Josephine Menzies McFadzean, mathematics teacher in the Central Islip school district, dies at 68

Mathematics teacher Josephine Menzies McFadzean, who spent decades in the Central Islip school district, didn’t add up to the popular image of serious and straitlaced, family and friends say.

"With my dad, they would party on a Saturday night," said her eldest daughter, Chanel Rae McFadzean Pettaway, "but she'd be up early the next day to go to church, St. John of God in Central Islip, where she also taught religious education" for 24 years.

McFadzean died at age 68 from complications of liver disease on July 26 in her native Belize.

Every vacation became an educational moment, Pettaway said. "If we went to Cancún, she made sure we’d go to see the pyramids. Or in Florida, we're going to go learn about the reptiles there."

That continued with her eight grandchildren, Pettaway said, "especially in the summer. Some people have day camp; they had grandma camp."

Debra Cavanagh, a fellow former math teacher in Central Islip and now vice president of the district’s school board, likewise remembered McFadzean’s "bubbly personality. She was a wonderful, caring person. If you needed help, she would always be there to help you out."

"There have been so many people telling us how much my parents helped them," particularly fellow immigrants from Belize, Pettaway said. "We had an apartment downstairs of our house, and so many people said that [my parents] opened their home to them, let them stay until they got on their feet, helped them find jobs." As testament to that, she added, chuckling, "They have so many godchildren I can't even count!"

Born in Belize

Josephine Aurora "Nena" Menzies was born on Aug. 7, 1957, in Belize City, Belize, the Atlantic-coast nation bordering Mexico and Guatemala that has a Caribbean culture. She was one of six children of Arthur Raymond Menzies and Eglah McMillan Menzies.

She attended high school at Saint Catherine Academy and then St. John's College, graduating in 1976. Following her mother into education, she taught at Saint Catherine Academy and at the high school St. Hilda's College, since absorbed into Anglican Cathedral College, before immigrating to the United States in 1978.

That year, she met fellow countryman Reburn McFadzean at a house party in Harlem. The two married on June 27, 1983, in Honolulu, and the following year bought a house in Central Islip.

By then Josephine had earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Manhattan College, now Manhattan University, in Riverdale, the Bronx, and began teaching at that borough’s Saint Catharine Academy, a sister high school to her own in Belize. At some point, her family said, she obtained a master’s degree from the Manhattan campus of New York Institute of Technology.

After a detour for several years working for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which became MetLife in 1991, she returned to teaching in the mid-1990s at Central Islip High School; she also tutored high school students in SAT prep at SUNY Old Westbury. "I had the honor of my mom handing me my diploma," Pettaway, who graduated from Central Islip in 2002, recalled. Following the 2003 school year, McFadzean and her husband lived in Belize for a year.

Retired in 2022

Returning to Long Island, they lived briefly in Smithtown before buying another home in Central Islip. Josephine McFadzean went on to spend two decades teaching math and serving as adviser to the science and mathematics clubs at Ralph G. Reed Middle School.

Retiring in 2022, she returned to Belize and again taught at her alma mater, Saint Catherine Academy. She also volunteered at the Belize City YMCA and at the Eglah Training Center, "a school that my sister, Mrs. Jane Bennett, started in honor of [our] mom," she told Belize TV news that year.

She was a founding member of the New York Chapter of the Saint Catherine Academy Alumna Association, which provides scholarships.

In addition to Pettaway, of Secaucus, New Jersey, McFadzean is survived by her husband; daughters Britnae Tillet, of Central Islip, and Ariel McFadzean Smith, of San Pedro, Belize; brother Raymond Menzies, of Hope Mills, North Carolina; sisters Therese Menzies Monroe, of Hope Mills, North Carolina, Jane Menzies Bennett, of Clifton, New Jersey, Dawn Menzies, of Linden, New Jersey, and Frances Menzies, of Central Islip; half brother Keith Menzies, of the Bronx; eight grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.

A visitation and a prayer service were held Friday at Moloney’s Hauppauge Funeral Home. Following a funeral Mass the next day at St. John of God Parish in Central Islip, she was buried at Queen of All Saints Cemetery in that hamlet.