Priscilla O'Connell-Key, special education teacher and administrator from Franklin Square, dies at 80

She was never afraid of a struggle because Priscilla O’Connell-Key saw everything through with "stubborn perseverance," her son said.

"I never heard her say ‘man I really wish that I had stuck with that,’ she always stuck with whatever she did, to the point where it was almost fictional," said Paul Franzese, of Wantagh.

Priscilla O’Connell-Key was surrounded by family when she died on April 30. She was 80.

An educated woman

The eldest of six girls, O’Connell-Key was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 5, 1946, and grew up in Cambria Heights. Her Irish immigrant grandmother, who lived close by, was a big influence in her life.

Her grandmother "was blind at that point in her life, but she would sit in this rocking chair and the older grandkids would sit around her and she would tell them stories about when she grew up, and she would try to instill values in them," Franzese said.

After attending the Mary Louis Academy in Jamaica, Queens, for high school, O’Connell-Key was determined to go to college.

"I believe that her parents, at first, when she told them that she wanted to go to college, they kind of laughed," Franzese said.

This did not stop O’Connell-Key, who "had saved all of her babysitting money that she made growing up, and she paid for her first year of college with that babysitting money," eventually convincing her parents to come on board and help her pay for her education, Franzese said.

In 1967, she graduated from St. Joseph’s College, now St. Joseph’s University, in Brooklyn, with a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature.

After earning her degree, she married Phil Franzese and spent a short time teaching in Florida in the late 1960s while he was stationed there with the Air Force. They moved back to Queens and then to Floral Park, where they raised their three children. The couple divorced in the mid-1980s.

With her kids getting older, O’Connell-Key went back to school and earned a master’s in special education and teaching in 1988 from Adelphi. She started working at the Martin de Porres School, a special education school, in Elmont.

She felt "it was her calling to help these kids," who were often cast out by society, her son said. After earning her doctorate in education from St. John's University, she became an administrator.

While working at the school, O’Connell-Key met her second husband, wood shop teacher Walter Key, who noticed how much she loved her students.

"I had wood shop in the morning and then in the afternoon I would be her assistant in the classroom, and we kind of hit it off then, as she was a good teacher, and I enjoyed working with her," said Key, who lives in Franklin Square.

A few months into working together, Key drove O’Connell-Key home because she had car troubles. After he met and played basketball with her children, she invited him in for dinner.

She needed some work done in her house, which he helped her to complete, Key said. "And it just kind of escalated from there. We became more and more friends and I finally asked her out," he said. They married in 1999.

A strong sense of faith

O'Connell-Key's Catholic faith guided her life choices, her family said.

"She headed a program [for] parents of kids ... with acute special needs who couldn’t find time to go to Mass because their kid couldn’t handle going to the church, where they would come and watch the people’s kid and let the people go to church," her son said.

She also participated in charity work, including handing out food and clothing to people who were homeless, and taking part in anti-abortion activism. She also served as a Eucharistic minister at her church.

"Her faith was definitely important to her, which is nice because when she met my stepdad, they had that in common. Their faith was a strong part of their lives," her son said.

O’Connell-Key’s Mass of Christian Burial was on May 7 at St. Catherine of Sienna Roman Catholic Church in Franklin Square. She was buried in St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale.

In addition to her husband and her son Paul, O'Connell-Key is survived by sisters Patricia Murphy, of Bellerose Village: Eileen Cole, of South Carolina: Joan O’Connell, of Huntington; Dorrie Forrest, of Florida; and Margaret Curci, of upstate Genesee; sons Philip Franzese, of Island Park; and Matthias Franzese, of Wantagh; and several grandchildren, stepchildren and step-grandchildren.