Anne Croce, community activist, dies at 84

When Anne Croce moved to the East Hills area of Roslyn in 1953, she was a young mother in a new residential development.

Over the next 52 years in the area, Croce became a community activist, fundraiser and senior citizen advocate.

"It was a burgeoning community . . . and my mother's desire to reach out and be a part of the community was a match made in heaven," said her daughter Patricia Balcom of Williamsburg, Va. "Part of it was she was a registered nurse, so that outreach and caring gene already was there."

Croce died of heart illness April 22 in Newport News, Va., where she and her husband, Dr. James P. Croce, had lived since 2005, family said. She was 84.

Croce's community involvement spanned the board of the Roslyn Little League to the appointed position of commissioner of community services for the Town of North Hempstead from 1989 until 2004, her daughter said. She also was a volunteer for such organizations as Ronald McDonald House, the American Heart Association, the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund and the St. Mary's Catholic Youth Organization, Roslyn.

"My father worked in the city, and there was mom, stuck in suburbia," Balcom said. "What was she going to do? She just submerged herself in a culture of giving."

The scope of her efforts often was recognized; she won numerous awards, including the Congressional Medal of Merit.

Croce herself described her philanthropic approach in a 2004 Newsday story, after creating Funday Mondays, a summer recreation program for North Hempstead seniors. "I'm just happy when I see people getting together and having fun," she said in the interview. "Life is short."

Croce treasured such sayings, her daughter said, and often spouted them when trying to make a point with her children. "She had every favorite saying in the book," Balcom said. Among her favorites: "Don't say you wish you had done something. Do it."

Besides her husband of 59 years, also of Newport News, and her daughter, survivors include a son, James Croce III of San Antonio; a daughter, Kathleen Tache of Newport News, Va.; a sister, Janet Rubich of Staten Island; six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

A funeral Mass was celebrated April 28 at St. Joan of Arc Church, Yorktown, Va. Burial will be at Cemetery of the Holy Rood, Westbury.