Paul Charles Monachina

Paul Charles Monachina, 93, of Lee, Massachusetts, died at home, surrounded by his four children, on January 13, 2026. His wife for 71 years, Joyce, had died 19 months earlier, and after that, his life was devoid of a certain joy.

Paul was born on Canal Street in Lee, on August 31, 1932. It was a time and a place that he often painted with his storytelling.

In his neighborhood, he learned the dialects of Tuscany and the Veneto, and spoke his own, Sicilian, at home. He often recalled his father’s garden there, where much of what they ate was grown, and his mother’s kitchen, where it was transformed into delicacies. Nearly every household good was delivered to the neighborhood, even mending services, by a man who arrived by train. The train station was in view of his bedroom window, where he saw the comings and goings of vacationers, and vividly remembered the Sunday night ski train passengers waiting on the platform. From the room overlooking the station, he listened to the NY Yankee games on the radio; he took the train to see their games. He was curious about and interested in everyone, a trait he carried through life, which may have been born with his unique view on the moving world outside his window.

Trains, busses, and streetcars got him around the county. On his first date with his future wife, Joyce Stanley, the taxi driver serenaded the couple with a tune on the harmonica (the Tennessee Waltz). They married in 1953, and for the two of them, life was an adventure and they relished it.

Earlier, during his junior year in high school, his father suffered a heart attack and Paul’s life changed. He had planned to be the first in his family to go to college but felt the need to help financially. He remembered the day he switched from the classical to the business curriculum and went to work 45-hour weeks at Rossi’s restaurant, while attending school. For a six-foot-tall athlete, giving up basketball was difficult, too. Fortunately, on his day off, a local priest would get the ball out of a closet and give it to the boys.

Soon after he graduated, he went to work at the local paper mill. He learned the art, science, and labor of paper making, and with a strong work ethic, native intelligence, and luck – and people who saw his potential—in the 1970’s, he was named director of Quality Control for Kimberly Clark’s Schweitzer Division Lee mills. Those mills produced the thinnest paper ever made. He traveled around the country to publishers and tea and cigarette companies, troubleshooting problems and brainstorming solutions. Driving in snowstorms in the Smokies, running to catch multiple planes during storms in Canada, tasting tea at a customer’s plant on the Texas shore of the Gulf of Mexico—all became more stories.

Joyce and Paul were spiritual seekers. During the 70’s and 80’s they belonged to a community at Cranwell School in Lenox, a group called the Vineyard, where they both blossomed, acting in plays and participating in liturgies. Later both named that time as life changing. Eventually, after Cranwell closed, they found the First Congregational Church in Lee, where community and social justice values made them feel at home.

He volunteered without calling attention to it, at the Christian Center, for the United Way, the Lee Lions Club, on the Lee Youth Association board, the Lee Chamber of Commerce, and others. Every Thursday for years, he fasted, donating what he would have spent on food to Oxfam. One volunteering adventure took him with a group to Mexico, to help build a hospital. He was the crew’s cook. Joyce and Paul were invited to spend their last years living at the home of daughter Janis and son-in-law Jeffrey Keenan, in an apartment created for them. This invitation meant they could spend their last days at home, even while requiring care. In their late years, he and Joyce often drove over Canal Street. The white clapboard house of his parents is still there, but most of the rest is gone. His mind’s eye could conjure the busy immigrant neighborhood.

Paul was a Korean War Era veteran, stationed in Fort Dix. He was predeceased by his wife Joyce, brother Charles, and sister Mabel, and parents James and Virginia.

He is survived by his children, Paul Monachina (Carol Way), Kathryn Monachina- Mukherjee (Ron Mukherjee), Judith Monachina (Fred Rutberg), and Janis Monachina (Jeffrey Keenan); grandchildren Daniel Bettega, Derek Bettega, and Julia Keenan; great grandchild Dalton Sumner; and Fresh Air daughter Kimberly Collins. He loved being a grandfather, even a nanny to Julia for a time, and adored his nephews and nieces. All will miss his open smile and his sea blue eyes.

A memorial service will be held at the Lee First Congregational Church, on Monday, February 9, at 1 p.m. Donations in lieu of flowers may be sent to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, a food pantry, Hospice Care in the Berkshires, or the First Congregational Church Building Fund.