Viola Ferro Scarangella

August 10, 2020

Viola Ferro Scarangella, age 103 of Leonia, passed away Monday, August 10, 2020. She was predeceased by her loving and devoted husband of 42 years, Dominic Scarangella in 1993. Viola, the daughter of Salvatore and Rosina Ferro and younger sister to Paul Ferro, Jeanne Ferro Moretti and Mary Ferro Raphael (all deceased), was born on May 11, 1917 in West New York, New Jersey. She was paralyzed for over a year as a child and during this time decided she wanted to become an art educator. She became the first person in her family to complete high school and college. When she told her parents she wanted to go to college, they gave her a choice… a trousseau or tuition. She chose the tuition and worked while attending college to pay her living and commuting costs. Viola graduated from a teacher training program in 1940 and from New York University’s School of Education in 1942. Her first assignment, as a “student teacher,” was in a school for the deaf. She was 4 Ft 11 inches tall and 82 pounds at the time and did not know sign language. This is how she began a 30 year career as a New Jersey public school art educator. From 1943-1947, Viola taught art (grades Kindergarten through 12) in the Plainfield School District. Always an innovator, one of her first assignments resulted in the creation of an instructional program that integrated art and academics – a forerunner of the career academy movement. During this time, she also volunteered as an art therapist at Camp Kilmer, where she helped to rehabilitate disabled WWII veterans. In 1947, she obtained a position teaching art to children in grades K-7 in Leonia NJ. She married Dominic Scarangella, an aircraft mechanic for American Airlines, in 1951 and left teaching in 1953, when she became pregnant with her daughter. She returned to her teaching position in Leonia in 1962 and taught nearly every child in Leonia, until her retirement from public education in 1982. But, retirement did not mean that she stopped educating. For the next 20 years, Viola taught art at the Leonia Recreation Center and taught senior citizens in her home. She was a life long member of the Women’s Club of Leonia. For Viola, art and art education was not about teaching students to render realistic representations of things, but about helping them to develop their imagination and creativity and to use various art techniques to express their unique vision. Her unique vision of art and of the world is lives on in her daughter, Diane Scarangella and her partner, Sherry Firestein of Leonia New Jersey and her two granddaughters, Kira Scarangella and Kai Scarangella. She was a loving aunt, friend and mentor to her nieces: Mary Raphael Grosso of Fair Lawn and the late Corinne Raphael Indri, and her nephews: Ferdinand Raphael of Paramus and Frank Moretti (deceased), and to her nine great nieces and nephews: Steve Grosso, Lisa Grosso Lambiase, Kim Indri Vanarthos, Corrine Indri Buirkle, Paul Raphael, LeeAnn Raphael Murphy, Kiki Mwaria, Antonio Moretti and Nicco Moretti. Funeral service Thursday 10AM from the Volk Leber Funeral Home, 789 Teaneck Rd., Teaneck then to Madonna church for a 11AM Mass of Christian Burial. Interment will follow at Fairview Cemetery, Fairview. Family and friends are welcome to visit on Wednesday 2-4 & 7-9pm at Volk Leber Funeral Home, 789 Teaneck Road, Teaneck. In lieu of flowers donations in her name to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105.