Birth date: Oct 9, 1920 Death date: Apr 29, 2026
With tender hearts, her family announces that Mrs. Irene Rosalind Pobozy Currie passed away peacefully on Wednesday April 29th, 2026. At home in Escondido, California, she was surrounded at her bedside by two grandchildren and one Read Obituary
Irene Currie Eulogy
Delivered by Alexia Currie on May 11, 2026
We come here together to honor Irene Curie. We are her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, all born in different generations. Generations have names now. Deidra is a Gen X, Scott a Boomer, Cappy a Silent. Kind of strange names, but one was named the Greatest Generation because it was the greatest. The generation born before 1925.
Irene Rosalind Currie was born on October 9, 1920 – one of the last remaining members of the greatest generation. She exemplified every characteristic, every admirable trait, of why her generation earned that name.
She was our beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother. The greatest!
She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Her father died when she was just a very young child. Her mother had to return to work to feed her two young daughters, so her devoted, beloved grandmother cared for Irene, her sister, a cousin—all preschoolers—during the day. That grandmother would always hold a very special place in her heart.
Mom excelled in school, skipping grades. She spoke two languages, Polish and English. She played the violin and while watching her older sister receive the piano lessons she herself couldn’t have, she watched, and listened, and taught herself how to play—beautifully. There would always be a piano in her home.
Irene was a child not only of the greatest Generation but of the Great Depression. While her family wasn’t destitute, there were sacrifices to be made and so Irene learned how to be frugal! A talent she practiced to the very day she died.
She graduated early from high school and won a scholarship to college but was unable to accept it. Instead, she had to help her family and had to find a job in a jobless market. The very first day she tried, she found work as a secretary at National Theater supply in lower Manhattan. It was there that her life changed forever. She met the man with whom she would share the rest of her life, John Currie, our beloved Dad. Big John. Pop-op.
Irene and John married in 1941, settled into a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and began producing daughter after daughter after daughter after daughter. Four little girls in a row. They needed more room and so in 1948 they moved to Wyckoff, New Jersey, into a house that Mom’s big Polish family built together. Brothers, uncles, and cousins drove out from the city on weekends and raised the home where the ever-expanding Currie family would grow, both in number and height. Irene Currie gave birth—natural childbirth—to 7 children, mostly girls, at a time when pain relief in the delivery room amounted to a few whiffs of ether. That feat alone qualified her for “greatest” generation.
While raising seven children, very tall children, and as Dad once memorably put it—all boys except for the five girls, she never stopped learning. She taught herself new languages: French and Spanish. She took up painting and created the wonderful oil and water color works that now grace our homes. She explored creative arts and metaphysics. Yet she never forgot the college education she had been forced to give up. She yearned for that degree.
That opportunity came again when Mom, Dad, and Scott moved to California in 1972. She enrolled in Community College, when she discovered that California offered free tuition to residents—naturally that frugal streak approved! She thrived. In 1976 she earned her long-sought dream—a B.A. from Cal Poly. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, and with the award for being oldest graduate, at the age of 57. Her children (and probably Pop-op too) all hid their own lacking-in-comparison college transcripts!
She never stopped improving herself, her mind, her skills, and knowledge. She took on whatever needed doing and mastered much of today’s technology, gracing our lives with her daily morning and evening emails—full of blessings, hope, humor, and incredible poetry, now forever immortalized in the book Life Love Reflection compiled and published by Melissa for Mom’s 100th birthday in 2020. While her children stood half a foot taller, she towered over us in every way.
I cannot speak about Irene Currie without talking about religion and her steadfast belief in the Almighty. There was always a rosary in her hands, in her bed, in her pocket. She was a devout Catholic all her life and lived by the tenets of her beliefs with quiet, steady conviction.
Mom was incredibly independent, yet gracious in accepting help. She was beautiful, brilliant, brave, humble, kind, loving, and compassionate. And maybe a little frugal! She is a legend in this big family of ours—our matriarch—and she will almost certainly hold the record for the greatest age any of us will ever reach—105!
On the occasion of [what would have been] her 75th Wedding Anniversary, Mom wrote “I look back on a wonderfully happy married life and am deeply grateful for all the family and gifts the Almighty has showered on us all, and wonder what I would have thought if I had had a glimpse into the future.”
The Almighty’s greatest gift to us—the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of Irene Currie was Irene Currie herself. We love you, Mom. How we will miss you, oh, how we will miss you. But we know all those rosaries paid off and you are now with Dad and incredibly happy in the hands of our Lord.
“Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.”
From: On the Death of the Beloved,
By John O’Donohue
There are so many wonderful recollections of family times with our Currie family Travelling from Brooklyn to the "country" in Wyckoff for Sunday get togethers with our cousins, seeing Uncle John & Aunt Irene. Her calm, quiet smile, and laugh. The concern that everyone was having a good time and that the younger kids were included in any games. She was the same giving person at Grandma's on Cleveland Street, or Aunt Gene's in Forest Hills. The one constant was that we were all family. On a solo vacation of mine in the late 70s, she and I went to Disneyland.. After one of the rides, she sat down, and said "You don't mind if I skip the next ride do you?" What a trooper, she should have been an Ambassador for Disney for all the times she went with family members. There was one constant in her life, Family. Whether it was a happy family get togethers, or holding others up during difficult times, her soft voice, hand on your shoulder or a hug, your happiness was increased, and your troubles somewhat eased by her presence or a soft thoughtful word. When her Mother, my Grandmother passed in 1987, in home hospice, my mental image lasts of Aunt Irene, her sister, Gene, her brother Stanley, and my Mother Rosalind standing together. And now it is just one. We are always family, from one coast to another. Thanks Aunt Irene for making sure we always got the message, and will carry it forward. Oh yes, thanks for reminding us of the Polish greeting for Christmas Eve.
Love and Peace,
Karen Simon
