Marian Paduck Zalonis

Marian was born February 14th, 1928 1928 to Leo Padock and Mary Bystrick in Wilks-Barre, Pennsylvania, where she attended school and a Polish Catholic Church. Roughly age 22, Marian met and married her husband, Tony Zalonis, also of Wilks-Barre. They later moved to New Jersey where they had two children, Donna and Diane, before moving on to Cary, North Carolina, in 1972.

Marian was truly a child Saint Francis and Saint Cecilia. A life-long lover of music, Marian loved attending Cary Band Days and listening to WCPE. She was also a powerful supporter of her grandson, Morgan, in taking up the violin.

But no where was Marian happier than in her yard, feeding the birds, watching the squirrels, and tending her garden - unless it was sitting with a cat in her lap or a pooch at hand to pet. Marian has always loved animals, from her childhood bunnies to the birds feeding at her window, and even the squirrels raiding her bird feeders. In her final months, one of her simplest pleasures was to sit on a park bench under the trees of Bond Park and watch the people go by. She highly recommends it.

When she wasn’t sitting at home, Marian was out traveling. Over her lifetime, she has been on 6 different continents and visited innumerable countries. Even late in life she was still traveling with a trip to France at the age of 90 (6 months after her first hip replacement!) and a long over-due trip to see the Rose Bowl Parade in 2019, among many others.

Marian also showed what stubbornness, determination, and religiously doing all your PT exercises can do for you. In Fall of 2017, Marian and her right foot had a little accident with a pitchfork that led to her falling and breaking her hip. Determined to not let something like a hip-replacement stop her from being independent or from working in the yard, Marian did the full course of rehab, then did every exercise her PT gave her everyday after, even when she wasn’t required to anymore. After 6 months, she was back in her yard, picking up pinecones and planting flowers without even the aid of a walker or a cane.

When she broke her second hip a few years later, she did the same and only begrudgingly had to accept the help of a walker, and even then only when working in her yard.

Marian’s final months were peaceful, with her only real difficulty being trying to convince her grandson not to stay out past 10 PM on a Friday night. She was happy to go to the park, watch the Durham Bulls religiously on TV or attend games, and eat weekly cheesecakes from Asali.

Marian was survived by her daughter, Diane Zalonis, and her grandson, Morgan Fleming. Marian and Tony remained together until his passing in 2002. She will rejoin him shortly in the Saint Francis Columbarium at St. Michael.

Funeral services for Marian will be held at St. Michael the Archangel Church on November 7th, 2024, at 12 PM Noon.