Mary Ita Dwyer dies; teacher, North Hempstead Town Democratic Party leader
Mary Ita Dwyer, a retired East Williston School District teacher and leader of the North Hempstead Democratic Party in the 1980s, died on Oct. 19 at age 88. Credit: Dwyer family
Mary Ita Dwyer, a longtime schoolteacher and Democratic Party leader, died Wednesday of a lung disease at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. She was 88.
Dwyer, who was the North Hempstead Town Democratic Party leader in the 1980s, helped Democrats gain control of the town board in 1991, a majority the party has kept since, those who knew her said.
“Mary's first love was her family, and her second love was the Democratic Party,” said state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. “She played a key role in helping to maximize the Democratic vote in the Republican part of the town and supported so many of us who ran for state office, in my case, and [getting] the town to go from a Republican majority to a Democratic majority that still continues.”
Over the decades, Dwyer worked with Democratic candidates and in 1986 ran the campaign for her late husband, Thomas W. Dwyer, who was elected a Nassau County district court judge. Her son Thomas K. Dwyer was a North Hempstead councilman.
Politics was a driving force throughout Mary Ita Dwyer’s life.
Her daughter Mary Dwyer of Seattle remembered her mother taking her and her siblings as children to campaign events to hand out flyers and gather support for candidates.
“My earliest memory was for Lester Wolff, who was a congressman,” the daughter said. “We would go out to apartment buildings or neighborhoods and we'd say: ‘Lester Wolff is here. Come out and meet him.’ ”
Her brother Thomas Dwyer’s middle name is Kennedy, named after John F. Kennedy following the president’s assassination.
Mary Ita Dwyer did not run for public office but organized on the ground.
“She engaged in the political process at the very grassroots level,” said Jon Kaiman, a Democrat and former North Hempstead supervisor.
John Kiernan, the Republican supervisor of North Hempstead from 1982 to 1989, said Mary Ita Dwyer was well-respected and dedicated.
“Hate and vengeance didn't play into our interaction,” said Kiernan, of Williston Park. “We both tried to get people elected that we believed in but that didn't in my mind make her a bad person and I wasn't a bad person in her mind.”
Michael Balboni, a former Republican state senator from East Williston, said Mary Ita Dwyer was a fierce Democrat who reached across the aisle.
“She didn't let the label get in the way,” Balboni said. “She would be supportive, obviously, of the Democratic flank, but then she wanted to find ways to make things happen.”
Dwyer was born on July 2, 1934, in Manhattan to Irish immigrants Martin Feeney and Mary Feeney-McCabe, who moved to Huntington in the 1940s. The Feeneys were a leading family in Democratic politics in Huntington, where Martin Feeney was the town parks commissioner.
Dwyer met her future husband on a blind date set up by their parents, who knew one another from their political involvement in Huntington, her son Thomas Dwyer said. The couple was married in 1958 and lived in East Williston. After her husband died in 2000, she moved to Shelter Island the following year.
Mary Ita Dwyer graduated from what was St. Joseph’s College in 1955 and taught at North Side School in the East Williston School District from 1972 to 2000, her daughter said. She held leadership roles at the teachers’ union there.
David Israel, a retired English teacher and former union president in the school district, recalled Dwyer as “one of the Golden Age teachers” who was warm, loyal and reliable.
“Historically, elementary education [was] led by men, with women as foot soldiers in the trenches of the classrooms,” said Israel, of New Hyde Park. “She rejected completely that stereotype. She was sort of a feminist in that she believed that women had the same leadership qualities as men, and she exercised them.”
In addition to her son and daughter, Mary Ita Dwyer is survived by her children Tracy Dwyer of Los Angeles, Kathleen Ruscick of Shelter Island, Sean Dwyer of Los Angeles and Megan Cossou of Westbury; and 13 grandchildren. A funeral Mass was celebrated at the Church of St. Aidan in Williston Park on Monday.
Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.
