Elena M. Rocchio, Renaissance woman, 96, of East Greenwich, beloved aunt to many nieces and nephews, passed peacefully on August 15, surrounded by most of them.

A 1952 graduate of Brown University (Pembroke), Elena was a true intellectual, a decidedly cosmopolitan, independent woman, who was fiercely devoted to learning right up until her passing.

She chose not to follow a traditional path in her life. She was a progressive career woman and bucked generational norms for women of her time. After college she moved to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne. She then lived for many years in Germany and Italy, residing predominantly in her beloved Verona. While overseas, she worked for Special Services organizing social activities for enlisted soldiers both in Germany and in Italy, including being the protocol director and an interpreter for Italian VIPs. Following that, she worked as a travel agent for an Italian travel agency.

After her return to the US in 1977, she resided in Alexandria, Virginia, and worked in Washington, DC for the last 20 years of her career at the research and development company Jaycor, a job which required a federal security clearance. She began as a researcher, and then progressed to an analyst, analyzing everything from nuclear weapons to logistics, drawing up training programs for various skills, and writing requirements for information systems.

Elena spoke Italian and French fluently, along with some German, and conversed with her friends in Italian and French right up until the end of her life.

More than anyone we have known, Elena traveled extensively throughout the world. She went on an African safari, which included hunting big game, and enjoyed several transatlantic journeys on the QE2. She explored such places as Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, Hong Kong, Macau, Budapest, Prague, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Bali, Ivory Coast, Normandy, and Scandinavia. She went trekking in Nepal at age 70, and ventured to Machu Picchu her late 80’s. She often brought back treasures to her siblings and her young nieces and nephews from her far flung travels, many of which are cherished possessions today.

Elena was very fit and physically active, and she loved to swim and ride bikes. She skied annually in the Swiss and French Alps until very late in her life.

She was perennially engaged in scholarly endeavors. She belonged to both the French and Italian clubs in the Washington, DC area, and taught an Italian class into her late 80s. She was a member of the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institute and often attended social activities in the Italian and French embassies.

Elena had an air of refinement and aristocracy about her, which was fitting as she was named after the Queen of Italy. She had very high standards and held people to them, and she was a bon vivant and a bit of a culinary connoisseur. The only TV she watched was PBS.

Elena was a voracious lover of good literature, in multiple languages, and of classical music. She embraced all things Italian and loved the operas from her ancestral land. She had an excellent sense of humor and was very quick-witted, and was always up for a good time.

Elena was the youngest of five children and a devoted daughter to her parents, Anthony and Antonetta (Pelosi) Rocchio, immigrants from Italy.

Her early life was marked by loss upon the death of her oldest sibling, Charles Rocchio, who was killed in action in World War II. Throughout her life, she maintained a close, loving relationship, including many visits, with the Maassen/Van de Weyer Dutch family who housed and cared for Charlie in the weeks before his death and have cared for his grave in the Margraten cemetery in the Netherlands ever since.

She was also predeceased by her brother, Robert Rocchio, her twin sisters, Angelyn Kiernan and Madelyn Dee, and her nephew, Robert K. Dee, Jr., as well as by her long-time companion, Philippe Melville.

Part of the family lore about her early life was a story retold many times about her being forgotten at Nausauket beach as a small child when all of the other children piled in the car to go home. She was discovered with a police officer, crying her eyes out, when they went back to retrieve her. She remembered the incident with a bit of trauma but was also able to laugh at it over the years.

In 2024, after the passing of her longtime companion, Philippe, Elena returned to her home state of Rhode Island, where she spent much special time with her nieces and nephews. She was always interested and invested in all of our lives and was extraordinarily generous to all of us.

Elena will be dearly missed by all who were blessed to know her, and will be remembered with gratitude as a thoughtful, generous, loving, sophisticated, brilliant aunt, with great poise, who lived a remarkable life.

Her funeral and burial will be private. Arrangements have been entrusted to the Hill Skeffington Funeral Home of East Greenwich www.hillskeffington.com