Rosemarie E. Farrell

On December 7, 2018, Rosemarie E. Farrell, 68, succumbed to ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, after a courageous battle of four years. She leaves behind a legacy of love for all who had the privilege of knowing her, both personally and professionally. A long time crusader for the downtrodden, she was a public defender for several years, before becoming an appellate attorney for the Florida Department of Children & Families. Rosemarie was a strong advocate for the environment, a volunteer for the Friends of Gamble Rogers State Park, and largely responsible for the resurgence of the Ocean Palm Golf Course in Flagler Beach. She was a gifted writer and speaker, as evidenced by numerous articles she authored as well as briefs and legal cases she painstakingly prepared and successfully argued before the Florida judicial system. She will be sorely missed and grieved by her sister, Lynne Farrell Abrams; her brother-in-law, Peter Abrams; her sister-in-law, Vera Potapenko; brother-in-law, James Silicani; nephew, Thomas Potapenko Farrell, as well as numerous Canadian and American relatives and friends. In lieu of flowers, Rosemarie was profoundly impacted by former NFL player Tim Green and his campaign to “Tackle ALS”. 100% of proceeds raised through the campaign support ALS research. In lieu of flowers gifts can be made to Rosemarie’s Team https://because.massgeneral.org/RosemarieFarrell. This was Rosemarie’s personal request. A funeral mass will be held on Tuesday, December 18, 2018, 1:00PM at Santa Maria del Mar Catholic Church. Inurnment will follow at Flagler Palms Memorial Gardens. Celebration of Life/Reception immediately following the cemetery inside Craig-Flagler Palms Funeral Home. CLICK BELOW TO DONATE

REMEMBERING MY DEAR SISTER, ROSEMARIE

How do you capture a life, preserve its essence, after that person is gone? I ask myself this as I desperately attempt to do that very thing with my sister, Rosemarie Elizabeth Farrell. Gone but a few months, I already feel her slipping away into the oblivion of time, there to lay among the forgotten soldiers who trudged this earth doing good for others, heroes and heroines all. Yet no one moreso than my sister.

When I first came to Florida fifteen years ago, my sister kindly took me in to share her townhouse in Flagler Beach. Her work as an attorney took her to Tallahassee for a couple of years, so I "house sat" for her. Then she came back to accept a position as Appellate Counsel, Children's Legal Services, for the Department of Children and Families. She worked tirelessly and relentlessly to amend past legal cases, lugging her yellow legal pad and mounds of casework and briefs, even when she would choose to "get away from it all," visiting my husband and myself in central Florida. Even then, her bed lamp would be burning into the wee hours as she scribbled her notes for later keypounding. Her brain would exceed all speed limits, pulling all-nighters to meet deadlines.

This was the same woman who volunteered at Gamble Roger's State Park to plant grass in its salt marshes; who pruned her rosebushes and planted impatiens. Who laughed uproariously along with me at Johnny Carson, then David Letterman, and who clapped along with me when American Pharaoh captured the Triple Crown. We went back together over sixty years.

One memory, fuzzy now, except when I am reminded by film footage of its enormity, was the trip we made together, along with a band of teenagers, to Bethel, New York back in August of 1969. We told our parents it was a music concert, and they were assured by other parents that we would be safe. What we landed upon were almost half a million fellow music revelers, none of whom had a clue about what was to unfold. In retrospect now, I have read that even the Woodstock performers were frightened by the sheer number of people who assembled there. Rosemarie and I made it there and back, our small periscope of living forever broadened by the experience.

In her Junior year of high school, she was an exchange student that summer for a Youth for Understanding program which sent her to live with a Japanese family structured much like our own. She returned to the States with her hair chopped into a bob, ready to take on the world.

Rosemarie was a sister, a friend, a critic, a champion of the downtrodden, an environmentalist. She was all these things, but so much more. As she faced down the unbeatable foe of ALS, let me share her own words:

"A writer by trade, I have used the pen as a tool to build consensus, to advocate, and to crusade on behalf of various causes. Over the course of careers in education, anti-poverty community action and law, I have written op eds, education plans and proposals, issue and research papers, eulogies and remembrances, and legal briefs. As a second year law student, a silent stroke wiped out 75% of my verbal memory. While trying to process the inoperable time bomb ticking in my head, I found my way to a doctor whose pioneering 'gamma knife' radiosurgery would save my life. Thirty years later, by now having survived traumatic brain injury and breast cancer, and having powered past all the 'nevers'--I gaze at the ravages of ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, and see the good that is still left. There will be no better day than this one."

Rosemarie passed away on December 7th of this past year. She would have been turning 69 on April 25th. Her legacy for us all, as I clutch her memory forever to my heart, bears repeating: "There will be no better day than this one."

There will be a 9 a.m. Mass celebrated in her memory at Santa Maria del Mar Catholic Church in Flagler Beach on Thursday, April 25, 2019.

Online remembrances may be made at www: craigflaglerpalms.com

Lynne Farrell Abrams is a freelance writer, with a B.A. degree in Communication. She is now retired after several years of employment as a writer and editor in the corporate world.