By Albert Amateau
Angela Boone, Republican district leader in the Village for 26 years and owner of Pennyfeathers, a Village pub and restaurant, died Oct. 20 at the age of 82.
At her Oct. 23 funeral at St. Anthony’s Church on W. Houston and Sullivan Sts., former U.S. Senator Alphonse D’Amato delivered the eulogy and paid tribute to her as a devoted Republican and as a compassionate and generous Villager.
“There wasn’t enough time in the day for her to help people,” said her daughter, Gabrielle Boone Jones, who intends to carry on at Pennyfeathers. “Whenever my mother saw a homeless man out in the street, she’d get him a plate of food to go,” her daughter recalled. When the senior program at Greenwich House was threatened by city budget cuts in 1999, Angela Boone used her influence with the Republican administration of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani to fund the program.
Born and raised in Buffalo, Angela came to New York with her mother, Rose LaMarca, when she was 18.
“She was an opera singer and came to study singing,” her daughter said. She moved to the Village to an apartment she shared with a roommate, Trudy Mahon, who remained a lifelong friend of the family. “Aunt Trudy died in the Village Nursing Home two days after my mother’s funeral,” Jones noted.
In 1948, Angela LaMarca married Charles Boone and settled on Barrow St.
“My father built Pennyfeathers on Seventh Ave. S. and W. Fourth St. in 1974 and gave it to my mother as a present,” said Jones. Charles Boone died in 1984.
An active Republican in a overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood, Angela Boone was an early supporter of D’Amato and campaigned for his successful 1980 U.S. Senate run. She became a friend of the D’Amato family and was especially close to the senator’s mother, Antonetta D’Amato, said Jones.
In addition to her daughter, her son, Charles, and two grandsons also survive. Greenwich Village Funeral Home, at 199 Bleecker St., was in charge of arrangements.
