Obituary of Elizabeth Davie
Elizabeth (nee O’Neill) Davie of Rockaway Township, NJ died on Thursday, January 11, 2024, after a brief illness. She was 83.
Elizabeth was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and immigrated to America with her husband, Leslie, and their two oldest daughters in 1967. Later, a third daughter was born in New Jersey. Elizabeth lived in Newtown, CT before moving to Rockaway Borough in 1969 and then Rockaway Township in 1972. She also maintained a home in Edinburgh for many years.
She grew up in a mining village community in Edinburgh called The Jewel. Elizabeth was crowned the Gala Queen of the village in her teens. She worked in Manfield’s, an exclusive shoe store on Edinburgh’s world-famous Princes Street.
Her mantra in life was why go big when you can go biggest? Everything she did, she did to an extreme.
Elizabeth enjoyed volunteering at her daughters’ schools. She was president of the Morris Hills High School Home & School Association and threw herself into making its biggest fundraiser, the annual Chinese Auction, a huge success. Elizabeth and other members solicited donations from businesses ending up with tons of donations that they arranged into attractive displays. She herself sewed a pair of six-foot Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls to be auctioned. She passed on her detailed binder and her playbook for the auction so the success could be continued and it was followed faithfully for many years. Prior to that, Elizabeth served as the treasurer of the Sacred Heart School Home & School Association in Rockaway, where she helped run fundraisers such as the weekly bingo and the annual school bazaar. She also served as a room mother.
When her girls were older, Elizabeth dedicated herself to a daily fitness routine, and again, no half measures for her. She started with an early morning run down Main Street from her home to the center of Rockaway Borough and back. Elizabeth then returned home and got in her beloved 1978 Cadillac and drove to the West Morris YMCA where she was a founding member. At the Y, she swam and did weight training.
Elizabeth was an enthusiastic gardener and enjoyed working on the wood frame and stucco home in Rockaway Township the Davies moved into in 1972. It is a four-story house and she turned it into a showstopper with years of mostly do-it-yourself projects. Elizabeth planted hundreds of annual flowers around her home each year, in addition to cultivating many perennial plants that continue to bloom around the house today. She had a two-story flagpole installed in her front yard and proudly flew the American and POW-MIA flags. On patriotic holidays, she put flags and banners from telephone poles at the top of her street to the bottom.
Elizabeth rented a hand steamer and steamed layers of wallpaper off the plaster ceilings and scraped layers of wallpaper off the walls. She then had her husband help her wallpaper the house. Elizabeth made curtains and hung them. She loved decorating the house for Christmas and made many of her own decorations, including elves to put on the stairs for Christmas and artificial poinsettia arrangements she placed all over the house.
On one memorable occasion, Elizabeth and her husband spent a Saturday digging up ivy that covered half the front yard because she decided she wanted to replace it with grass. They were a little puzzled at the strange reaction of various neighbors waving to them and laughing. That's because they didn't know their daughters had planned a surprise 25th wedding anniversary party for them that night. Relatives had come from as far away as Ottawa, Canada; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and North Palm Beach, Florida for the event. And, of course, the neighbors were invited.
Elizabeth insisted on making the bridesmaid dresses for her oldest daughter’s wedding. Her mother and two sisters came over from Scotland for the wedding. She had them hand carry white heather wedding favors over for the reception because white heather, which is rare, is considered good luck in Scotland.
She enjoyed socializing and her friends introduced her to bowling when they invited her to join the Wednesday Morning Coffee League at Rockaway Lanes. Elizabeth loved to bowl. Soon she and her husband were in an evening league and she bowled in various leagues with friends and family over the years.
Elizabeth also was a reader of all sorts of materials from daily newspapers to poetry and she could converse with anyone about anything. She had a sharp sense of humor and loved a good gossip and a good laugh.
As much as she loved all these things, she loved nothing more than being a grandmother. She showered her seven grandchildren with attention and affection, hosting them for sleepovers, taking them to movies, bowling, to the mall, to arcades, to the diner and just generally spoiling them.
Elizabeth was a parishioner at Sacred Heart Church in Rockaway for many years and later Saint Cecilia's Church, also in Rockaway.
She was predeceased by her husband of 55 years, Leslie, in 2014. Elizabeth is survived by her three daughters and their families, Audrey Risberg of Rockaway Township, her husband, James, and daughter, Amanda; Alice Burnett of Long Beach Island, her husband, Robert, and daughters, Laura Foley, Lucie Magee and Leah Winkler; and Anne Mucci of Mountain Lakes, her husband, Ronnie, and sons Ronald, Joseph and Michael; and her three great-grandchildren. She also has relatives in Scotland..
Arrangements are private and entrusted to Codey and Mackey Funeral Home of Boonton. To share a condolence, please visit CodeyMackeyFH.com
