October 4, 1935 – January 19, 2024
Diana Lee Guida Brown
All through a profession in social work at New York space hospitals, Diana Guida Brown gave passionate voice to the wants and dignity of hospital sufferers when she perceived them as being ignored, typically going to the state home in Albany to combat for brand spanking new laws, or advocating for coverage adjustments domestically corresponding to for the primary AIDS sufferers within the early Nineteen Eighties. Fittingly and true to her personal closing intention, Diana died peacefully at her Leonia, New Jersey dwelling whereas receiving hospice care. She was 88 years outdated.
Because the youthful daughter born to Anna Avallone Guida Masciari and Crescenzo Francis (Joe) Guida, Diana would develop up in New York Metropolis after which Glendale, California. Her mother and father divorced whereas she and her sister, Dolores Ann Guida Ferraro, have been very small and later remarried (Anna to Louis Masciari, Joe to Virginia) and he or she gained her brother Edward Francis Guida, with whom she was ceaselessly related by their shared birthday. Diana graduated from Glendale Excessive Faculty in 1952 and commenced attending Glendale Faculty.
At her household’s behest, she give up Glendale Faculty and her secretarial job with the Los Angeles workplace of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to accompany her grandmother again to New York Metropolis. There, she attended Columbia College Faculty of Common Research to earn her bachelor’s diploma in Sociology whereas working half time within the Dean of Research’s Workplace. That Dean, Arthur Washburn Brown, would marry Diana in 1959 and delay his graduate work so Diana might attend Fordham College Faculty of Social Work to finish her grasp’s diploma in social work (MSW) in 1961. Years later, Diana and her kids would take care of Arthur as he suffered from, after which succumbed in 1990, to coronary heart illness. His early loss marked her all the time, and till her demise, he remained the good love of her life.
Diana’s first job as a social employee at Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital earned her recognition by Glamour Journal (September 1965) as being a “Lady with Go Jobs.” Different “Go Jobs” would come with being Chief Social Employee on the Archdiocese of Newark Mt. Carmel Guild Little one Research Middle, Assistant Director after which Affiliate Director of Social Work at NYU Medical Middle, Director of Social Work at Schneider’s Kids’s Hospital and Director of Social Work at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital. She served on the City of Leonia Juvenile Convention Committee for a few years, and later well being committees in Bergen County.
Diana partnered on many social work journal articles corresponding to “The Social Work Function in Hospital Discharge Planning” in Social Work in Well being Care Vol 4, No.1 Fall 1978 and “A Mannequin for Group Intervention with the Chronically In poor health: Cystic Fibrosis and the Household” printed each in Social Work and Pediatrics, Ruth B. Smith & Helen G. Clinton, Eds, and in Social Work in Well being Care Vol. 21, No. 1 1995. In 1972, she printed a e-book known as Developmental Handicaps in Infants and Younger Kids: A Information for Mother and father. (Charles C. Thomas, Writer.)
In “retirement,” Diana’s varied volunteer roles included changing into a Catastrophe Psychological Well being Clinician for each the Medical Reserve Core in Bergen County, New Jersey, and the American Purple Cross in each New York and New Jersey. These led her to reply to financial institution robberies, fires and different disasters, together with the September 11, 2001 assaults (the place she labored for months at Floor Zero providing help teams and counseling to first responders) and the occasional airplane touchdown within the Hudson River. Diana additionally volunteered with the Bergen County Division of Senior Providers Well being Committee (which she chaired for a time).
All through her life, Diana’s religion sustained her, and he or she remained lively at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Leonia, New Jersey for greater than 50 years, serving on the AIDS ministry staff and main fund raisers to carry the AIDS Memorial Quilt domestically every year.
Diana was preceded in demise by her mother and father and her sister. She is survived by her kids Rev. Marisa Anne Brown Ludwig (Peter Ludwig) and Gian Arthur Brown (Daybreak Brown), her grandchildren Morgan Jack Brown Ludwig and Conor Seadon Brown Ludwig, her brother Edward Francis Guida (June Taft), her nephews Vincent and Michael Ferraro, her niece Ashli Thompson (nee Guida), Ann Guida, and plenty of cousins, mates and former co-workers who remained in contact till the tip of her life.
Following Diana’s needs, there won’t be a funeral service however her household will schedule a celebration of life in Spring 2024. Within the meantime, and in lieu of flowers, Diana would need well-wishers to make time to savor a Sunday New York Occasions, accompanied by a day drink – Diana would go for water with a mere splash of Dewars scotch, an unbearably candy glass of Rose wine or a decaffeinated Medaglia d’Oro espresso – whereas a soccer sport performs on within the background.
