Beloved mother, grandmother, aunt and nurse Alice Finkle passed away peacefully on Dec. 1, 2023. She was 92 years old.
Born in September 1931 in Pueblo, Colo., her family moved with her father’s opportunity to build Route 20 in upstate New York. The oldest of six children, she moved out at 13 years old to work for a doctor to help support her family. Her dream was to become a nurse, but college wasn’t to be at that time. She did continue to attend high school and soon after graduation, she met the love of her life and they married in 1950. She and her husband, Dory, settled in Roscoe, N.Y., where he worked as a shop teacher in the high school and they began raising their family.
In 1964, Paul Stoutenburgh, a college friend of Dory’s, called to tell him about a job opening at Greenport High School for a shop teacher. They sold their house and moved to Long Island with their three children.
A few years after arriving on Long Island, she was able to fulfill her life-long dream of becoming a nurse, attending Suffolk Community College and earning her degree in 1970. She worked at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport for 18 years where she became the head nurse of the ICU. During that time, she attended Stony Brook University, where she earned her bachelor’s and then her master’s degree in nursing. In 1988 she left ELIH to become an assistant director at Long Island State Veteran’s Home in Stony Brook along with teaching in the school of nursing.
Travel was very much a part of her and Dory’s life, hiking in the Rocky Mountains, camping across the U.S., visiting friends and family in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, North Carolina, Florida and exploring new places such as New Zealand and Australia with their good friends the Stoutenburghs. Also an avid gardener, she was especially proud of the unusual plants she could coax to bloom and flourish, and enjoyed going on all the local garden tours.
Her last few years, she was well cared for and loved by her caregivers — Susan Kaytis, RN, and aides Felicia, Alice and Jill.
Alice leaves behind a wonderful legacy of love in her family: daughter-in-law Kathy; daughters Jo-Anne (Jeff) Crawford and Merri (Rory) MacNish; grandchildren Russell (Sarah), Elizabeth (Tyler), Andy (Ashley), Ken (Meghan), Jonathan (Sara), Tim and Everest; and great-grandchildren Shawn, Lukas, Cohen, Hayden, Elliott, Charlotte and Jack. Predeceased by her husband of 69 years, Dorville; their son, Terry; her sisters, Minnie, Shirley and Grace, she’s survived by her brothers Jim (Nancy) and Bob (Gail).
An avid reader, life-long learner, and close follower of current events, a message that she very much wanted to impart to all of us was to encourage everyone to exercise their civic duty and vote whenever the opportunity arises.
Both she and Dory participated in the Anatomical Gift Program at Stony Brook University to aid medical students in their education and research. As strong advocates of education, they both saw this as a meaningful way to continue to support that cause even beyond their time here and encouraged those around them to consider doing the same.
A memorial service is planned for Dec. 28 at 11 a.m. at North Fork Methodist Church on the corner of Route 48 and Horton’s Lane in Southold.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to their long-time backyard neighbors, the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Society towards a permanent memorial that will be placed on the Village Green in her and Dory’s memory.
This is a paid notice.