- Date Of Birth: August 22, 1924
- Date Of Death: October 2, 2006
- State: Connecticut
She was a beautiful young chemist with dancing eyes, a keen sense of humor and spirit of fun. Her curiosity of the world and love of the sea were nourished by the view from her laboratory of the sparkling New York skyline and harbor. But she was told her position was secure “only until the boys come home” from World War II. One of those “boys” was a dashing Naval officer back from several years of duty in the Pacific and East Asia. When he said: “Marry me and I’ll show you the world,” she took him up on his offer. So the couple embarked on numerous military assignments that were, over the next couple of decades, to encompass the Pacific Rim: American Samoa, what was still the Territory of Hawaii, Taiwan, South Vietnam, and California, before moving to Connecticut, where her husband, Cmdr. Patrick W. Moore, newly retired from the Navy, joined the financial administration at Yale University. Florence Moore, who died on Oct. 2 at the age of 82, was born in Bayonne, N.J., on Aug. 22, 1924, the daughter of John and Agnes Maloney. In 1942, she enrolled in an accelerated pre-med program at Fordham University, finishing her degree in chemistry in 2 1/2 years, which for the first time opened its doors to women because of the shortage of male students during World War Two. After her graduation in 1945, she joined Standard Oil of New Jersey as a research chemist. Although constant moves and the arrival of four children made it difficult to keep up her scientific career, she took advantage of one of her husband’s military assignments to earn a master’s degree in education from the University of California, Berkeley. This enabled her to take up teaching posts at international schools in Taiwan and South Vietnam in the early 1960’s. In Taiwan, she also founded a school, St. Patrick’s, which began as a nursery, but has grown over the years into a thriving institution providing education from pre-school through high school. She also taught at the Free Pacific Institute in Cholon, the Chinese district in Saigon, South Vietnam. In California, she worked as an assistant to Bishop Raymond Lane, retired director of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, also known as Maryknoll. Even after her husband’s retirement from the Navy and a move to Orange, Conn., the couple kept up their travels, though this time primarily to Europe, inspired in part by Mrs. Moore’s work as managing editor of Yale Italian Studies journal and as administrative manager of the Italian Department. Mrs. Moore often stated her finest accomplishment as a mother was to have four children proud to be American, but most important, to be citizens of the world with a profound respect for all cultures, creeds and races. A lifelong lover of animals and avid supporter of animal rights organizations, her final life advice to her children was: “Be kind to your dogs. Be kind to all animals.
