Diana P. Shrader

Diana P. Shrader, 56, died peacefully at home in the presence of family and friends on January 17, 2011 of complications resulting from Multiple Myeloma, a rare type of cancer which destroys attacks blood cells. She was the daughter of the late Charles and Mary Coscia and is survived by her loving husband of 24 years Chris Shrader, five siblings; sisters Maryann Coscia, Lucy Wimmer, brothers Charles, Shawn and James Coscia. She also leaves behind various beloved nieces and nephews.

Born on April 20, 1954 in Hackensack NJ, Diana was the fourth child, and third daughter of Charles and Mary Coscia. The family lived in Paramus NJ at the time, but moved to Upper Saddle River by the end of the 1950s and that’s where Diana spent her formative years. They owned a large house on a hilltop – there are lots of hills there – that her dad had worked directly with architects and builders to design. The house still stands today, and Diana and I drove by and saw it several times, most recently in 2002 when we had traveled to New Jersey for her 30-year class reunion at Northern Highlands Regional High School from which she had graduated in 1972. Charlie was enormously proud of their home there. He had grown up in the Bronx on Arthur Avenue in the “Little Italy” section. I was able to identify the house he grew up in the Bronx and photograph it in 1984 when I worked in New York for a year.

As a young child the personal traits that would characterize Diana as an adult were already evident. She made friends easily and exhibited that feisty spirit early on. Charlie loved to relate an incident where Diana, wherein a coon-skin cap, led a group of kids, all boys, through the living room giving the order “come on men!”. Her early years are chronicled in an eight-grade autobiography “Rattles to Battles”. This essay was an English class writing assignment which Diana saved. I was unaware of it until nearly two years after her death when I found it in a box in the closet and it is now among my cherished possessions.

By the time she graduated high school at 18 she had the itch to get out on her own. She spent a summer after high school working as a maid at the Sagamore Hotel, a swanky resort hotel at Lake George NY. Years later, when she accompanied me on a work related trip to Miami she happened upon the “sister” hotel, Sagamore Miami built by the same turn of the century tycoon and that was a nostalgic event for her.

Anxious to break away from the “nest” – again, the spirited and nonconventional persona -- she made a few more trips, spending a few months in Boca Rotan Florida, then a little later crossing the country with a few friends, and living for a brief time in California. She even spent a brief period of time living in a commune, though I’m not clear on the details. Each time she ended up back home in New Jersey. Charlie and Mary sold the Upper Saddle River house though in the early 1970s so this time Diana really moved out on her own. She got a job as a nursing assistant at St. Peters Hospital in New Brunswick which is where we would eventually meet. She lived in a series of shared housing arrangements including several years in which she and her sister Maryann shared an apartment in East Brunswick, then subsequently with other roommates. She also went on to complete junior college program, receiving a degree from Middlesex College in 1982.

I met Diana in 1982 when we both moved into a house on Baldwin Street in New Brunswick that had been converted into upstairs and down stairs apartments. We were not romantically connected at that point – that took 4 or 5 months – in fact we saw each other only in passing. Over time though we got to have a number of conversations and found resonance in our many common interests and tastes. Things then progressed quickly we were soon living together and that would continue for the next 27 years.

Much of Diana’s profession life was devoted to the elderly and the poor or disabled. She worked at a senior citizen facility in New Brunswick for several years; even for 5 or 6 months after we moved 25 miles north to Linden New Jersey to be closer to my new job. We quickly found though that Linden and Union County were less amenable to us than the more vibrant University town we had left, so it never felt like more than a temporary stop. Diana eventually resigned from the job in New Brunswick and had several part time jobs, again in the area of senior care, during the remainder of the year we spent there; from August 1984 to July 1985.

