Maryellen Bonavita

Maryellen McDaniel Bonavita concluded her life on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, while at her home near Brookville.

For the preceding 73 years, she lived - exuberantly!

She was a loving mother, wife, sister, friend. She brightened lives as a superb cook, an inveterate gardener and a cellar-crowding creator of canned goods. She burst through each day with frenetic joy.

She was a graduate of Clarion-Limestone High School, then attended college in Clarion for a year. She fledged in California as an almost-hippie, then earned her keep as a waitress in Brookville and DuBois. In mid-life she completed college, earning a bachelor of arts degree from Penn State DuBois Campus. She was superb at public relations, speaking and writing for United and Central electric cooperatives and for the DuBois Area School District and Riverview Intermediate Unit as well as doing freelance writing. She had been a board member of the DuBois Area Chamber of Commerce and a member and former president of the Penn State DuBois Alumni Association.

Retirement? Naah. She used her culinary skills as a purveyor of lunches at Namaste Center for Well-Being in Brookville along with her sister Melora while she expanded her nurturing to include grandchildren, chickens by the dozen and stray barn cats.

The chief beneficiaries of her zest for life include her husband of 20 years, Denny Bonavita of Brookville; daughter Mariya Navarrette and her partner Toni Martinez of Mt. Laurel, N.J.; sons Michael (Alyson) Navarrette of Medford, N.J. and Evan Greene of Mackeyville Pa.; grandchildren Abigail Wesner and Wyatt Navarrette of New Jersey and Lailah Greene of Mackeyville; sisters Melora McNutt and Claire Orner of Brookville, Martie Slaughter of Virginia, Jennifer McDaniel of North Carolina, Julia Bradshaw of Raleigh N.C.; brother Joseph McDaniel of Manorville; stepdaughter Renae Greene of State College. She is also survived by two former spouses, Arthur K. Navarrette of Utah and James D. Greene of Home Camp.

Her life began in suburban Detroit, Mich., where she was born on June 3, 1952, the eldest of five daughters of the late Marilyn Parmly and James Edgerton McDaniel. The family moved to Pennsylvania in the 1960s. She attended school in Brookville, then graduated from Clarion-Limestone High School in 1970.

During her retirement, she brightened lives in winter sojourns in Apalachicola, Fl., for more than a dozen years.

Her sunny personality overlaid a private persona that precludes public viewing or funeral services. "Plant something that will grow," was her suggestion for remembrances.

We shall.

Friends and family may leave online condolences, light a memorial candle, share a memory and obtain additional information by visiting www.furlongfuneralhome.com.

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