rosemarie O’Keefe (née Valenzuela Ferrari) was killed Saturday evening (November 27, 2010) in a car crash on Route 9 near Cold Spring while returning to her home in Peekskill. Born in Chile on January 27, 1929, she came to the United States in the late 1950’s as a Fulbright Scholar to study for a PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University. While living in New York City, she met her future husband Thomas who was an attorney in Peekskill for many decades and who predeceased her in 2000. After raising five children, Rosemarie was a substitute English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher for various school districts in the mid-Hudson Valley and worked at the Dutchess County Community Action Agency in Dover Plains, New York during the 1980’s. She subsequently worked for many years with emotionally disturbed children in the Union Free School District of the Tarrytowns. In more recent years she volunteered to teach English to new immigrants in classes held at the Peekskill Field Library. Rosemarie is survived by four sisters who reside in Santiago, Chile as well as her five children, Thomas and John Paul of San Francisco, Michael of Zurich, Switzerland, Christopher and his wife Susan of Croton-on-Hudson, and Annemarie and her husband Redmond Abrams of Dover Plains. She also leaves behind nine grandchildren: Kathryn, John-Michael, Andrew, Alexandra, Hudson, Isabel, Dillon, Margot and Colgan. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to the North Highlands Engine Company No.1, 504 Fishkill Road, Cold Spring, New York 10516 or to the Philipstown Volunteer Ambulance Corps, 14 Cedar Street, Cold Spring, New York 10516 Visitation will be held at the Joseph F. Nardone Funeral Home in Peekskill, New York on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 between 4:00pm and 8:00pm. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at the Church of the Assumption in Peekskill, New York on Saturday, December 4th at 11:30am.