Joan R. Gasparello

Gasparello, Joan (Circola) of Hingham and Nantucket Island died August 7, 2005 at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. Devoted wife of Ralph Gasparello, Sr. of Hingham and Nantucket. Loving mother of Paula M. Jordon of TX, Linda A. Gasparello of VA, Lisa C. Holt of Newburyport, Nina C. Moore of CA and Ralph M. Gasparello, Jr. of NY. Dear sister of Kathleen Piselli of CT. Cherished grandmother of Rebecca, Nick, Hannah, Gabriel, Austin, and Dallas. Also survived by many nieces and nephews. A private family Memorial Service will be held at a later date. Memorial gifts may be made to The American Lung Association of Massachusetts, 25 Spring Street, Walpole, MA 02081-4302. To sign the online guestbook, [email protected]. Civic Leader, Mrs. Gasparello was born and mostly raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her father, the late Fred Circola, worked as a broker on Wall Street, and her mother, Mae, worked as a department store sales clerk. After graduating from Brooklyn’s elite Midwood High School, she attended Cornell University, and graduated in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in English. Before marrying in 1952, she worked in Manhattan as an advertising copywriter for the Allied retail group. The couple moved to Hingham in 1953. Mrs. Gasparello used to say that she and her husband, Ralph, “and hundreds of other couples in the 1950s, discovered” the town. As she raised a family, Mrs. Gasparello found huge personal fulfillment in helping Hingham’s educational institutions– particularly Wilder Memorial Nursery School and the Hingham Public Library–keep up with the town’s rapid growth. In the late 1950s, Mrs. Gasparello put her creative skills to work as chairman of the board of Wilder. She organized numerous “night out” musical galas to raise funds for the nursery school, which was trying to cope with the baby boom. In 1959, one such gala featured the music of folksinger Joan Baez. In the 1960s, Mrs. Gasparello raised money to relocate the Hingham Public Library from the Agricultural Building in the town’s center-torn down in the 1970s–to its present site. Among her fund-raising accomplishments as chairman of the board, Mrs. Gasparello persuaded Bonwit Teller, a major New York retailer, to hold a fashion show at the library. But she took the most pride in her chairmanship of the lecture series, getting the poet Anne Sexton and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov to speak at the library. In addition to her work for Wilder and the library, Mrs. Gasparello served as president of the South Elementary School Parent Teacher Association, and as a leader in the Hingham chapter of the League of Women Voters. In the 1990s, Mrs. Gasparello was the executive director of the National Association of Senior Travel Planners, a group she co-founded and ran with and her husband. In addition to her love of travel, she enjoyed antiquing, visiting art galleries and gardening. Mrs. Gasparello leaves her husband and five children; Paula Jordan of Belton, Texas; Linda Gasparello of The Plains, Va.; Lisa Holt of Newburyport, Mass.; Nina Moore of San Francisco; Ralph Gasparello of Piermont, N.Y.; six grandchildren; a sister Kathleen Piselli of Woodbury, Conn.; two nephews, a niece and many friends.