Obituary of Margaret Brizek

Margaret Brizek, beloved wife of the late Joseph Brizek, passed away on February 12, 2021. She was born in Passaic, New Jersey on October 16, 1925 and was the daughter of Andrew Fabian and Anna Hrina Fabian. Her father was born in Slovakia in 1894 and emigrated from there to America in 1913; her mother was born in America in 1903 but was raised in Slovakia, from which she returned to America in 1921 at the age of 18. After marrying in 1923, Andrew and Anna raised their four children, including Margaret, her older sister Helen and her two younger brothers, Stephen and John. Margaret grew up in Passaic and at age 15 met her future husband Joseph, whom she always referred to as "Breezy". With World War II under way and he on active duty in the U.S. Navy, they married on October 19, 1942. After serving six years in the Navy, Breezy returned home to join Margaret and their three year old daughter JoAnn and began the full and loving life that they, together with their son Steven, who was born in 1949, would share until Breezy's death in 2009. Throughout her married life and beyond, Margaret cherished above all else her role as mother to JoAnn and Steven, as grandmother to JoAnn's children Tracey and Vincent Laterra, as great-grandmother to Tracey's children Amanda, Joseph and Amber Widmer and Vincent's daughter Mary Jo and as great-great-grandmother to Amanda's son Jonathan. Her unquestioning and unbounded love for each of them, and the inexhaustible devotion to do all that she could and to work as hard as she needed to in order to keep them safe and to make them happy, was her life's work, her gift to us, her lasting legacy. Margaret often observed that all God wants is for us to be good. She leaves us now having lived her long life to the end as an example of what simple, uncomplicated, divinely inspired goodness is, how precious it is and how important it is for each of us to follow her example to the end. Margaret is survived by her son Steven Brizek and his wife Ida Rose, her daughter JoAnn and her husband Louis Laterra, her granddaughter Tracey and her husband Joseph Widmer, her grandson Vincent Laterra and his wife Christine, all of her great-grandchildren and her great-great-grandson, by her sister Helen Tokar, and by her brothers Stephen Fabian and his wife Dorothy, and John Fabian and his wife Joyce. A funeral Mass will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 20, 2021, at St Anthony R.C. Church, 276 Diamond Bridge Avenue, Hawthorne, N.J. 07506. The funeral Mass will be followed by interment at St Mary's Cemetery, 1 Outwater Lane, Saddle Brook, NJ 07644.