Yvonne Joyce Colligan of Braintree and Provincetown died at her family home in Provincetown on Oct. 3, 2024 in her childhood bedroom. The cause was colon cancer, which she had fought with courage. She was 89.
The daughter of Mary P. (Bent) and Arthur J. Roderick, Yvonne was born at 29 Conant St. on June 26, 1935. She had a twin brother, Ronald, and an older brother, Irving.
“Everyone in the household had a nickname,” said her daughter Joyce. “She and her brother were called Vonnie and Ronnie.”
The house at 29 Conant had three floors. Yvonne’s grandmother, Mary P. Roderick, lived on the middle floor; her uncle Joe, nicknamed Tarts, who piloted PT boats in World War II, lived on the first floor; and Arthur, nicknamed Deeda, a trap fisherman, his wife, and the three children lived on the third floor. When the twins were too much to handle, Yvonne’s mother knocked on the floor with a broomstick and Grandma Mary would rush upstairs to help. Yvonne and her grandmother were especially close.
When Yvonne was eight, the family moved to 9 Conant St., where, many years later, she returned to be cared for by her daughters in her final days.
Yvonne ran with the Conant Street gang of kids, who in winter skated on Clapps Pond behind the present-day Methodist Church and sledded from the top of Bradford Street. “In those days,” said Joyce, “the East and West Ends had different elementary schools, so they didn’t have much to do with each other until high school.”
Yvonne was an energetic presence in high school and community life. She was vice president of her class and an honor student. Provincetown High School had a record player in the cafeteria in the early 1950s, and at lunch Yvonne and her friends would play rock ’n’ roll and teach each other to jitterbug. Her classmates named her “Personality Plus” in the yearbook.
“My mom was an incredible athlete,” Joyce said, “an unbelievable basketball player.” In the 1940s and ’50s, sports brought the whole town together, and townspeople followed the girls’ high school basketball team during the season and in postseason tournaments in Boston. Yvonne was the team leader and a Cape Cod all-star. She was voted “Most Athletic” by her senior class and the girl with the “Biggest Appetite.”
Yvonne found time to work after school at Brunnell’s Pharmacy with her friend Loretta Steele Nunheimer, with whom she attended an Ella Fitzgerald concert at the A House. She also waitressed alongside her grandmother, who is said to have waited on Elizabeth Taylor at the Bonnie Doon.
Yvonne sometimes hung out at Jon Scott’s Restaurant, where she met Thomas Colligan from Quincy, known as Tommy Blue Eyes From the City, who was working there in the summer of 1952. They began dating the summer after Yvonne graduated from high school. That year, 1953, Yvonne’s friend Conrad Malicoat wrote in her yearbook, “to Vonnie, the Marilyn Monroe of P’town High School, the last of the red-hot mammas.”
Thomas was in the Navy when he and Yvonne married in 1957, and together they went to Naples, Italy where he was posted. After his discharge, they returned to Provincetown, but work was scarce, so Thomas took a job with Raytheon in Quincy as a materials manager.
Yvonne and Thomas raised their children in Braintree, where they had settled by 1960. Inspired by the Christmas Eve open house traditions of Conant Street, where families would go from house to house to be served the signature dish or drink of each family before attending midnight Mass, Yvonne’s door in Braintree was always open.
“People were always stopping by, in Braintree and in Provincetown, when we were growing up,” said Joyce. “She was very, very funny, and everyone loved her.”
Yvonne’s household was lively and well regulated: the family gathered for dinner every day, she made sure everyone went to Mass on Sunday, and every holiday from Halloween to Easter was celebrated with gusto. The children were always busy ice skating, at gymnastics class, or, with Yvonne as troop leader, at Brownie and Girl Scout meetings.
Yvonne dedicated herself to community service: as a Braintree Women’s Club President and director of its glee club, which gave concerts for the local nursing home for over 20 years; as an active member of the St. Thomas Moore Parish and of the Braintree Catholic Women’s Club; and as a volunteer for the South Shore Center for Brain Injured Children.
Yvonne is survived by her children, Joyce Eby and husband Steven of Weymouth, Susan Colligan of Braintree, and Russell Colligan and wife Ann of Mashpee; and her grandchildren, Emily Colligan Miller, Julia and Caroline Eby, and Ian and Margaret MacCormack.
She was predeceased by her husband, Thomas J. Colligan.
A Funeral Mass for Yvonne will be celebrated on Friday, Dec. 27 at 10 a.m. at St. Francis of Assisi Church, 856 Washington St., Braintree.
A celebration of life and interment of both Thomas and Yvonne at the Bourne National Cemetery will take place in the spring.
