Eleanor Manire-Gatti

Amherst, MA – Eleanor Rose Manire-Gatti, 82, of Amherst, MA, passed away on Monday, January 6th. She was born on December 15th, 1942 in Cleveland, OH to Louis and Elizabeth Jartz.

Eleanor grew up in Cleveland with her older sister, Louisa and had fond memories of her mother making preserves from the raspberries that grew in their bountiful garden. Her father was a machinist, union steward and newspaper columnist in the Slovenian Society newspaper. His outspokenness for workers’ rights and the less fortunate profoundly influenced her worldview and beliefs. She taught her parents how to folk dance when she was nineteen years old and it became a central theme of their lives.

She attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH for three years. In 1964, she married Larry Manire, the father of her children. She completed her Bachelors at the University of Arizona and her Masters of Education in 1972. She worked as a naturalist in Tucson, Arizona for the National Park Service. In 1978, she moved with her family to Providence, Rhode Island where she worked for the Rhode Island Audubon Society. While raising two children, she studied nursing and worked for the VNA of Providence, RI, as a substitute school nurse and in community health clinics.

She married Frank Michael Gatti in 1997 and together they shared their warm and welcoming home overlooking the Holyoke range in Amherst, MA where many were invited to pick from their apple trees. She attended Andover Newton Theological School and received her Masters of Divinity in 2005. Part of her studies included Chaplaincy internships in Rhode Island Hospitals.

Eleanor was a proud second generation Slovenian, a Unitarian Universalist, and a defender of human rights and the environment. Her beliefs and identity were reflected in her actions in the community. She was active in town politics and served on the Amherst Town meeting for many years. She was a member of the Amherst Committee on Homelessness, the Hampshire County Interfaith Task Force, the Amherst Medical Reserve Corps, the Amherst Conservation Commission, was a board member and volunteer for the Hitchcock Center for the Environment and was a host of the Focus radio program at WMUA. She loved polka music and folk dancing and danced with the Amherst International Folk Dancing Group until her dementia and mobility challenges made it too difficult.

She is survived by her two children, Aaron Manire and Kerry Taylor, four step-children, Elizabeth Gatti, Michael Gatti, Gilian Yurko and Daniel Gatti, three grandchildren and six step-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband, Frank Gatti who passed away on September 2nd and her sister, Louisa, who died in 2011.

A funeral service will be held at 1:00pm on March 8th at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst, MA or one of her other affiliated nonprofits.