Theresa Langan-Baade, of Newsday, dies

For 40 years - or more than half of Newsday's history - Theresa Langan-Baade's laugh could be heard through the newspaper's advertising department.

Langan-Baade, who died on Feb. 20 at 76, was serious in her work, rising through the ranks to supervise the ad department's support staff, said Glenn Irizarry, a Newsday sales assistant who worked with her for nearly 20 years. "Every morning we came to work," he said. "But we had our laughs."

And she had a "good, jovial" one, he said.

Langan-Baade was raised in Garden City South and attended Sewanhaka High School in Floral Park. She started working for Newsday in 1955.

"She was such a warm spirit," Langan-Baade's niece, Lori Madison, recalled. "She hugged everybody."

It was at Newsday, Madison said, that she met her husband, Charles Baade, who worked there briefly as an artist.

"Charlie was the opposite of her, quiet and subdued," Madison said, but she was the type to bring people out of their shell.

The couple had a long courtship - 14 years - before they married in 1985, when she was 50. But they only had five years together after the wedding before Charles died.

A longtime friend, Mary Re, said, "She was Irish and she loved being Irish," always bringing soda bread in on St. Patrick's Day.

Her brother Tom Langan said that later in life, after retiring from Newsday in 1995, Langan-Baade moved to Laguna Beach, Calif., where she took up lawn bowling, often playing teams from around the world.

And there was one brush with celebrity, said Tom Langan, former executive director and head writer of the soap opera "Days our Lives." He said their family, who lived in Garden City South, had the same address growing up as soap opera actress Susan Lucci, but in different towns.

"It turned out she'd get these postcards from around the world addressed to her. I picture a teenaged Susan Lucci looking at these postcards and wondering who my sister was," he said.

In addition to her brother Tom, of Rancho Mirage, Calif., Langan-Baade is survived by sister Mary Langan of Indian Wells, Calif.; brothers Martin of Stockton, Calif., Lawrence of North Massapequa, and William of Deer Park; and nine nieces and nephews.

A memorial Mass will be celebrated at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at St. William the Abbot Church, 2000 Jackson Ave., Seaford. The remains will be cremated.