Rosetta Dwyer, 80, teacher, lawyer

Rosetta G. Dwyer of 61 Sleepy Hollow Road, who had careers both in education and the law, died on Friday morning, Oct. 15, 2004, at Norwalk Hospital. She was 80 years old. Her husband, John Patrick Dwyer, died May 4 of this year.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Mrs. Dwyer was born on Dec. 3, 1923, a daughter of the late Daniel and Mary Elizabeth Harkin Gillen. She grew up in Brooklyn where she attended Bishop McDonald High School, and she graduated from Hunter College.

Mrs. Dwyer started out as a homemaker, and then became a teacher. She taught English at Maxwell Vocational High School in East New York, and later Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, from 1966 to 1986.

While teaching full time, she attended St. John’s University School of Law, where she graduated in 1973. That year, Mrs. Dwyer opened a law office, specializing in admiralty law, and she continued to teach while maintaining a private practice in New York and later White Plains. She was admitted to practice before federal and New York State courts.

She retired from the law in 1995.

The Dwyers bought a summer place in Ridgefield in 1950, and were among the first owners of a home at Eight Lakes Estates. They continued to live in Hollis, Long Island, until moving to Ridgefield full time in 1977.

Although she had two professional careers, Mrs. Dwyer enjoyed such homemaking skills as knitting and crocheting, and also played the piano. She was an avid reader and each month donated many of the new books she read to the Ridgefield Library.

She also kept on top of town affairs, frequently writing letters to The Press, particularly on education. In one 1989 letter, Mrs. Dwyer complained that sports had become too dominant in the lives of young people. “When I was teaching and had a senior class write compositions, required by the college counselor, on what they expected to do in their lives, 90% of the students wrote that they expected to try out for a career in the athletic field,” she said. “I found that completely unrealistic and I realized that our students are living in a fantasy world ready made for them by the nation’s obsession with sports.”

Mrs. Dwyer was a member of St. Mary's Church.

Mrs. Dwyer is survived by two sons, John P. Dwyer Jr. and his wife Victoria of Greenwich and Daniel A. Dwyer of Ridgefield; a daughter, Maryanne Dwyer of Ridgefield; and two sisters, Eileen Sweeney of Oceanside, N.Y., and Sheila Peralta of Flushing, N.Y.

A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on Wednesday in St. Mary's Church

Interment was in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven, Hawthorne, N.Y.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the Dorothy Day Hospitality House, 11 Spring Street, Danbury, CT 06810.

The Kane Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.