Our beloved Lisa Marie Potanovich of Fairfield, CT passed away unexpectedly and peacefully in her home on March 13, 2025. She was age 71.

Lisa was born May 26, 1953 in Bridgeport, CT. She graduated from Notre Dame High School and earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Southern CT State University. She lived for 21 years on Manhattan's Upper East Side before coming back to Connecticut for the past 22 years.

Lisa served as a clinical and research nurse at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, an Associate Director Information Scientist Worldwide Regulatory at Pfizer, and Senior Manager Clinical Documentation at Regeneron.

Lisa was gifted with a keen intellect and strong motivation to do good work. She held high standards, firm convictions, and extraordinary compassion. She was classy, genuine and approachable. Among her many talents and interests, Lisa practiced ballet, had an eye for art, and a love for history. She enjoyed gardening, volunteering for church and community, and traveling.

Lisa's greatest gifts to us were her wide welcoming smile and laugh, warm hospitality, and her friendship. She valued spending time with us, took care of us, found delight in the oldest and the youngest of us. She faithfully marked birthdays and holidays with a card or text and sometimes a surprise parcel. She shared her enthusiasms and remembered ours. Lisa gathered us together as family and friends; whether close or far, we shared a common residence – a family home – in her heart, where we remain connected.

Every year or two, Lisa hosted a famous picnic, a pilgrimage of appetite and laughter rewarded by her exquisite cooking, which we were recruited to carry, plate after plate, wave after wave, to a great gleaming white tent. The day never lasted long enough. And then there were the pies: Lisa could take a common round dish and with the quick, deft magic of hands somehow fold inside an orchard of flavor that defied chemistry.

Lisa is survived by her sister, Susan (Potanovich) Gore, her nephew Richard Gore, her many cousins, and lifelong friends from all over.

She was pre-deceased by her parents, Andrew "Buddy" Potanovich and Blanche (Ross) Potanovich of Bridgeport; and many aunts and uncles, including Priscilla Ross, for whom she lovingly provided care.

Please join us to celebrate Lisa's life. Funeral services will be held Friday at 10:00a.m., from the Redgate – Hennessy Funeral Home, Main Street and 4 Gorham Place, Trumbull, and at 11:00a.m., in St. Pius X Catholic Church, Fairfield, with a Mass of Christian Burial. Interment will follow in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Trumbull. Friends may call Friday from 9:00a.m. to 10:00a.m.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in her name to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
501 St. Jude Place, Memphis TN 38105
Tel: 1-800-805-5856
Web: https://www.stjude.org/donate/