Dorothy E. Taudel

Dorothy Elizabeth Taudel, 93, of Westfield died peacefully on August 5, 2024, at Westfield Gardens Nursing and Rehabilitation. She was a native of the city and a lifelong member of St. Peter’s and St. Casimir’s Church. She was predeceased by her husband, Leonard F. Taudel, in 1992. Dorothy was the daughter of Elizabeth Mihlik Pitoniak and Baltazar Pitoniak, who arrived in the Whip City at different times in the first decade of the 1900s from Zdiar in what is now Slovakia. They also lived in Bitumen, Penn., as many Pitoniaks and other Slovaks did to work the coal mines. According to Images of America: Westfield, vol. 1., Gregory Oleksak was the first Slovak to settle in Westfield and in fact the whole state, on Upper Western Avenue in 1884. By the time Dorothy was born her parents had bought a dairy farm on Northwest Road, along the Little River and across the road from the old Westfield Marble Company quarries, whose stone graces Saks Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building, and Lincoln’s Tomb in Illinois. Mayor Alice D. Burke—the first female mayor in New England—would visit with Dorothy’s mother on her FDR-like weekend drives around the city. Dorothy attended the legendary one-room Mundale School on Granville Road, with a woodstove and one teacher for all of grades K–8. This was the last generation of Americans who actually did walk to uncanceled-school in two feet of snow. Mundale School opened in 1867 and closed in 1944, Dorothy’s final year, destined for a strange career as an airplane hangar. Dorothy worked on the school paper, the Mundale Herald, and so the flame of Mundale pride was kept alive until the end. (Astoundingly, those looking for a big photo image of the red schoolhouse need only go to the Westfield Applebee’s.) Dorothy graduated from Westfield High School in 1948. She loved life out in the country but also the lively mainstream American scene “downstreet,” Mundale slang for downtown Westfield. Her diaries from 1943 and 1944 never mention radio but do show her sometimes seeing nearly a different movie a day—with no internet, but rather the old-fashioned way, at the Strand and Park theaters. At that time city buses still ran all the way up Western Avenue to the Four Corners at Northwest Road, no doubt making her trips to and from town much easier. Whether baling hay, sawing wood, doting on her older sisters’ babies, or milking cows (her father would always assign her the gentlest one) while three brothers were off fighting in World War II, leaving the farm woefully short, Dorothy was a devoted daughter and sister. She worked for years at Foster Machine of Westfield, then in 1968 began her career in the main office at Berkshire Industries, founded and run by the late Otto Essig. She made lifelong friends with many of the other “girls” there and retired in 1992 but sadly, in that same year her husband of 42 years passed away. She and Leonard, who had himself retired from the Chemical Department at Stanley Home Products, had had so many years of happiness together, with five trips to Hawaii, where they saw Don Ho perform, and many to Las Vegas, staying at the Debbie Reynolds Casino; the Rat Pack golden age. Dorothy came through her difficult years but she always missed Leonard, a soft-spoken and decent man with a bright smile even as his work-related ailments worsened. No one will forget Dorothy and her tender, gentle soul and everyone will miss her. Dorothy was predeceased by all of her siblings, 11 total: Veronica Pitoniak, who was born on January 30, 1916, and died on January 3, 1919, age 2, from the Spanish flu; Jennie Nomakeo, Joseph Pitoniak, Anna Moriarty, Stephen Pitoniak, Thomas F. Pitoniak Sr., and John P. Pitoniak. Other siblings in an era of terrible infant mortality and unimaginable heartbreak: Adam (1912), Maria or Mary (1916), and twins Edmund and Edward (1932). Dorothy will be greatly missed by her nieces and nephews: Thomas Pitoniak Jr. and Kathleen Pitoniak; Susan and James Sokolowski; Joyce Lapoint, wife of Dorothy’s nephew the late Donald Lapoint; Lois and Philip Barlow; Edward Pitoniak and Kate Barber; Mary Jean Pitoniak; Elizabeth Pitoniak; Clare Pitoniak; Barbara and Dana McDonough; and Jean Martin. For their kindness and help and friendship to Dorothy over the years her family thanks James and Sandra Gogal, Stanley Sklarski and the late Sylvia Taudel Sklarski, Dr. Patrick Pepek, Edwina and Robert Brazee, and Stanley Olechna. Thomas Pitoniak Jr. would also like to extend thanks to the Arbors at Westfield, Patty at Westfield Gardens, and Robin at Beacon Hospice. The funeral will be held on Monday, August 12, 2024, at 10 am from Firtion-Adams Funeral Service, 76 Broad St. Westfield, MA, followed by a Liturgy of Christian Burial in St. Peter’s and St. Casimir’s Church at 11 am. Burial will follow in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Westfield. Calling hours will be held on Sunday at the funeral home from 2-4 pm. www.firtionadams.com

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