Former colleagues, nonprofit won’t let Fox Chapel woman’s late husband be forgotten
Anthony DeAngelis was a lot of things. He was witty and fun; a tinkerer who loved taking things apart and putting them back together; the kind of guy people sought advice from; an anime lover and avid gamer; and, most importantly, he was a loving husband and father to his wife, Katherine DeAngelis, and son, Dino.
“Even on his worst days, he was better than most people I’ve ever met,” Ms. DeAngelis, 39, of Fox Chapel, told the Post-Gazette. “He was so open-hearted, vulnerable, very generous. ... He was extremely principled, somebody who really lived their life by a code and was very uncompromising in that code.”
They had been married for about eight years when Mr. DeAngelis was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in early 2018. He died in January 2020, but not before getting to attend Dino’s second birthday party in November 2019 at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. It was was thrown by the nonprofit One Day to Remember, which plans outings for the children of parents with incurable diseases and gave Mr. DeAngelis one last perfect day with his family.
Mr. DeAngelis was employed by Development Dimensions International, a Pittsburgh-based organization that helps businesses “hire, promote and develop exceptional leaders,” according to its website. His former colleagues wanted to ensure he would never be forgotten. So, they spent the last year raising $14,000 for One Day to Remember in Mr. DeAngelis’ name. They presented the check to Ms. DeAngelis and One Day to Remember leadership late last month.
“Anthony was really special to them,” said Rachel Antin, One Day to Remember’s founder and executive director. “They get to make an impact on families in memory of him, and I think that’s really special and meaningful.”
The De-Angelises met when Ms. DeAngelis was 23 and her future husband was 25. She briefly moved away from Pittsburgh to get her master’s in industrial psychology, but she quickly returned to the Steel City to be with Mr. DeAngelis. They got married in 2010 “and had a lot of fun for a long time” while also building their careers. Mr. DeAngelis went the business analysis route, while his wife pursued and still does a mixture of headhunting and human-resources consulting.
Dino was born in November 2017. Three months later, Mr. DeAngelis began feeling off and decided to get an X-ray that revealed a mass in his chest. He started undergoing chemotherapy within two weeks, and his initial prognosis was optimistic, Ms. DeAngelis said. Eventually, though, the treatments stopped working, and there was nothing anyone could do for him.
“It all felt very sudden at the end,” Ms. DeAngelis said. “It’s like it should have been expected, but we still felt like we had more time to turn things around.”
Ms. Antin had been friends with Ms. DeAngelis’ mother for a long