Dolores Lucia

Dolores Lucia (October 28, 1925 – January 23, 2021) passed away peacefully in the company of family members on Saturday January 23. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland to Lithuanian immigrants Martha and Kazimir Kedosis, the 11th of 12 children and spent her childhood and youth in the lively Lithuanian-American community in that city. She was a graduate of the Mercy Hospital Nursing Program in Baltimore and had brief but a varied career, working as a nurse in the Cadet Corps, as a polio nurse in Sioux City, Iowa, and for the Red Cross as a Blood Mobile nurse. In 1954, she married Joseph A. Lucia (at the time a Dental student at the University of Maryland and through their marriage a dentist in Endicott, NY), her husband for nearly five decades. Joseph pre-deceased Dolores in 2016. She is survived by her six children and their spouses and families (Joseph, Philadelphia, PA; Yvonne, Binghamton, NY, Annamarie, Campville, NY; Steven, Rochester, NY; Thomas, Endicott, NY; and John, Rochester, NY), along with nineteen grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. A devout Catholic her entire life, she was also passionately concerned about social issues and served as president of the Broome County Right to Life Committee. As a believer in solutions and out of a desire to support single mothers, she was a founding member in 1990 of Mom’s House of Johnson City, NY. During the 1980s and 1990s she was an inveterate writer of letters to the editor of the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin. She was deeply dedicated to and proud of her family and her warm and welcoming home was the gathering place for over three decades for holidays, birthday celebrations, and many other festivities. Large Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas gift exchanges, annual Easter Egg Hunts in her backyard, and summertime pool parties were highlights of the year for her grandchildren, to whom she was affectionately known as “Granny Do.” She always took enormous joy in seeing the world through their energetic and exploring eyes. Her home always contained at least one special room or closet full of toys for visiting kids. During their visits she could regularly be found on the floor next to the youngest, building block towers, or sitting at a craft table, making figures with Play-Doh. She was a believer in “guardian angels” and would say to anyone who was traveling to or from a visit with her, “May the angels carry you.” She remained interested and engaged in the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren through her final days. Her generous spirit lives on in their hearts and memories.
A private family Mass will be held at Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church with interment at Calvary Cemetery at the convenience of the family. Donations in Dolores’s memory can be made to Mom’s House at the following Web address: https://momshouseny.org/support-us/donate/