Marie D. Whalen, who spent her final years living at her son Robert Whalen’s house in Montauk, died at home on Feb. 3. She was 100.
A grade school teacher for many years at P.S. 90 in the South Bronx, she and her husband, Edward Whalen, raised their four children in a two-bedroom apartment on 196th Street in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, near the Grand Concourse.
“Marie was charitable to her community and, after the couple moved to the Bronxville area of Yonkers in 1985, she regularly attended Mass at St. Eugene’s in Yonkers,” her family wrote.
She and her family spent many years near the Salesians of Don Bosco seminary of Goshen and New Rochelle, N.Y., with three of her sons attending a summer camp run by the brotherhood.
Marie Theresa DiMartini was born in New York City on Jan. 23, 1926, to William DiMartini and the former Enrichetta Barone, immigrants who had come to the United States in the early part of the 20th century from Colledimacine, Italy. She and her sister, Ann, grew up in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.
Mrs. Whalen earned both her undergraduate and master’s degrees in education from Hunter College.
She married Charles Edward Whalen, who went by Edward, on Nov. 22, 1952. Their eldest son, Richard, was 4 when Mrs. Whalen gave birth to identical triplets, John, Robert, and Charles. The occasion was so unusual that their birth merited a front-page article in The New York Daily News, and repeated visits from the press on several of their early birthdays, Richard Whalen said. She put all her sons through college, they said, with the triplets each becoming electrical engineers and her eldest son becoming an attorney.
“Having grown up during the Great Depression, hard work, family, and financial prudence were important to Marie. She passed these values to her children,” they said.
Mr. and Mrs. Whalen enjoyed traveling and had visited nearly every state in the country before Mr. Whalen’s death in 1998.
In March 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Mrs. Whalen moved to her son’s house in Montauk.
She is survived by her sons, Richard of East Hampton, Robert and John of Montauk, and Charles of Bretton Woods, N.H. She also leaves two granddaughters, Lili and Mary Beth, and a daughter-in-law, Maureen Whalen.
She was a member of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, where a service was held on Friday at 9:30 a.m., the Rev. Liam McDonald officiating. She was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y.
