- Date Of Birth: October 6, 1950
- Date Of Death: July 23, 2021
- State: Florida
Adriana Rosa Haley was born October 6, 1950, by the crashing Atlantic Ocean in Commodoro Rivadavia, in remote Chubut, Patagonia. Her mother was Ondina Anunciacion Elisa Storoni, a teacher, and her father was Arturo Salvador Vicente Belbey, an Argentine military officer. Adriana’s maternal roots stretch back to large numbers of Storoni families who emigrated from Pesaro, Italy on the Adriatic Sea in the 1890s to the port of Buenos Aires establishing commercial shipwright supply businesses.
After her mother’s early divorce and moving to Buenos Aires, Adriana was raised as an only child by her loving and talented mother and devoted maternal grandparents Guido and Rosa Storoni. They would spark her lifelong interests in opera, city culture and tales of family adventures in remote windswept oil fields of 1930s Patagonia. Adriana attended renowned girls’ schools, learning German, French, Spanish and English, leading to one year of engineering and graduation with MS Clinical Psychology from University Argentina John F. Kennedy. Starting her career, she married Jose Vasquez for several years and divorced, having three little daughters, Gabriela, and twins Barbara and Anabel.
While on a ten week Eurail vacation tour of Europe, Adriana met Michael Haley of NY on August 1979, on slow train to romantic French Riviera, Monaco and Italy. Immediately they had intense chemistry, deepening love but in spite of risk on both sides, she moved to Poughkeepsie, NY early 1980 with her daughters where Michael was at IBM. They were married June 1981 in their hilltop garden home amid family, with a honeymoon in Martha’s Vineyard, MA. There were many new beginnings in NY, loving an “instant family” life, schools in new language, hard work, holidays and adoptions, US citizenship, birth of son Derek in March, 1985, and new grandparents. Adriana’s mother, Ondina Belbey, now an expert labor Cabinet attorney appointed by Argentina’s President, moved to NY to live happily with our family for six years but sadly succumbed to cancer in 1990, a loss felt very deeply by all.
Adriana determinedly pursued her difficult PhD enduring long snowy commutes to NYC while supporting our family. She proudly earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology 1993 from Fordham University NY and immediately launched her freelance bilingual clinical psychology consulting career with the NY Boards of Education, a very successful and admired twenty year business until retirement in 2013.
How shall we remember Adriana best?
Adriana had a powerful personality: She persisted always to finish a goal. She was practical, impatient, beautiful, passionate, loving, intensely loyal, curious, intelligent and brave. She had a great sense of humor and was well matched with Michael’s jokes! She was an excellent driver and enjoyed driving good cars very fast. She was kind, generous and outspoken. She was always willing to do the hard work to support Michael’s brother, Stephen, and elderly mother Irene. She strongly supported progressive values, women’s rights, and she did not suffer fools easily. Adriana survived a first throat cancer in 2010-2011 in Mt. Sinai NYC, and learned every aspect of the disease to better advocate for herself.
In 2000, Adriana and Michael took another risk in life in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, together building a beautiful, strong, spacious sea cliff home with spectacular 30 mile Pacific Ocean views to Costa Rican mountains and sunny rainbows. “One of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen in all our travels. And we built it ourselves!”
Upon retiring from NY to Palmetto Bay, FL 2014, Adriana and Michael created new gardens, new home design, extended family, new neighborhood friends. She enthusiastically set up whirlwind of travel adventures of culture, museums, vanishing places to: Australia, New Zealand, Galapagos Islands, Amazonia rain forest, Cuba, much of Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, Hungary, Tahiti, Kenya, Russian Volga River cruise, Venice, Croatia, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Morocco, Paris and reconnecting to life-long friends the Raymonds in Provence, France, US Parks and Switzerland by rail, Beijing and Chengdu, China, and for the last time in her life trips to Mendoza, and friend Ana Aira in Buenos Aires, Argentina,.
She and Michael always adored each other, always said that we had loved each other as much as humanly possible, that “We have no regrets.”
Remembering Adriana, yes, she was felled by cruel cancer too soon, but when we remember the whole energetic, loving and intelligent arc of her life that may define for us a better way to live–and perhaps—a better way to die.
Adriana is survived by her beloved husband of 41 years, Michael R. Haley (Palmetto Bay, FL), their adult children Barbara I. Haley (Coral Gables, FL), Anabel Kassembe and husband Jerry Kassembe (Aldie, VA); Derek M. Haley and new bride Katerina Stephens (Bronx, NY); and seven loving grandchildren, Lucas and Alejandro Giraldo; Isabella , Zuri, Sage and Aurora Kassembe; and Sofia Stastny.
(micro loans to women’s business in 3rd world);
National Audubon Society,
The Southern Law Poverty Center,
International Rescue Committee for refugees.
Event ID: Stanfill
Password: ZS7IRA
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