Westbury community leader Cathy Moramarco, 76

Cathy Moramarco somehow managed to squeeze everything in, juggling her private life as wife and mother of three with her public life as one of Westbury's biggest boosters. 

Moramarco served 20 years on the village's planning board — she spent a decade as the board's chairwoman — and was a former president of Westbury's Business Improvement District. She also was a co-founder of the village's annual street fair.

Moramarco died March 26 after being hospitalized for anemia. She was 76.

In her role as community leader, Moramarco worked tirelessly. She simply had a passion for Westbury, said Mayor Peter Cavallaro. 

"She didn't just make decisions to make decisions, she did so with the community's best interest at heart," he said. 

Her love for Westbury was evident at home, too.

"Even when she was sick, she would still go to the BID [Business Improvement District] meetings," said son Adam Moramarco. "She never missed any of the [board of trustees] meetings. She just cared so much about the village." 

Born April 7, 1942, Moramarco grew up on Argyle Road in Westbury. She graduated in 1960 from Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead. Four years later, she earned a pharmacy degree from Temple University in Philadelphia. 

Moramarco met her future husband, Eugene Moramarco, at her family's restaurant in Westbury. The Green Tree was at the corner of Maple and Post avenues.

Eugene Moramarco worked at a bank across the street from the restaurant during his summers off from law school at the University of Virginia. He often went over to the Green Tree, where he would strike up a conversation with Cathy's dad. 

Cathy's dad introduced Cathy and Eugene. 

A year after Cathy graduated college, the couple married. They had three children — Greg, 51, and Adam, 48, both of Westbury, and Rachel Moramarco Bolen, 46, of Los Gatos, California. Eugene will celebrate his 80th birthday next month.

Her daughter likes to share the story of her mom's mixing bowl.

Moramarco received the Pyrex-brand bowl as a bridal shower gift, a present that she would use throughout her life to make her family-famous apple pie — a favorite of her kids, Bolen said.

The magic behind the pie: Her mom didn't measure any of the ingredients.

"She just knew to add this amount of nutmeg or this amount of cinnamon and this amount of apples to fill up the bowl," Bolen said. "The recipe was just inside of her." 

Adam Moramarco called his mother "an amazing cook" who was "the most giving person you'd ever meet because she put everyone's needs in front of hers."

He remembered how his mother encouraged him to try out for a kicker position for the National Football League in 1996, just after he graduated college. He had played soccer in school but hadn't been invited to the NFL draft in the traditional way.

"I thought she was gonna say, 'You're crazy,' " recalled Adam Moramarco. "But she said. 'Go for it.' "

Besides her husband and children, Moramarco is survived by a brother in North Carolina. She was preceded in death by her parents and a sister.