Carolyn Ruth Gaddis Sinopoli
Carolyn Ruth Gaddis Sinopoli passed away on December 22, 2010, at her home in Southold. She was born to Richard and Frances Gaddis on January 2, 1954, at Southampton Hospital.
Carolyn’s mother, Frances Still, was a lineal descendant of the Still family, one of the original settlers of Southold Town in 1640.
Her father, Richard T. Gaddis, was a Greenport resident since 1917, a member of the Greenport Fire Department and a true craftsman of wood joinery. He employed his craft at The Greenport Shipyard from 1932 to 1976, in a time when boats were made of white oak and teak. And also, in a time encompassing prohibition and a Second World War, during which the shipyard was commissioned by the Department of Defense to assist in the war effort with the production of “the mine sweeper,” a craft utilized by the U.S. Navy during World War II, and where he met his wife, Frances, of some 53 years. Mr. Gaddis was also a World War II veteran, who served in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Okinawa. Husband and wife were true-blooded Americans of an era that once was.
Carolyn and her family were Greenport residents until 1968, after which they took up permanent residence in Southold. Carolyn attended Southold School and was a graduate of the Class of 1972.
Carolyn was a woman of simple taste, with basic core values. She was an extremely kind, generous person and a lover of nature and animals. A more honest person you could not find.
She was a versatile woman of extreme intellect and a whiz at finances, and yet was her father’s daughter, who could refinish a piece of furniture to professional level.
Growing up in Greenport as a child, Carolyn would walk the beach from her home to the shipyard to see her dad on the job, a refreshing innocence that was Carolyn to this day.
A local girl in every sense of the word, Carolyn was a member of The Women’s Auxiliary of The American Legion on Main Road in Southold for some 13 years, and its treasurer for eight of those 13 years. She was a member of both the Greenport and Southold Methodist Churches, and an employee at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, where she was a training technician from 1999 until September 2009, when she was forced to retire due to illness.
Although her life was short in duration, just 56 years, Carolyn enjoyed a life of quality and was loved by many, coworkers alike. She lived her life in dignity and enjoyed its simplicities. She enjoyed family vacations on Cape Cod, where we watched our daughter Stephanie grow up before our very eyes on the shores of Dennisport. While a lover of baking, a Thanksgiving Day aroma of pumpkin pie, her specialty, would fill our home each year, a home she loved to decorate for Christmas and where she could always find the funds to buy that extra ornament or gift for someone, she would always find a way. And she loved her dog ‘Gus,’ a King Charles Cavalier, all 50 pounds of him, believe it or not.
Carolyn had the rare fortune in life to have true friends who help her family to this day after her passing, to whom her family will be eternally grateful and indebted.
Carolyn is survived by her husband, Ralph; her two beautiful daughters, Leslie and Stephanie; and a beautiful little grandson, Thomas Edward, who was born to us just months before she passed, and who she so greatly and gratefully adored and cherished.
She will be sorely missed by all the lives she has touched.
And so, to all of her dear friends and family, on behalf of Carolyn, I put to writing her wishes for us all herewith: her wishes to us for safe voyage, for calming seas, for love and for the wisdom to appreciate life through all of its comings and goings and all of its givings and takings, and for lasting tranquility.
This was Carolyn Ruth Gaddis Sinopoli.
With most sincerity,
Her Family.
This is a paid notice.
