Elena Russo Anello

Elena Russo Anello, born Elena Russo on April 16th or 30th 1919 in Montclair, New Jersey to Lucia and Michelarchangelo Russo, passed away peacefully at home in Sada Jiwa, Desa Sembung, Badung, Bali, Indonesia on July 19th, 2020.
She was over one hundred and one years old and had made Bali her home for the last nine years of her life, arriving in June 2011 when she was 92 years old.
Elena grew up in Montclair, NJ. When she started school she became known as Helen Russo. She married her high school sweet heart and became a war bride. her husband, Sam Anello, left shortly after marriage, being sent out West to Air Force training school before being deployed to Guam where he was stationed for the duration of the war.
Helen and Sam had four children. They settled in West Orange after the war where they built their family home at 26 Lancaster Terrace and lived there for the next fifty plus years. In West Orange Helen was an active member of the W.O. Presbyterian Church on Pleasant Valley Way.
When they were a young family, Helen devoted herself to raising her four children. She was an excellent seamstress and made most of the clothes for her three daughters. After the youngest child left home, Helen reinvented herself. She learned to drive, bought a car, a Volkswagon Beetle, and started working at Montclair Community Hospital in the business office. She worked there for over twenty years.
She also rekindled her early passion for art by taking water color classes at the Art Students League in Manhattan, combining a love for painting with a love of NYC. She became a member of a watercolor club in Caldwell, NJ. She was an accomplished watercolor painter who exhibited her work, won prizes, an sold paintings.
In her later years, she moved to the Glen at Highland Meadows in Queensbury, New York. After six years of lining at the Glen, Elena, as she preferred to be called, decided to relocate to Bali to live with her daughter.It was a move that proved to be very good for her health and well being. She lived in Bali for almost another decade arriving when she was ninety-two years of age and living past one hundred and one.
In our family she is truly the last Matriarch of her generation. She was looked up to by all for her Kind, Calm, compassionate Nature, and a Great Inner Strength that showed through in difficult times. She is preceded in death by her husband Sam Anello and her daughter and first born child, Elizabeth Helen Anello -Robinson. She leaves behind, a son, John R. Anello, his wife Margot Greene Anello, daughter, Nancy L Anello, and daughter, Barbara Anello -Adnani, her husband Zachary Adnani. 6 grandchildren, and 4 great grand children.
A private memorial will be planned in the future. Memorial gifts in memory of Helen may be sent to the Alzheimer’s N.J. fund in her name by visiting their website, alznj.org