Gail Nova: devoted mom, effervescent

Jeff Nova remembers Gail Nova as a spectacular mother who never strayed far from the beach.

As a child, she loved the Jersey Shore. She only left to attend the University of Miami and as an adult settled in Hallandale Beach. Only when she became unable to take care of herself, eight years ago, did she move into a Hollywood nursing home.

She was one of eight people who died Wednesday when The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills lost electricity, knocking out the air conditioning.

Nova, 70, was pronounced dead at the hospital at 6:49 a.m. Wednesday.

Jeff Nova learned of his mother’s death Wednesday from a Sun Sentinel reporter; he said the nursing home has not returned his calls.

“There needs to be accountability,” he said.

Said his wife Stacy Nova: “She was next door to an excellent hospital where she could be transported quickly if need be. The facility had a plan for the storm that was conveyed to us by the staff. No one could have imagined this would happen.”

They were only married for a year, but Kenny Nova said he always carried a special place in his heart for Gail Nova.

And her death angers Kenny Nova, who now lives in Winter Haven, Fla.: “It pains me she left that way,” he said. “She was warm and sensitive, a good lady.”

The couple met in 1968 and they had a “whirlwind romance.” He was 23, she was 21. “She was barely five foot tall... pretty as a picture,” he said.

She loved when her husband cooked her Italian food — especially roasts and stuffed peppers. The self-described “hippies” played cards and listened to music. It was the 1960s and the “acid generation.”

“She would sooner walk around a fly than chase it off the table, that’s how she was when she was 21,” he said.

He said she came from a good family, having been raised in New Jersey. Her father was a mechanic, her mother a gypsy.

The couple had Jeff, their only child together.

“We were young and foolish and it just didn’t last forever,” he said.

“But 17 years after we divorced we renewed our friendship,” he said. “Gail was a happy, effervescent, incredibly good devoted mom.”

Jeff Nova said his mother worked as an X-ray technician at Jackson Memorial and she was a “soldier — she paid her taxes, she was a moral person,” he said. “She was very extroverted, she wasn’t modest, she engaged with people easily, there was no fear of saying hello.”

She liked food – “the spicier was better, if you were sweating, that was a good meal.” She enjoyed her 17-year-old granddaughter, friends, shopping, and until she moved into the home, her three cats.

“If you are going into a nursing home you’re looking for care, you are putting your trust into people,” Kenny Nova said. “She was at their mercy and their mercy wasn’t strong enough to hold a cup of water.”

Nova