NYC woman who died on Montclair street was immigrant who loved America – NorthJersey.com

Maria Ascenso loved to walk.

As with many Manhattanites, her favored mode of transportation did not require a token, or exact change, or an argument over what neighborhood a cabbie would or would not drive to.

Sometimes she would walk 25 blocks to work and later walk 25 blocks home.

“She never took the subway,” said Ascenso’s son-in-law, Paul Hoerrner, “She was a pedestrian in every sense of the word.”

It was last week when Ascenso took her final steps, crossing Wendover Road, a cozy one-block street in Montclair, near Edgemont Park, where her daughter and Hoerrner live with their children.

She was walking the family dog, a Boston terrier named Walter, when she was struck by a vehicle and died at the age of 74.

Ines, Ascenso’s daughter, realized there was something going on outside when she saw a woman chasing after Walter, who was running up the family’s driveway with his leash dragging behind.

‘A suitcase and a dollar’

Ascenso moved to New York’s SoHo district with her husband, Joaquim, from Portugal in 1966, when the now-trendy neighborhood of couture boutiques and floor-through lofts was a community of immigrants.

“I guess it’s your typical immigration story,” Ines said of her parents during an interview on Wednesday. “They came here with a suitcase and a dollar, and America was everything.”

Ascenso worked as a housekeeper and nanny for families, first through a visa program with the Brazilian Embassy that hired Portuguese speakers.

“My mother has a fourth grade education, and my father has a sixth grade education,” Ines said. “It was about nose to the grindstone, work hard every day and save every penny.”

Eventually, Ascenso would work 20 years keeping house for a Holocaust survivor who had no relatives left. The two became best friends, sharing tea and chatting. By the end, the survivor had named Ascenso the executor of her estate, and when she died, she left her former cleaning woman a comfortable inheritance. 

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With the money, Ascenso purchased a house in Asbury Park where she could host large family gatherings, for which her SoHo apartment was always too small.

“She lived for her children and her grandchildren,” Ines remembered of her mother. “There was nothing else. That was it.”

Ines and her husband chose to settle in Montclair because it afforded her mother public transportation to come visit whenever she wanted, without getting rides from Joaquim.

“She was fiercely independent,” Ines said.

And so she would visit often, and always take Walter for a walk, getting in her steps.

Investigation continues

On Jan. 15, she and Joaquim were visiting the Hoerrner-Ascenso home on Wendover Road. It was Friday, the start of a weekend with mild weather in the mid-40s and clear.

At about 2:30 p.m., she left her daughter’s home, Walter in tow, but didn’t make it far.

The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office is still investigating how a car came to hit Ascenso, and, when contacted Wednesday, wouldn’t release any details of the crash, since there were no charges against the driver.

Paul and Ines’ understanding of what may have happened comes from the eyewitnesses who spoke with them in the immediate aftermath.

“We don’t feel any rancor toward the [driver],” Hoerrner said. “I’m sure she’s feeling horrible as well.”

But that doesn’t make the loss any more bearable.

A wake and funeral Mass for Ascenso will be closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

She leaves behind another daughter, Dinella; grandchildren Sebastian, Lucian, Ava and Felix; and Joaquim, 78.

Ines said her mother would like to be remembered as honest, kind and hardworking.

Paul interjected: “She didn’t work hard for herself, she worked hard for her family.”

The family she loved would often gather out on the breezy shores of Asbury Park, where there was finally room for all, and perhaps take a stroll along the boardwalk. After all, she always loved to walk.

Nicholas Katzban is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.

Email: katzban@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @nicholaskatzban