Loretta Hackett

Dear Sister, loving Aunt, Great-Aunt, beloved Cousin, cherished Friend.

Dear Family and Friends,

My sister Loretta was a very big part of all of our lives. She was the oldest of three born to our parents, Jack and Dolores Hackett, on November 14, 1949. She would have been 68 years old this year. Ret, our younger brother Dennis, and I were raised on Brooklyn Avenue in Brooklyn, N.Y. where she attended St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Elementary School. She later went to Erasmus Hall High School, and then Pace University in Manhattan. Growing up in Brooklyn we had many friends from school and the neighborhood. We were fortunate to grow up in an area where everyone knew everyone. Loretta made friends easily and kept in touch with so many of these people especially her girlfriends Ginny, Regina, Chris, and Mary with whom she had annual reunions and many visits in between. Loretta was a great communicator and thanks to social media in more recent years, she was able to keep up with family and renew old friendships.

Throughout her life she was very active and successful. In business she worked her way up from being a secretary for an insurance company in the 1970’s to the position of HR Director for the National Basketball League. Her jobs required her to travel and she always returned with stories of the sites she had seen and some of her adventures (I’m sure we don’t know about all of them). After thirty-plus years in the rat-race of the corporate world, Loretta made the decision to leave Manhattan and took a job at Molloy College where she, once again, developed new and lasting friendships.

Albeit some knew Ret as a person with a great sense of humor who loved a party, she was truly defined by family. Loretta cherished those close to her dearly, she would rush to help any of us in need and truly dedicated herself to those who needed her most. When our father Jack and youngest brother Dennis had taken ill, she jumped to action and then cared for our mother Dolores in her later years moving to Ft. Lauderdale so we could all be close. It certainly wasn’t all bad. Ret, my wife Ginny, and I enjoyed a very close relationship as well as a deep and everlasting friendship. We always managed to have a great time and took any opportunity to enjoy events and experiences together, some may have been considered them to be hair-brained I’m sure.

Nothing brought Ret more joy throughout her life than her nieces, Melissa and Kate, her nephews John, Dennis, and Melissa’s husband Rob. Even as everyone grew older and became adults with hectic schedules, she was ever present in their lives. She would often have lunch or dinner with each of them to hear the latest news and offer support and encouragement to work hard and continue chasing their dreams. She was in attendance for every milestone, whether a wedding, graduation or birthday. Loretta loved her great niece Shannon and nephews Joey and Bobby, whom she would always invite over to her home for a barbeque and swim in the pool. She loved to tease them and make them laugh as well as monitor their playing to ensure no one “got an eye poked out”.

Loretta always found time to keep up with our many cousins; the Bells, the Michelsens, the Griffins, and the Conrys. She adopted the Kiernans, who were childhood friends from Brooklyn Avenue and when Ginny and I and Harold and Maureen got married, they too became family. Our numerous get togethers were not only fun but lessons in history (which were probably re-written and exaggerated many times) to our children. If we didn’t hear from someone for a while, Loretta would be the one to reach out and to see how they were and to catch-up with the latest family news. She and our cousin Arleen spoke every day, sometimes for hours. She kept up with our Uncle Lenny (our parent’s Best Man) and Aunt Jane O’Neill who live in Jacksonville. Distance and time were never a problem; to Loretta the people she loved and cared for were the most important.

Family, God, and Country were the tenets of this wonderful woman’s life. We feel lucky to have had her in our lives albeit too brief.

Rest in peace our dear sister.

Jack & Ginny