Eight teams gathered on June 29 at the bocce patio at the Marblehead Council on Aging for the Josie Crowley Memorial Bocce Tournament, turning an afternoon game into a remembrance for Johannah "Josie" Crowley. The event raised money for a plaque for the patio, a trophy for the winning team and lunch.
For the people who showed up, the reason for the gathering was plain. Crowley died at home on March 22, but her name still sat at the center of a place where she had long been a familiar face, and the tournament put that presence into practice again.
Pat Bibbo helped lead the event, while volunteers from the Marotta family, Sheila Varrel, Judy Cuzner and Judy Fox kept things moving. Janeen Glabicky offered a tribute, and John Crowley spoke about his wife and mother as the day unfolded. The plaque money was meant to give the bocce patio something lasting, while the trophy and lunch gave the tournament its familiar rhythm.
That was fitting for a woman people remembered as a fixture at the Marblehead Council on Aging. Victor said that when he and his wife first moved to Marblehead and showed up for bocce, Crowley welcomed them with open arms, blue hair and a smile. It was the kind of detail that made her easy to picture even in her absence.
Crowley graduated from Marblehead schools with the Class of 1959 and trained at the Salem Hospital Pediatric School of Nursing. She and John Crowley were together for 63 years, retired at the same time 26 years ago and returned to Marblehead, where she kept coming back to bocce, Veterans' breakfasts, chair volleyball and fitness classes.
The tournament made clear what the memorial was really doing: preserving a welcome as much as a name. Donations in Crowley's memory were directed to the Friends of the Marblehead Council on Aging, and the permanent plaque planned for the bocce patio will keep linking her to the place where she once greeted players with that same smile.
