T. Bowler, former Hicksville librarian, dies

Theresa Bowler stayed connected to her roots.

Even after living for decades in Hicksville, she still returned to the Bronx - where, as a young woman, she met her husband - for the ingredients to make her signature tomato sauce with meatballs.

She made it in great batches, ladling it into containers for her elderly mother, her children and grandchildren.

Bowler, a former Hicksville school librarian and human resources manager for Estée Lauder, died of a heart attack Thursday. She was 75.

She was born in 1935, and grew up in East Harlem. In the mid-1950s, she and her family moved to the Castle Hill section of the Bronx.

That's where she met James Bowler, who, home from World War II, had gone to work for a telephone company splicing cables.

They were married in 1957, and, with two young children, moved to Hicksville in 1962. A third child soon followed.

Theresa Bowler volunteered in the early '70s as a librarian at Our Lady of Mercy School in Hicksville, and later was hired as a librarian at the Hicksville school district's East Street School. She began a 17-year career with Estée Lauder in 1980.

She loved hosting family gatherings and cooking for friends. Her kitchen was aflurry the week before St. Patrick's Day, as she baked loaves and loaves of Irish soda bread.

"She got along with everybody," her husband said. "She could talk to anybody and make a friend out of them."

She is also survived by her children, Jim Bowler, of Belmont, Calif., Margaret Niche, of Wilton, Conn., and Thomas Bowler, of Manhattan, and four grandchildren. A funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday at 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Mercy Roman Catholic Church in Hicksville.