May Bishara Wesolowski

May Bishara Wesolowski, age 96, died peacefully at her Millcreek home August 5th, 2024. Born to Alexander (Skundar) and Nettie (Akari) Bishara May 1, 1928, she was the youngest of ten children.

She grew up in Niagara Falls, NY, leaving high school to work at Bishara Brothers family grocery, while four of her brothers fought in WWII. May overcame adversity in her early years, raising three kids alone after the dissolution of her first marriage. The family attended St. George Antioch Greek Orthodox Church in the Falls. Her sisters Mabel and Mary helped her during these tough times as did brothers Frank, Carl, and Joe. Aunts and Uncles who were surrogate fathers and mothers as the situation might require. 

May believed in family, trusted family and preached family until her last breath. She and her new husband Ray Wesolowski built a new life together moving their blended five child family to Erie in 1972. May was a loving mother and devoted homemaker. She adored cooking large Syrian family dinners. If you went to her house, she would feed you. Refusal only led to more food offerings. Birthday parties were never missed even when her grown kids protested. To May, having family around her was the veritable stuff of life. 

May loved traveling, shopping, watching others garden, canning vegetables, reading mystery novels. She and Big Ray would go camping in their Vanagan. 

May served Erie County, working at her election polling place for nearly 20years until her mid-eighties. She helped in the Millcreek school system where the kids called her grandma. All of us are especially grateful to “Nurse Tina” and the Tracy School family for helping her contribute there over the last 20 years of her life. The kids threw her a 90th birthday party that touched her to her soul. May got such a charge out of seeing great grands Lucy and James at Tracey when she worked.  

In addition to her parents, May was preceded in death by her husband of 40 years Raymond A. Wesolowski, son Russell Smith; and all her siblings: Fuad and his twin, Carl, George (Ruby) Mary Wasmund (Ernie), Frank, Mabel Slaiman (James), Robert (Alice) and Joseph (Verna)Bishara. 

May is survived by four children, Kathleen Smith, of Fairview, Douglas Smith and his wife Regina, of Millcreek, Lori Wesolowski, of Millcreek and Raymond Wesolowski, Jr., of Millcreek: four grandchildren, Ian (Kelly), Jared (Jenna), Elliot (Bianca) and Felicia (Casey) Smith, eight great grandchildren. She cherished her special niece and nephews——Bonnie Haick, Judy Susice, Rima Kordie, George Slaiman and Carl Bishara, and so many nieces, nephews and cousins in the Slaiman, Saad, Wasmund, Haick, Bishara clans. 

Friends may call at the Burton Quinn Scott West Ridge Funeral Home, 3801 West 26th Street, on Monday August 12 (2-4 / 6-8), And are invited to attend a prayer service there on Tuesday August 13 at 9am followed by an hour of calling from 10 until the time of a Funeral Mass at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church at 11 AM. Burial will be in Gate of Heaven Cemetery.