MAJEWSKI, MAUREEN

A funeral mass was held Aug. 20 at Holy Family Church, Union City, for Maureen (Horan) Majewski, 73, a 25-year Weehawken teacher’s aide who helped to launch the township’s Pre-Kindergarten program, passed away Aug. 14 surrounded by her husband and children at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in Rahway. Born Maureen Mary Margaret Horan on May 13, 1947, Majewski was the second-youngest child of seven, belonging to an Irish-Catholic family who lived in the west side of Manhattan neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Majewski attended St. Michael’s Academy there before moving with her family in 1962 across the Hudson River to Weehawken, where she graduated from Weehawken High School, Class of 1965. The following year, while working as a secretary to Dr. Leonard Gordon – husband to Oscar winner Rita Moreno – at Gordon’s Manhattan practice, Majewski met her future husband. She wed John Robert Majewski of Hoboken in 1968. Though they lived their first year as a married couple in Bayonne, the next 52 years were spent raising a family in Weehawken: Lori, a lifelong Weehawken resident and Sirius XM radio host; David, a Glen Ridge teacher and coach at Glen Ridge High School; and Christopher, a lieutenant in the Weehawken Police Department. Through the years, Maureen served the people of Weehawken as a Daniel Webster School PTA president, a recreation cheerleading coach, a crossing guard, a Gregory Park summer program supervisor. She was also an elected Republican County Committeewoman. However, it was her dedication to the Webster School Pre-Kindergarten – a program she was instrumental in relaunching – that is her legacy. “Weehawken had tried a program, but it didn’t work,” says Maria Desharnais, a veteran township teacher who, in 1997, was hired to head up Pre-K version 2.0, with Majewski as her aide. “We got no help, no advice, nothing. So off we went, two newbies on our first day staring at a bunch of four-year-olds. Maureen and I shrugged our shoulders and said, ‘Okay, here we go!'” Together, Desharnais and Majewski developed a wide-ranging curriculum that included gym, art, library and music instruction, and that today serves five, full-time Pre-K classes. “It was an amazingly successful journey in terms of education, but also, we developed quite a bond, [Majewski] and I,” Desharnais said, adding: “They simply don’t make them like her anymore. She fought for those kids like her life depended on it. She left her mark on me, the students, and so many more.” Majewski retired after 25 years of service in 2016. Along with her husband and children, Majewski is survived by a son-in-law, John M. Clifford; a daughter-in-law, Jeannine, and her and David’s children, Amy and Steven; son Christopher’s fiancee, Glenda Alcantara; as well as numerous brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews. Majewski was predeceased by her parents, Ellen and Patrick Horan, and her siblings, Margaret McCarthy, Catherine Gallagher, Patricia Maroney, Barbara Piazza, Eileen Hochman, and Michael Horan. Services arranged by the Leber Funeral Home, Union City.