denettis

Lifelong Woodbridge residents Olympia and Michael DeNettis, pictured in their 1946 wedding photo, died just 32 hours apart this week in separate Middlesex County hospitals.

(Photo courtesy of the McDonald family)

WOODBRIDGE – When 95-year-old Olympia DeNittis died Sunday at JFK Medical Center's Haven Hospice in Edison, her family members decided not to tell her husband of 67 years, Michael, who was battling cancer in another hospital.

“He did not know she had died,” said the couple’s granddaughter, AnnMarie McDonald.

“We made a decision not to tell him. I saw him in the hospital (and) there was still a glimmer of hope we might be able to bring him home.”

Michael DeNettis, 94, told his family he dreamed he had died the night before. And he wanted to know the prescription medication his wife was taking.

“It was bizarre,” AnnMarie said.

Michael DeNettis died Tuesday at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

“I think instinctually he knew she had died,” said AnnMarie.

Michael and Olympia DeNettis – who grew up a block apart in Port Reading, became childhood sweethearts and married after World War II – died just 32 hours apart in separate Middlesex County hospitals.

On Wednesday, the family spoke with reporters about the couple’s great romance and working-class lives in Middlesex County – he as head custodian at Woodbridge High School and she as a factory seamstress in Perth Amboy.

Services for the couple will be held today at Gerity & Chubenko Funeral Home, 411 Amboy Ave., (Rt. 35), Woodbridge with a funeral mass to follow at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, 436 Port Reading Ave. For more information on services, click here.

“It’s been devastating without them,” AnnMarie McDonald said Wednesday. “They were both remarkable people. We relied on their guidance and insight until the end.

“And now they’re together,” she said.