Mary-Beth Santarelli

Mary-Beth Santarelli of Melrose, Massachusetts passed away on Friday, February 28th, at the age of 69. She was the beloved wife of Daniel Franklin, with whom she shared 40 years of marriage.

Mary-Beth was born on May 26, 1955, in New York City, but she never stayed in one place for long. Mary-Beth and her parents, the late Dolores (née Sullivan) and Alphonse Santarelli, were always moving, giving Mary-Beth a childhood spent all across the United States and a lifetime love of travel. Her earliest memories include seeing rain for the first time in the New Mexico desert, when “dark spots” started appearing on the dry desert ground, and the year when she went to school in three different states as her father advanced through the ranks of the FAA. Throughout it all, her closet friends were her brother, John, and her cherished cousins in her sprawling Italian-American family. Soon, Mary-Beth and John added their pet beagle Snooper to their family, and the five of them stuck together, with Mary-Beth’s mother teaching art classes all across the country and instilling her with a love for art, and Mary-Beth's airplane safety inspector father teaching her the importance of following the rules—or attempting to, at least. What Mary-Beth actually learned was how to follow only what she thought was right, and stand up for herself when she thought the rules were wrong; and while her father might have been exasperated to hear his daughter called a school chaperone a “male chauvinist with a bad wig,” he also knew that she was probably right. “I trust you,” he said to her when she went off to college—Mary-Beth may have had an independent streak, but everyone knew she'd always do the right thing.

Mary-Beth went to college at UMass Amherst and received a bachelor's degree in journalism and mass communication. She started to get a master's as well, but soon discovered how much she loved working and gaining her independence compared to the drudgery of being in school. Mary-Beth became a lot of things: she was a journalist and editor at Software News, she was a filmmaker making informational videos for the Massachusetts Transportation Dept., and she was even an animator and was active in the Boston-area animation scene. As a contractor, and later the owner of her own marketing business, Mary-Beth never lost sight of the importance of standing up for herself—she always made sure she was paid what she was owed, and when a certain well-known company dragged their feet on paying their bills, Mary-Beth’s threat to walk spooked them into sending a private helicopter to hand her a check!

Mary-Beth never lost sight of her love for travel, and loved the freedom of being on the road. She took a trip cross-country with her best friend, which became the highlight of her young adulthood and an endless source of anecdotes for decades to come, and took frequent business trips to cities all across the United States. It was on a trip to a computer convention in California where she met her future husband, Dan (“the only guy there with clean hair”), and the two of them discovered that they only lived a few miles apart! The two quickly discovered they shared the same strong values and the same wry sense of humor, and the rest is history: the pair was married on February 17th, 1985. Mary-Beth and Dan cherished their love of travel together, taking frequent trips to Europe, and started a family, welcoming two kids by the end of the millennium.

After a lifetime of movement and travel, Mary-Beth finally found her home in Melrose, where she and Dan settled down for almost thirty years. She made fast friends in the community, and remained an advocate for the causes she believed in — doing right by people. Mary-Beth was never one to sit back and complain; if someone was going through a rough time, she would damn well do something about it, whether that meant sticking up for her kids at school, hosting Bead-for-Life events to raise money for women in dire situations abroad, or even opening up her home to refugees who needed somewhere to stay. She had a particular soft spot for swimming, and loved sharing her pool with anyone she thought needed it: friends, friends of friends, children of family members of friends of friends, anyone. In time, illness began to take its toll on her body, but it never diminished her strong spirit, her warm love for her family, or the love she held for everyone facing injustice in the world.

Mary-Beth is survived by her husband Dan and her two children. She will be laid to rest in a ceremony at 12pm on Friday, March 7th, at Wildwood Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts. A memorial service for Mary-Beth will be held at a future time yet to be determined. In lieu of flowers, the family instead suggests making a charitable donation in her honor, such as to Heifer International.

Arrangements under the care of the McDonald-Finnegan-Anderson Funeral Home, Stoneham.