Succasunna, NJ  Mrs. Jeannette Sprick, a former longtime resident of Clifton, N.J., died Oct. 8,2018 in Succasunna, N.J. She was 97. She was born in 1921 in Akron, Ohio, to Anna (Ietis) and Frank X. Claudepierre. In 1930 the family moved to Clifton when Mr. Claudeperre was hired to work at U.S. Rubber in Passaic. Jeannette graduated in 1939 from St. Mary’s High School in Rutherford and did office work for the next few years.

In 1946 she met Frederick V. Sprick, who had just been discharged from the Navy. They began dating, and on April 12, 1947, they were married at St. Clare’s Roman Catholic Church in Clifton. They lived in Paterson, N.J., for two years before purchasing a house on Barrington Avenue in Clifton in 1949.

In their new home they raised a family of five boys and one girl and were active in parish life at St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church; the children all attended the parish grammar school, and their mother belonged to the Rosary Society, whose members continued to send her a birthday card and a Christmas card every year even after she moved out of the area.

From the 1960s to the early 1970s Mr. and Mrs. Sprick ran the Clifton Midget Bowling League at Bowlero. During the same period the family rented a bungalow for a week or two each summer in Ocean Beach, N.J. Mrs. Sprick spent countless hours each summer pitting sour cherries picked by her children from the two trees in their backyard, cherries that she baked into delicious pies or shared with her neighbors.

As the children grew older, Mrs. Sprick did comptometry work at home. After Mr. Sprick retired from the U.S. Postal Service in 1982, Mr. and Mrs. Sprick traveled to Hawaii and Alaska and Italy. They were avid bridge and pinochle and Scrabble players and Mets fans. Mrs. Sprick enjoyed occasional visits to Atlantic City to play the slot machines, and at different times she bowled in leagues at St. Philip’s Church and at Garden Palace in Clifton and at Parkway Lanes in Elmwood Park, N.J.

In 1988 Frederick Sprick died at age 67, and in 1991 Jeannette Sprick almost died from a brain aneurysm; after surgery and being semicomatose for six weeks, she awoke with no memory of the incident. Following three months of rehab and three months of living with her daughter, Mrs. Sprick returned to her own home with a new lease on life.

In 2002 Mrs. Sprick sold the family home and moved to a senior citizens apartment complex in Wayne, N.J. In 2007 she moved to assisted living at Sunrise at Randolph in Randolph, N.J., and in 2010, showing signs of the dementia that would increasingly debilitate her for the rest of her life, she relocated to Merry Heart Nursing Home in Succasunna.

In addition to her husband and her parents, Mrs. Sprick was predeceased by her sisters, Laurene Petruff and her husband, John, and Ruth Anne Maier and her husband, Jack; and by two brothers, Richard and James.

Mrs. Sprick is survived by a daughter, Margaret “Micky” Ziemer, and her husband, George, of Succasunna, and by five sons: Tomm Sprick and his wife, Linda, of New Milford, Conn.; Frederick Steele and his wife, Barbara, of Newnan, Ga.; Robert Sprick of Orlando, Fla.; Dennis Sprick of Ocean Grove, N.J.; and Michael Sprick and his wife, Joyce, of Camden-Wyoming, Del.

Mrs. Sprick is also survived by eight grandchildren: Alicia McDonald and her husband, Mark, of Bernardsville, N.J.; Julianne Vanderwood and her husband, Kevin, of Rome, N.Y.; Holly Gonzalez and her husband, Derek, of Bayville, N.J.; Marissa Connolly and her husband, Brett, of Charlotte, N.C.; Anne Sexton and her husband, Greg, of Orlando; Patrick Ziemer of Nashville, Tenn.; Spencer Steele of Newnan; and Austin Steele of Athens, Ga.

Mrs. Sprick is also survived by three great-grandchildren, Zachary and Ava McDonald and Rylan Vanderwood. Additional survivors include nieces and nephews, a grandniece and grandnephew, and two great-grandnieces.

Funeral arrangements are by the Davis & Hepplewhite Funeral Home, 96 Main Street, Succasunna, NJ  973-584-7264  (davishepplewhitefh.com) Visiting hours are Thursday 10/11/18 from 4 PM to 8 PM. Funeral Mass is at 10 AM at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Flanders, New Jersey Friday 10/12/18 at 10:00AM. Interment will follow at Calvary Cemetery, Paterson.