Now is the time we never spoke of because we couldn't bare the thought of not seeing seeing each other again. Now that we know there is no tomorrow for us, only memories to last me from here. So auf wiedersehn my love, until we meet again. Your loving family & love of your life, Bill.

Anna Arena Willem, Known and remembered by her friends and family as Grannie Annie or Annie, or Ann, Mom or… Ma.

Born December 23, 1936, In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn New York, to Harry and Helen Arena.

Her father was Italian, born in Boston but moved to Sicily with his parents when he was two or three years old. Returning to the states when he was a teenager, he as his years rapidly went by, became the hardworking backbone of the family he started, and his success was responsible for a significant part of the goodness of Annie's life ahead.

He from their store in Sheepshead Bay named Arena Marine Service rigged and sold beautiful wooden runabouts with the brand-new outboard motors of the day. Annie received as a gift from her father one of those new brightly varnished mahogany boats for her high school graduation present. It was named with fancy lettering 'Evinrude Annie.' The future looked so awesome for her with her own boat and planning to go to school with her first year's tuition already paid. But tragically she never went off or even ever made it to college, because unforeseeably changing her future, her magnificently incredible father while out fishing far from shore, unexpectedly passed away. Annie then stayed with her mother to help with the store, and the two had a strong close, loving, everlasting relationship.

Devastated and with her whole world caving in Annie would soon after that marry, and have three sons. But the difficult, problematic marriage to the father of her children, a Korean War Veteran, had after only five or six years deteriorated and ended in divorce.

Annie continuing on was humble in her mannerisms, and every day in her life she was grateful and thankful to God for her many blessings. She a simple, beautiful sweetheart would continually throughout remain so pleasant, seemingly never giving anybody a hard time. She was a classic, clean-cut true blue American beauty.

Annie had a love for the simple things in life and tremendous appreciation for the beauty in nature. She had an extreme appreciation and gratitude for the little treasures that the sea and its shores had to offer. And with that had always had a passion for creating and expressing herself with exceptional seashell art and jewelry. And her home was always nicely decorated with both.

She for her three boys keeping them close together as a family had dreams of doing wholesome, happy fantastic things. And way back when in those early 1960's she became intrigued with the idea of moving those healthy ambitions to somewhere on the coast of Florida. Things in New York were undoubtedly tough in the cold winters, fishing was hard, and the kids were always sick. With plenty of reasons for going, she and her new partner in life, a commercial rod and reel Striped Bass fisherman started looking for information about fishing in Florida.

Annie, when she was a young girl, had been to St. Augustine and Daytona on vacation with her parents and said to them that she "would one day move there." And at this point in her life, she was going to do it no matter what considering she and the fishing machine of a great man she was with would make a strong optimistic team.

Before moving, she had to come up with some other ways of making money. Annie made a piggybank out off a big glass, Skippy peanut butter jar. Using a magic-marker, she taped a label on the side saying, "MOVING TO FLORIDA" and right away she and her little family started saving their pennies for the trip. And as far as the kids were concerned…they totally loved the idea. They regularly watched the TV show Flipper, and thought, they would get a pet porpoise too.

She had a passion for making seascapes, thinking that this would also be a way to make some money. Truly a form of self-expression her handcrafted colleagues were beautiful with big, Maine lobsters, sea horses, colorful beach sands, and seashells. She with the "skalla" claws off blue crabs, which were the little feathery white flappers in front of the crab used to brush food in towards their mouths, would take two,  invert and glue them together, making what looked like little seagulls in her backgrounds. There were even small tiny horseshoe crabs involved in the mix. Not having much luck selling them locally, some also being displayed up in the city. So Annie like 'The Highwaymen' did some years later, loaded up her little car; a turquoise blue Ford Falcon. She drove out east on Long Island and stopping at a restaurant had great luck when she opened up the trunk and just like that sold them all. Also, there is no doubt about it, Annie forming her one girl company SEA SHELL CREATIONS was the inventor of now very popular seashell nightlights.

Another thing Annie and her partner came up with was collecting small, shedder, molted horseshoe crabs out in the middle of the marsh off Jamaica Bay. She'd after drying and spraying them with clear lacquer would package them in small plastic bags with a plain typed label explaining the history of how horseshoe crabs were one of the oldest living creatures on the planet. She went to the Coney Island Aquarium where after making a deal several hundred of her packaged horseshoe crabs where sold. You'd think that out of the thousands of school kids on field trips from the city that visit there every week, that a couple of them horseshoe crabs surely made it to someone's living room up in Manhattan.

Granny Annie will be so missed by her friends and family that always looked forward to the opportunity on occasion to see her. She, for many of her years, mainly due to her suffering with severe migraines, lived a quiet life; maybe for others to quite at times.

Thankfully in the recent decades that followed the earlier ones, she was blessed by a... beyond beautiful marriage to an extraordinary and ageless man named Bill Willem that has survived her and that she and all that know him, love so very dearly.

Annie Willem is also survived by, Brother John Arena.

Her three sons Harry, Albert, and Michael Quatraro, Their wives, Sondra, Marcia, and Kathy. And also Her many Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren, Geoffrey Michael, Nicholas Albert, Kia Maria, Kristy Ann, Jessica Summer, Michelle Nichole, Kayden Ann, Kallie Rose, Carter Christopher, and Max Franklin.

"Just put it in God's hands." ~~ Grannie Annie...