Kathleen Mary (Spellacy) Grob

Kathleen Mary (Spellacy) Grob, age 82, beloved wife, mother, grandma, auntie and friend, died in peace, and bravely on New Year’s Eve afternoon in her beautiful living room in front of her Christmas tree.  Kathy was born in the summer of 1941 on June 3, on the south side of Chicago, the youngest of two children born to Thomas J., a handsome and celebrated raconteur who immigrated from Ireland at the age of 17 and Edna (Dathe) Spellacy, her loving salt of the earth mother of simple tastes who at times shook her head in awe at the dynamo that was her daughter, and with whom she would talk on the phone every day of her life. Mother and daughter and brother Tommy spent every summer with cousins Joyce and Carol at Aunt Lill’s cottage in Powers Lake, WIsconsin; Kathy on a dare once swimming clear across the 450 acre spring fed lake. She graduated from Reavis High School and attended University of Illinois, Urbana, graduating from DePaul University where she was known by friends, and had since remained, the life of the party, able to create a party out of whole cloth. Over the years she was renowned in our circles for the inspired parties she would throw. Each Christmas Eve, Easter, Thanksgiving, anytime someone turned 30, or got married, or had a child she set an inimitable table and never had a to-do people won’t still talk about. If it was just a weeknight and you were there for dinner, or if you’d escaped to her house at the beach with children nearly empty handed because you knew you could, that you and your children would never need a thing she did not have or would not get, and that any child in her home would be on the receiving end of her tirelessness, playfulness and inventiveness. Such was her generosity and sense of fun. Kathy turned any coming together into an event where you were put first and coddled. With Arthur, her husband, they relocated their young family from their larger family in Chicago first to Rochester, New York and then Southport, Connecticut creating a wonderful life for her children by the friends she made those early years and kept until her death, and who became family for us. Among the most dear to her are the Wronas, Tometskos, Bunkers, Seabergs, Homnicks and especially her dearest friend Patricia Kelsh’s family. Kathy was an active volunteer for the St. Pius X Parish and school in Fairfield, and later, Notre Dame Catholic HIgh School fundraising, coaching, serving on councils while running the volunteer gift shop at St VIncent’s Hospital in Bridgeport. She always had her tennis group, always had her bridge group, always had her theater group at Long Wharf, always had her ladies luncheon group, and her Southport, then Penfield beach group, constantly hostessing. There was no distance she wouldn’t make her husband drive with her for a pizza Friday nights. She worked for many years alongside the lovely Sandy Rosenberg and Diana Bell at Printemps in Westport where her impeccable eye and good taste were relied upon by the rich and famous when buying their gifts and fine paper, and planning their weddings.  

Kathy is predeceased by her parents, Thomas J. and Edna C. Spellacy, her older brother Thomas F. Spellacy, and his wife, her best shopping buddy and travel mate, Patricia (Gaynor) Spellacy. She leaves behind her beloved nieces and nephews with whom she shared much hilarity and joy as they spent summers with her in Connecticut: her dearest Kerry, Kathy, Kevin, Patrick, Colleen, MaryClare, Shawn, Danny and Meghan. She leaves behind her daughter, and biggest fan, Stacey (Grob) Fresher, of Farmington, and her beloved grandsons, Thomas J. of West Hartford and Daniel R. Fresher of Denver, Colorado; and her son Michael C. Grob (Bettina), and beautiful grandchildren Dierdre, Will, Emily and Libby Grob of Easton, Ct. She is survived by her loving and loyal husband of over 60 years, Arthur O. Grob, who shared the final years of her life in Mashpee, Ma and Simsbury, always a beneficiary of her wondrous ability to make and keep spectacular friends like Fi Andreas, even to the end of her life, even as she was robbed of the memory of the beauty she had created in her life for us, and robbed even of her ability to communicate with us, but with her still expressive blue eyes, or the stern grasp of her hand.   

Saturday mass at 11 am. St. Pius X church. 834 Brookside Dr. Fairfield Ct 06824

Flowers can be delivered on that day, 2/25 to church.