SHIRLEY JUNE SCALETTA (née ELHATTON)

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SHIRLEY JUNE SCALETTA
(née ELHATTON)
1928 - 2019

On September 26, 2019, Shirley June Scaletta (née Elhatton) slipped peacefully from this life into the waiting arms of God.
Shirley was predeceased by Ignatius ("Seano") Scaletta, her loving husband of more than 62 years, her parents, Edith (née Scrimshaw) and Patrick Elhatton, her brothers, Leslie, Norman and Glenn, her sisters, Bernice and Irene, her brothers-in-law, Peter Tkachuk, Robert Henry and Joseph Scaletta, and her sisters-in-law, Lillian and Odile Elhatton, and Marie and Marie-Jeanne Scaletta.
She leaves to mourn her daughter, Lynn McGhee (John), sons, Dean (Rachel) and Todd (Christine), grandchildren, Lisa (George), Jason (Tracy), Sophia (Pierre-François), Sara (Jean-Michel), Abby (Morgan), Lauren and Jack, great-grandchildren, Shanea (Brian), Shayla and Samantha (Andrew), great-great-grandchildren, Nevaeha, Keenan and Amara, brothers-in-law, Sam Scaletta and Augie Scaletta, sister-in-law Pat Scaletta, and numerous nieces and nephews.
By the time Shirley had reached adolescence, the world was at war. With her eldest brother, Leslie, serving in Europe with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, and with her other elder siblings working and assisting with the war effort, it fell to Shirley to be the one who would be pulled out of school to open and read the letters and telegrams from overseas which her mother could not bear to face alone. While Les would eventually return home, in late May, 1944, it was Shirley - not yet 16 years old - who had to tell her mother that he had been gravely wounded while serving in Italy. It was a remembrance that stayed with her the rest of her life.
Shirley and her two elder sisters formed the nucleus of the Rockettes, a team which dominated senior women's basketball in Winnipeg in the late 1940s. A photo of the 1949 City Championship team, and one of the seven original uniforms (a red top and navy blue skirt) sewn by their mother Edith, are now prominently displayed in the Manitoba Basketball Hall of Fame and Museum. The squad epitomized the diverse North End upbringing of its members, of which they were all very proud.
As a young adult, Shirley was schooled as a secretary and spent a number of years working for the local Boy Scouts office. When the children came, she - like many other women of the time - became a full-time, stay-at-home Mom. It was a role she cherished, and excelled at.
For Shirley, the two most important things were her family and her faith, and all of her life she nourished both with dedication and love.
To her children, her grandchildren, and her nieces and nephews, she was a mentor, a teacher, and a confidante who could be trusted to lend a sympathetic ear and offer a word or two of wise counsel.
Shirley was a Life Member of the Catholic Women's League. Every year while we were growing up, she and several like-minded women would cram into a car owned by some jovial local priest and travel to a CWL National Convention held in locales as far-flung as Charlottetown, PEI and Jasper, AB.
The website of the Manitoba Chapters of the Red Hat Society (RHS) recognizes Shirley as the woman who brought the "Red Hat concept" to our province in the Fall of 2000, when she "officially registered her chapter, the Prairie Pearls, with Hatquarters in California, and was dubbed [its] Founding Queen Mother". From those humble beginnings, RHS Manitoba has grown to hundreds of members in over 50 chapters in communities across the province.
As Seano approached retirement in the late 1980s, they began spending their winters in Scottsdale, AZ, where they made many new friends and actively participated in the daily life of the trailer park where they rented year after year.
When these winter getaways became no longer viable, Shirley turned her hand to woodcarving. Over the next few years, she produced many finely crafted wood spirits, birds, and reliefs.
On June 10, 2018, Shirley turned 90 years of age, surpassing a milestone not reached by any other member of her immediate family. At the time, she used neither a walker nor even a cane, and was not on any medications. But as the years marched on after the death of her beloved Seano in 2015, Shirley struggled mightily with short-term memory loss and steadily-worsening symptoms of dementia. Throughout her many trials, however, she never lost her sense of humour!
The family is grateful for the compassionate and respectful care Shirley received at the Minnedosa Personal Care Home during the last few months of her life.
Funeral service will be held on Friday, October 4, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Bernadette Catholic Parish, 820 Cottonwood Road, in Winnipeg, with reception and interment to follow.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a charity of your choice. Shirley has requested that the recipient be "a charity or organization, religious or secular, which promotes and protects the rights and values of family life".

Family and friends may sign a
book of condolence at www.glenlawn.ca

Glen Lawn Funeral Home
204-982-7550

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Oct 01, 2019