We moved to the Washington area after I got a job in Maryland where we were married in 1987. We bought our first (and only) house in Bowie MD in 1989. Diana went back to college in 1988 at Bowie State University which offered one of only several degree programs in social work within the Maryland system. Going back to university after a long time away from school and as a 30 something was difficult, but she prevailed and graduated Cum Laude with a social work degree in 1990. As was always the pattern, she made a number of friends there, and several people whom I hadn’t seen since came to her memorial service.

Diana had several jobs over the next two years, eventually landing at the Maryland Department of Adult Protective Services, where she would remain for about 5 years. We also took a number of interesting trips during that time frame, including ones to Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and to most notably to Alaska in the Summer of 1992. We both enjoyed the outdoors and liked to camp out back then; however, I think that triggered a recurrence of the chronic shoulder pain - and associated nerve pain – that Diana had experienced intermittently over the years. This condition was the result of a sequence of childhood injuries; she had broken her clavicle at age 7, again at 8, and once again as a sophomore in high school. It had never healed properly since then; a “non union” in medical jargon.

This shoulder problem led to innumerable trips to the orthopedic clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, for a plethora of pain medications, various PT regimens. This was followed by to two ultimately unsuccessful operations at Hopkins, and finally to a third more or less successful one at the Harbor Hospital in Baltimore. Diana had missed a lot of work and this had a significant impact on our day-to-day lives over that ten year period. Diana later suspected that the inordinate number of medical X-rays incurred during those years of treatment could be the root of the rare blood cancer that ultimately took her life, but there is no way to know whether or not that is the case.

Later, from 2002 until her death she was an employee of the City of Bowie, specifically a staff member at the Bowie Senior Center. Her warm spirited personality made her a popular employee, and made many friends there. She leaves behind a large network of friends and has touched many lives with her kindness and generosity.

We were a childless couple, and had pondered, then finally pursued adoption. Contracts were established documents initiated and money and fronted. Since by that time we were “middle aged” adults, we were required to take fairly rigorous physical examinations before the agency and the foreign government involved would approve the adoption. It was then that we learned that Diana had an abnormal blood protein count which placed her in a high risk category for the onset of Multiple Myeloma; a type of bone marrow cancer which leads to depletion of vital blood cells. Adoption was out of the question, and a treatment regimen was initiated. The treatment was generally minimally invasive and Diana was able to live her normal life until late in the fall of 2010. There had even been a period of almost complete remission in mid 2010, but unfortunately the cancer returned and the medications that had previously managed it became ineffective.

Throughout her life, Diana was a devout Catholic, participating in the music programs of three area parishes. She was up until the time of her death involved with the instruction of the CCD for children as well as participating in various church sponsored community volunteer activities over the years. She opened up her heart to various families, in several cases becoming like a second mother to their children. She left behind a large network of friends and has touched many lives with her kindness and generosity. She also loved animals, and was instrumental in the establishment of a dog park in the city of Bowie. Our Diana was an enchanting and carefree person, unselfish in all she did.

A memorial service was held at the Ascension Catholic Church, 12700 Lanham Severn Rd, Bowie MD at 11:00 AM on Saturday, February 19, 2011. Over 150 people attended and she was eulogized by numerous friends and family members. The mass was delivered by Father Kyle Ingles.

Diana P. Shrader was cremated on January 19, 2011. Her ashes were presented for blessing of the Catholic Church at the memorial mass.

I spread Diana’s ashes at two locations:

8/23/2012, 14:00 EDY

One portion was poured into the ground at the grave site grave site of

Mary T. Coscia and Anna McHale, her mother and maternal grandmother. The location is:

Section 11, Plot 52

Cemetery of the Resurrection

361 Sharrot Ave.

Staten Isand, New York

718-356-7738

The remainder was spread into the waters of Lake Willoughby, in Westmore Vermont. This was one of our favorite places. I traveled by Kayak to the base of Mt. Hor and east of Mt. Pisgah: (N 44.72402, W 72.04227) on 8/24/2012 16:40 EDT.

- Chris R. Shrader, 1/17/2013