Miriam R. Cristofani

Miriam R. Cristofani, Shawnee, died at home on Friday, February 7, 2025. She was 91 years old. Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1933 to Edgar and Miriam Palmieri, she was a tiny baby (5 lbs. some ounces), and her parents called her "little Miriam" – her mother being "big Miriam." From the age of 11 on, she spent summers at Our Lady of Lourdes summer camp in Livingston Manor, New York in the Catskill Mountains. Always good at sports, she excelled in tennis, swimming, and diving. She could do an amazing jackknife and a graceful swan dive from the high springboard.

Miriam attended The Packer Collegiate Institute, an independent PreK-12 grade school in Brooklyn, graduating in 1951. She was popular and had many friends. She was a good student, completed all her assignments, and was generally liked by the faculty. Following her graduation, she attended and graduated from a Secretarial School in Manhattan where she learned shorthand, typing, and other business skills. She worked as a private secretary at Mobil Oil in Manhattan for several years before her marriage.

She was a devoted fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and enjoyed going to Ebbets Field to watch Jackie Robinson play before the team moved to Los Angeles in 1956. When she was young, she enjoyed following Ted William’s career and while visiting her son, Jack, in Boston in 2009, she attended her first Red Sox game. It had been on her bucket list to attend a game where Ted Williams played. 

In 1960, she married John Cristofani. After short stays with family in Brooklyn and Queens at the beginning of their married life, the couple moved to Medford Lakes, New Jersey then to Vernon, Connecticut and finally to Shawnee, Kansas in 1979. The couple was married for 42 years. The couple had five children. Miriam ran the household because her husband often traveled on business. She organized the children for school: She took them to the library, got them library cards, and spent time reading to them before bedtime. On her own and with her husband, Miriam attended the children’s school and athletic activities: Little League Baseball, AAU Swimming, high school and travel team hockey (which took her from Montreal to Minnesota, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Colorado). She enjoyed watching sports on television and was a fan of the NY Giants, NY Yankees, Kansas City Royals, Kansas City Chiefs, and Kansas Jayhawks. 

Her husband’s job as a regional sales manager for Hackney & Sons allowed Miriam to travel to Scottsdale, Arizona, Bermuda, Acapulco, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands. During the last years of Pope John Paul’s reign, she traveled to Rome with extended family and attended Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Her husband died in 2002. All her children survive her: Jack (Jason Miskuly), Regina, Joe, Jim, and Tom (Jody Flaherty). In addition, she leaves three grandchildren, Dustin and Lucas and Isabel Cristofani. Additional survivors include her younger sister, Suzanne Keevers, of Boulder, Colorado, and sisters-in-law Eleanor Schaefer of Martha’s Vineyard and Joan Myers of Breezy Point, NY; as well as many nieces and nephews, cousins, and second cousins.

A visitation will be held on Friday, February 28, 2025, from 6-8 p.m. at The Amos Family Funeral Home, 10901 Johnson Drive, Shawnee, KS 66203. Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Saturday, March 1, 2025, at 10 a.m. at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, 12800 W 75th St. in Shawnee with burial following at Resurrection Catholic Cemetery in Lenexa.