Isabelle Donohue

Belle was born in Manhattan just shy of 95 years ago to Hungarian immigrants, Andrew and Ethel Hodinka. After losing the family home, built with Andrew’s own hands, during the Great Depression, Belle grew up in an apartment on 196th Street in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx with her two older siblings – Mary and Charlie. While she may have had an unremarkable childhood, her Christopher Columbus H.S. 1943 yearbook remembered her as having “extraordinary beauty and brains of equal measure.”

Not surprisingly, Belle had her choice of suiters. Among them was Frank James Donohue, a handsome son of Irish immigrants who was two years her senior. As family lore tells it, Frank was #2 on Belle’s list until one fateful summer day when he invited his rival to take a walk. That rival was never again seen in Pelham Bay and, from that day forward, Frank was without challenge for Belle’s affection.

During WWII, Belle worked as a secretary in Manhattan while Frank served as a radio instructor at the naval training center in Shoemaker, California. They began their 57-year marriage with a ceremony at City Hall in Manhattan on October 5, 1946. After a modest honeymoon, they settled in the Bronx for seven years before moving to New Jersey. There they would raise four sons.

In 1965, Frank left a 19-year career at New York Bell Telephone Company to start his own construction company. Finances were tight in those years, and Belle demonstrated a remarkable ability to stretch a dollar to make ends meet. Clothes purchased for Son #1, were handed down sequentially to Sons #s 2, 3, and 4 despite the wide variation in their dimensions and the evolution of fashion over the twelve years separating the eldest from the youngest. To supplement the family finances, Belle returned to work as Executive Assistant to the CFO of BVD, where she went on to dominate BVD’s after-work bowling league. Her high-game, high-series, and high-average trophies were a source of great personal and family pride.

Conditions in the construction industry improved in the 1980s, and Frank and Belle joined the tony Tuxedo Country Club. They always seemed more at ease with the staff than the members, but eventually forged several lifelong friendships, most notably with Ray and Alice Girlt. Belle took up golf under the tutelage of her ever-patient and understanding husband, developing a level of proficiency that rivaled her bowling skills. At the age of 79, she carded her first hole-in-one, a feat that so far has eluded her golfing sons.

Belle spent the last years of her career as the Office Manager for Frank’s construction company. While Frank held the title of President, those in the know understood that Belle was running things.

Eventually, the siren song of year-round golf in Florida became too difficult to resist, and Belle and Frank retired in 1986 to a golf community outside of Tampa.

While physically separated by 1,100 miles, Belle and Frank remained part of their family’s lives through weekly Sunday telephone calls and regular visits. Belle’s six grandchildren still talk about her birthday notes written in a graceful script, her silly jokes, and her willingness to get down on her hands and knees to play whatever games struck their fancy. She always let them win, feigning disappointment when the result was decided and begrudgingly rewarding the victor with a trip to Dairy Queen.

Her sons, all endowed with generous proportions, remember first their mother’s cooking, particularly her Pot Roast, Chicken Paprika, and Savanyú Hús dinners. If pressed, they might also remember her kindness, patience, loving smile, affection for their beloved canines Colonel, Nike, Sophie, Doris and Duffy, and animosity toward Winston. Extended family and friends, particularly Flo & Jack, Warren & Peg, Mary & John, and Charlie & Anne, might remember Belle as a great companion with an affinity for whiskey sours and gin and tonics and who enjoyed the robust laughter that often accompanied their consumption.

Belle lost Frank in 2003, but remained in their Florida home for the next eleven years, filling her time on the golf course sporting a wide assortment of lavender and pink outfits, bowling, and dinners with friends. When she could no longer manage her affairs, her sons cajoled her into moving back to New Jersey.

Alzheimer’s would slowly erode her memory, independence, and oratory skills and confine her to a wheelchair, but she never lost her beautiful smile or her endearing personality. She looked forward to daily visits from her sons at the nursing home until her final days, always craning her neck upon their arrival to see whether they remembered to bring her a strawberry sundae and making it difficult to say good-bye upon the conclusion of their visits. Her passing leaves an enormous void in their lives and of those who had the pleasure of knowing her.

The coronavirus pandemic ultimately claimed Belle’s life while under quarantine, physically separated from her loving family and part of an unfolding tragedy now devastating thousands of families with loved ones in nursing homes. Our hearts go out to all of them. Belle is survived by her loving sons and daughters-in-law -- Frank and Jeanne, Kevin, Edward and Stephanie, Kenneth and Colleen while her alias, “Grandma Belle,” is survived by six loving grandchildren – Kimberly, Kevin, Ryan, Erin, Kaitlin, and Brianne, and three great-grandchildren – Frankie, Mia, and Emilia.

Instead of flowers, Belle would have been pleased if we helped others through contributions to the Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research Foundation or The CDP COVID-19 Response Fund.

Egészségére!