With Brave Wings She Flies

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Ersilia Cataldo Matarazzo was born on December 15, 1968, she was 50 years young. Ersilia was known as an angel on earth, as she spent much of her time helping people from all walks of life and volunteering. She truly touched a lot of lives around her.

Ersilia worked at Metro credit union in Chelsea for over 20 years and within the Everett community. She worked at St. Anthony’s church and helped organize events every year. She also served on the school committee, Board of Registrars, and the Board of Assessors. She was also the vice president of the Kiwanis club. Ersilia was very passionate about donating her time. 

On December 19, 2018, everything changed. Ersilia was taken away from her children and her family way too soon and it was due to domestic violence. Her passing has been extremely difficult for not only for her family but for the entire community. 

Ersilia was an amazing wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. She wasn’t fond of sharing the truth about what was really going on behind closed doors. Over the years, she was both verbally and physically abused. She tried her best to shield her children from her pain. For the people who were constantly around her, overtime, they caught on that she was being treated poorly. If they tried to intervene, she would say “don’t get involved” or “don’t worry everything is fine and will be okay”. But that’s the problem, her family and friends believed that everything would turn out okay but it never did. It hurt them to see her live through that pain and being too scared to really help her more than they did.

We urge people that are going through this to not be afraid to reach out to someone and ask for help. If you see someone who looks like they are in need of help, don’t be afraid to ask, if something doesn’t look right, speak up. Ersilia’s family and friends never thought it would end like this. They never thought they would lose her in this way and it completely broke their hearts and changed their lives forever. We hope by sharing Ersilia’s story and developing Orange Rose Foundation, it will bring more awareness to domestic violence and to maybe help someone speak up and ask for help before it’s too late.

We want to continue her mission which is to help those in need and give back to the community and we hope to do that through supporting organizations and raise awareness of domestic violence. We hope you will help spread awareness of domestic violence.