BY LINCOLN ANDERSON  |  Mary Spink, who rose from a checkered past to become a member of Community Board 3 and a leading advocate for affordable housing, died in the early hours of Mon., Jan. 16. She was 65. The cause of death was reportedly failure of her kidneys and liver. About 200 people attended [...]

By ALBERT AMATEAU  |  Mary Zummo, a Village resident for more than 70 years and active as a volunteer at Our Lady of Pompei Senior Center, died Mon., Dec. 19, in Beth Israel Hospital at the age of 90. She was in good health until September when she began a series of hospitalizations for heart [...]

By JERRY TALLMER  |  It was, of course, Joseph Papp who introduced Vaclav Havel to the United States of America, and vice versa. The year was that terrible one all over the world, 1968 — here, Paris, Prague, Chicago, Beijing, everywhere — and the play, translated by Vera Blackwell, was poet-politician Havel’s “The Memorandum,” in [...]

BY ALBERT AMATEAU  |  Clive Robbins, a pioneer of music therapy and founding director of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University’s Steinhardt School, died Wed., Dec. 7, at the age of 84. “He was one of the founding fathers of music therapy and revered by thousands of people throughout the world,” [...]

BY ALBERT AMATEAU  |  Josephine Ruvolo, a Village resident for almost all her life and the widow of Dr. Charles Ruvolo, died Tues., Dec. 6, at the age of 95. She was the secretary and receptionist and handled the billing in her late husband’s medical office, and raised two sons, both of whom are doctors. [...]

BY ALBERT AMATEAU  |  Anthony Amato, founder of the Amato Opera Company, which started in Greenwich Village in 1948 and gave its last performance in 2009 in its little theater on the Bowery, died Tues., Dec. 13, at his home on City Island at age 91. Rochelle Mancini, a former Amato Opera singer who helped [...]

Rosemarie Antoinette Rich Gregory passed away on Oct. 12, at Kaaterskill Care Nursing Home in Catskill, N.Y. Her son, Colin K. Gregory, is a longtime advertising account executive for Community Media, which publishes The Villager and East Villager. Rosemarie was born on April 17, 1933, to Anthony Rich and Mariella Porto Rich in Athens, N.Y. [...]