Rachel Marie Boccio

Rachel Marie Boccio died on March 2, 2026, at her home in Chester, Connecticut, in the
presence of her sister Rebecca and her son Atticus. Although the outcome of her nearly three-
year struggle with cancer was never seriously in doubt, least of all during the last year of her
life, it still feels unreal that someone so vital could die at all, let alone at the age of 51. For the
literally scores of people who loved Rachel, and who thought of her as the life-force itself, her
passing has at once a terrible reality and the feeling of a dream.

She grew up on the north shore of Long Island in Kings Park, which was (then) a solidly middle-
class community. It was the sort of place where her parents, James and Suzanne, of modest
means, not only could afford a nice split-level house on Cedar Road, but actually have it built
for them. Rachel’s memories of those days were almost all happy ones: enjoying the company
of her two sisters (Rebecca, older by one year, and Cynthia, younger by three), and making
many friends that she would keep for life; she met her best friend, Christan Cassidy, in seventh
grade. Her house was not far from the bluffs overlooking Long Island Sound, and Rachel’s deep
love of the sea (especially the Atlantic Ocean off Montauk, where the family would spend many
a summer) dated from this early period.

Jim owned a route, delivering bread to grocery stores throughout the middle island – and some
of Rachel’s most vivid recollections were of accompanying her dad on these pre-dawn treks.
Equally vivid stories centered around Sue’s attempts (not necessarily with Jim’s knowledge, let
alone acquiescence) to save every stray cat on the north shore; one creature in particular spent
six months, secretly, under Rachel’s bed. This is also the period when Rachel discovered the
first of many things that she was very good at: swimming. Her talents were recognized early,
and many of her mornings, before school, were spent in intensive training. Known for her
endurance as much as her speed, she ultimately competed on the state and even the national
level.

A serious car accident not long before her high school graduation put an end to her swimming
career – a turn of events Rachel never regretted, since it allowed her to rediscover her passion
for learning. She followed Rebecca to the University of Delaware, which she loved beyond
words, and her initial plans were to follow Rebecca, also, into a career in nursing. An English
class her first semester, however, was enough to convince her that her future lay elsewhere;
first she changed her major from pre-med to English, then she told her parents about it!

At this stage in her life, the thought that she might someday emulate her professors and teach
in a college, herself, was barely a glimmer on the horizon. And so she went to work teaching at
the secondary level. After earning the first of her two Master’s degrees, in Education, she took
a job at, on the face of it, the least promising place imaginable: the John R. Manson Youth
Institution, the State of Connecticut’s high school for incarcerated teenagers. In fact, she loved
the work – and she loved her students, many of whom were non-readers, as well. As she would
describe it later, the fact that some of her students had committed terrible crimes, including
murder, ceased to be relevant the moment they crossed the threshold of her classroom; then,
they were simply people, and precious to her. Her profound sense of social justice, and of the
way the prison system all too often propagates the inequities it’s meant to correct, was greatly
intensified by the experience of Manson.

Meanwhile, life was happening. Her son, Atticus, the light of her life and her deepest and most
abiding source of joy, came along in 2000. Settling eventually in Middletown, Rachel threw
herself, with her usual unstoppable energy, into parenthood: little league, Boy’s Brigade, play-
dates, all of it. During this period, too, her sense of her own potential began to subtly shift. She
went back to school in 2005, pursuing a second Master’s degree (this time in English) at Trinity
College – mainly because she missed being a student. By the time she earned her diploma,
however, she knew she wanted more, and began to believe that a second career in academia –
writing, research, being a professor – lay within her grasp. Pursuing her doctorate, at the
University of Rhode Island, while simultaneously completing her stint at Manson, was no easy
task. During one semester, she swung a deal that allowed her take one day off per week from
Manson, in exchange for doing double-shifts on three other days. And so, she would cram three
three-hour graduate classes into a single day in Rhode Island, then crash (in a sleeping bag) on
the floor of a fellow grad-student’s apartment, rising before 4 the following morning, so as to
get back to Connecticut, check on her son, and get to Manson by 7:30, to begin that double
shift. Unstoppable energy.

For anyone outside of Higher Ed, it’s hard to imagine how unlikely it was that a woman in her
mid-forties would land a professorial job at a good school. In fact, after she completed her
Ph.D., retired from Manson (twenty years of service meant a pension), and went on the market,
she received multiple job offers, and took one at the school she liked best: LaGuardia
Community College in Queens, NY. Her colleagues later admitted that, after her interview with
them, they were desperate to hire her. The mere fact that teaching there required a three-and-
a-half-hour commute (each way) from Connecticut was nothing for someone of Rachel’s
energy. She threw herself into this new life with typical joy and commitment, becoming a
much-loved professor (winning a city-wide teaching award in the process), finding a whole new
cohort of friends, and earning tenure a year earlier than expected. With time she might have
turned her brilliant dissertation into a book; a study of incarceration in nineteenth-century
American literature, it deftly combined her two careers. As it turned out, more than a half
dozen published essays will be part of her lasting legacy. Although she started late (most
professors begin in their twenties or early thirties), she intended to have a career in full, retiring
no earlier than at the age of 75. She spoke with absolutely no irony whatever of being on a
“one-hundred-year plan” – and why not?

The one-hundred-year plan came to an end at 4pm on June 1, 2023, when, after some alarming
blood tests prompted a trip to the Emergency Room, she was confirmed to be suffering from
breast cancer, stage four. The two-and-a-half years that followed had their share of misery: the
concerns for loved ones, the grinding weekly trips, with her partner David, to Sloan-Kettering
for radiation, or scans, or surgeries, or a series of chemotherapy treatments (eight in all), none
of which ultimately worked, but all of which left her feeling dreadful. Rachel wasn’t one to
wallow, however, and if the disease, and the poisons, in her body slowed her down, all that
meant was that she now had the energy of a normal person. Not long before her diagnosis, she
bought a down-at-the-heels house in Chester, and proceeded to make it adorable. She cut and
sewed her own curtains, painted the place (largely) on her own, and always made sure that the
external decorations were season-appropriate: cornstalks and pumpkins in the fall, wreaths and
candles in the winter, and more flowers that one would have thought possible – and which she
continued to tend almost until the end – during the other seasons. Everything she touched she
made better.

As the cancer destroyed her body, her soul grew stronger. Always a believer, and a church-goer,
she found her final important community at Saint John’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford.
Without that last group of new friends, and especially her pastors Margie Baker and Todd
Fitzgerald, the last years might have been unbearable. Instead, with their help, she trained her
shining intellect on the most important questions of all: God, the soul, life and death. It took
hard work, but she ended up in a good place, and though she died in great physical pain, she
did not die in fear. When her loved ones were inclined to mourn, or despair, she would gently
remind them, in that beautiful voice of hers, that “there are no bad days.” She meant it, too.

In addition to her parents, her sisters, her son, and her partner, Rachel is survived by her former
husband (but friend to the end) Robert Deleon, her niece Erin Roben, and her nephews Andrew
Roben, James Roben, and Simon Ellis. Donations in her memory may be made to Saint John’s
Episcopal Church in West Hartford.