A Lifetime, A Legacy: Mary Haffert Anninos

Pete and Mary Anninos on their wedding day.

A lovely local lady who comforted those in mourning as a member of St. Joseph Church’s Bereavement Committee is now being widely bereaved. Surrounded by family, Sea Isle City’s Mary Haffert Anninos, 85, died serenely on March 23.

The Philadelphia native moved to Sea Isle as a 6-year-old when her parents, Helen and Horrace Haffert, purchased the Seminole Hotel at 50th Street and the beach in the mid-1940s, says Mrs. Anninos’ brother, Pat Haffert. Their parents renamed it the Surfside Hotel.

“That’s where Mom grew up,” says Mrs. Anninos’ son, Pete Anninos. “It was an enchanted kind of upbringing,” he says of his mother’s childhood in Sea Isle City.

While graduating from Wildwood Catholic High School, the-then Mary Haffert addressed her class as its valedictorian. She next earned her bachelor’s degree in education from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. During those years, a summer job offshore would change her life.

In 1958, 19-year-old Mary Haffert was hired as a waitress at the then-Howard Johnson by Exit 17 of the Garden State Parkway. Summer manager Pete Anninos hired her. Mary Haffert married Pete Anninos at St. Joseph Church on Dec. 26, 1960.

Their wedding day was celebratory in several ways, her brother Pat recalls. That day, the Philadelphia Eagles played the Green Bay Packers in the NFL Championship at Franklin Field. The Birds prevailed, 17-13.

Most of the wedding gifts that Mary and Pete Anninos received were affected by another major event, the infamous storm of 1962. By then, the couple lived in a small house in Bordentown. But their wedding gifts and Mary’s wedding gown were stored in her family’s home, the Surfside Hotel. As the nor’easter slammed Sea Isle City from March 6-8, it demolished the Surfside Hotel, taking Mary Anninos’ wedding gifts and her gown with it.

After her family members were airlifted out of Sea Isle City by the U.S. Army National Guard, they temporarily lived with Mary and Pete Anninos in the couple’s compact home. By all accounts, such an arrangement came naturally for Mrs. Anninos. “My mom was such a loving, caring, selfless person,” her son Chris Anninos says. “She didn’t worry about herself.”

Mary and Pete Anninos were married for 62 years, until his death in May 2023.

The Anninos raised their children, Pete, Chris, and Nicole, in Delran, where Mrs. Anninos worked as a second-grade teacher for 30 years.

Mrs. Anninos’ students and their parents regularly telephoned the Anninos’ home to speak with her mother, Nicole McIntyre recalls. These calls often came when the family was seated and having dinner. “Mom always stopped eating and talked with them,” her daughter says, adding that one little guy who dearly loved Mrs. Anninos called regularly.

His sister’s Delran students were constantly asking for her, says Pat Haffert. Her brother remembers how effectively Mrs. Anninos managed one student who simply could not sit still in her classroom: She gave the lively young boy a duster and naming him the classroom’s official cleaner. It worked. The child was delighted. Little was known about the condition dubbed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder back then.

That same loving care was applied to the needs of Mrs. Anninos’ own children.

Mary (holding balloon) was a second-grade teacher in Delran for 30 years.

Mary at her 80th birthday celebration with her children Chris (left), Nicole, and Pete Jr., and Nicole's dog Pumpkin.

Nicole McIntyre notes that she sometimes grew “nervous about school” as a youngster. When this happened, “Mom picked me up at lunchtime and took me to lunch,” she reminisces.

Plus, Mrs. Anninos always welcomed her children’s friends to their house for after school snacks like Yodels, Twinkies, and potato chips, says daughter Nicole McIntyre.

Animals, including rabbits, gerbils, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, including stray dogs and cats, were also welcomed into the Anninos’ household. Both of his parents loved animals all the way back to their days living in Delran, Pete Anninos says.

“At one point, we had four cats, two dogs, and a rabbit,” his sister Nicole notes.

Mary and Pete Anninos relocated back to Sea Isle City when they retired in 2003.

Over the next two decades, Mrs. Anninos was a regular presence in three places on the island: St. Joseph Church, The Crooked Tail – a nonprofit thrift shop that supports successful efforts to assist Sea Isle City’s cat population – and the Sea Isle City Historical Museum.

Mrs. Anninos was “very religious and very forgiving of human nature and other people’s weaknesses,” her brother Pat says. She attended morning Mass daily at St. Joseph’s and prayed several hours daily. Her involvement in the parish’s Bereavement Committee “came naturally,” Haffert muses. “Mary was an empath; she felt your pain.”

Toward the end of her life, Mrs. Anninos told family members that she prayed for people by name each night, “starting with the people who were most helpful to her that day,” niece Caitlin Haffert says with a laugh. So, family members joked with one another about being on the top of Mrs. Anninos’ prayer list. “We all thought that we were Aunt Mimi’s favorite,” she notes. “My sister had a knack for making everyone feel special,” Caitlin’s dad Pat adds.

Her knack for caring applied to wild felines on the island, as well. When colonies of feral cats ran rampant in Sea Isle City in the 1980s, Mary Anninos and her sister-in-law Mary Haffert joined forces with realtor Maggie Sgalio to address the problem, Sgalia says.

Pete and Mary at their granddaughter’s wedding reception in July 2021, being recognized for their 60 years of marriage.

Mary and her children celebrated Pete's 80th birthday with a surprise party at Avalon Country Club in March 2017.

With full financial support from the City of Sea Isle City under “Mayor Lenny” Desiderio, Mary Anninos and company captured feral cats and had them neutered, spayed and vaccinated for rabies and distemper, Sgalia explains. “We put notches in their ears to indicate that they were vaccinated,” she adds. Their Sea Isle City Save Our Strays (SOS) group, now known as Sea Isle Cats, effectively eliminated the problem of feral cats taking over the island.

“We’ve been saving cats for 40 years now,” Sgalia says of their ongoing effort that includes fostering and adoption services for stray cats. In 2014, Sea Isle Cats opened The Crooked Tail nonprofit thrift shop, where Mary Anninos volunteered, to finance the operation.

Not only that, “Mary had food on her side entry and porch for the feral cats, and sleeping notches for them” by her home on 40th Street, Sgalia recalls. Mrs. Anninos’ niece Caitlin sometimes assisted in feeding the cats. “Aunt Mimi had feeding stations at her house” and offered instructions to put out “five plates of wet cat food at 4pm daily,” she reminisces. “The cats appeared to eat once we went into the house.”

Mrs. Anninos also volunteered at the Sea Isle City Historical Museum. She modeled the attributes of museum volunteers, says volunteer Peter Greco: “All of the people here at the museum are warm, outgoing people who are generous with their time and willingness to assist museum visitors. That describes Mary!”

Up until last summer, Mrs. Anninos’ grandson Kyle McIntyre, 28, spent summers with his grandparents in Sea Isle City. During the younger of those years, Kyle’s daily routine with his Mimi and Pop Pop was a boy’s delight. Mimi picked up doughnuts daily from Maryanne Pastry Shoppe for breakfast, her grandson says. Then off Mimi and he went to join his cousins on the beach. Upon their return home, Pop Pop and he played video games, he adds.

“Mimi was going to have to leave Sea Isle when Pop Pop died” because it was growing harder for her to do things around the house, he reflects. Family members found a condominium for her that was located close to his mother Nicole McIntyre and him in Mount Laurel. That move never came to be after Mrs. Anninos suffered a fall and her health deteriorated.

“To the day that she died, Mimi did not want to leave Sea Isle,” says her grandson.

Perhaps somewhere in the hereafter, Mary Haffert Anninos found a better place.