Today, my mom, Donna Martonfi-West has passed away. She was the most unique person you could ever meet. She was incredibly sociable. She loved people. She loved to talk. She loved playing games - card games, board games, pretty much any kind of game as long as it involved competition and social interaction. Many of her friends can tell you that they were forced to play games past midnight on more than one occasion. She had a lot of friends. Take the most sociable person you know, and think about the number of friends they have - if you double that, that's how many friends my mom had. She loved to debate. She had very strong and unique opinions that she could defend zealously. She could talk herself out of any situation. There were circumstances in which there was almost no chance she could prevail but she vigorously advocated for herself and succeeded. She did the same for us, growing up. There was more than one traffic ticket of mine where she found the officer, talked his ear off and got me out of it. In these situations, I'm sure her adversaries were just thinking, "I just want this woman to shut up!" She defended us unconditionally and she always made us feel valued. When we were young, we could just call her at work and she would answer no matter how busy she was. She told great stories. Any event was much more interesting being told by her than by anyone else. She looked at things differently. She was an eternal optimist and she always had a smile on her face. Even a month ago, when she decided to go off chemo, she told us, "the doctor says I could live up to another year!" We hoped that was so, but we knew it was unlikely. I am very thankful that she had 3+ great years after the cancer diagnosis. In 2019, we thought she only had weeks left to live but she had a vibrant, full life after that - even marrying Dalton West who is/was absolutely wonderful. She was always very strong and tenacious. I'll end with a funny fact. You know the pronunciation of my last name as MARtinfee. Well, that's not how it's supposed to be pronounced. Its supposed to be marTONEfee. She decided to change the pronunciation when she married my dad. We always thought my dad and his side of the family were pronouncing it wrong. She always just paved her own path. She will be missed by hundreds, if not thousands of people. We all loved her very much. Submitted 4/2/2022 1:33:53 PMComment (0)
