Harriette A. Youngs, 90, of Fords, died on Saturday, July 6, at her home, with her loving, full-time caregiver, Regina Dei, by her side.

Raised in Perth Amboy, Harriette moved to Fords as an adult, and she lived there for the rest of her life. She was a retired high school teacher at Perth Amboy High School. Harriette was also a regular parishioner of Our Lady of Peace Church, Fords.

A 1956 graduate of Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), Harriette majored in mathematics. She spent her career teaching algebra. She was a compelling and charismatic instructor whom her students loved. She also helped her grateful nieces and nephews make it through Algebra I and II, spending many evenings on the phone with them over homework.

One summer, Harriette met some students on the street in Perth Amboy, who ran up to tell her that they'd received their schedules and were thrilled she was once again to be their teacher. The students had just come from the store where they'd purchased the thick notebooks she required. She solemnly told them to tear out all the dividers – because they'd need all the pages for her Algebra II class. They obeyed immediately.

Harriette was the daughter of John and Harriet Ulbrich of Perth Amboy, and her father worked for the city's First Bank and Trust Company. Her father also volunteered at their parish church, St. Mary's, to count the weekly contributions, and Harriette remembered the solemn task, every Sunday afternoon, to stack the coins and place them into paper wrappers, for deposit the next day at her father's bank.

Harriette's mother was from Laurel Hill, Queens, NY, near the Brooklyn-Queens border, and her parents had met during a Knights of Columbus dance in Perth Amboy, while Mrs. Ulbrich was visiting cousins.

During the Great Depression when Harriette was a child, she remembered traveling with her mother to see her Queens family. First, they'd board the Perth Amboy-Tottenville ferry to Staten Island, crossing the Arthur Kill, a tidal strait separating New Jersey and Staten Island. Then, mother and daughter would take a jitney bus across the island to the Staten Island Ferry, where they traveled into Manhattan. From there, they boarded the subway. After several connections and an additional bus, they arrived in Queens. The trip cost a few small coins, and took hours, but Harriette remembered that it was a great adventure. The future mathematics major was also proud of her mother's frugality.

Harriette grew up on Barclay St. in the Perth Amboy hospital area between Convery Blvd. and Amboy Ave., and remembered many happy hours playing softball in Washington Park, sledding down a big hill near the hospital, and ice skating with her best friend, Phyllis Muska. She was born at the hospital and was fond of saying that it was the last time she ever stayed overnight in any health facility. Harriette was in robust physical health her entire life, though she suffered in later years from dementia.

Harriette attended St. Mary's High School, where she graduated in 1952. She was a popular cheerleader and worked on the school newspaper, The Lions' Roar, where her friend Phyllis was editor-in-chief. Harriette had a speaking role in the class musical, Roberta, and her fellow thespian was her future husband, Michael Deegan, who graduated with her. But the two did not become a couple until years later when they were both working as teachers at Perth Amboy High School.

In 1958, Harriette and her friend Phyllis took a legendary trip to Europe for a summer's worth of touring the continent, a newly re-popular pursuit for travel-hungry Americans, after two World Wars and the Great Depression. Both teachers had saved for two years for the trip. They crossed by ship on the Cunard Lines, which had twelve passenger liners on the Atlantic in 1958, according to William Miller, author of "Conquering the Atlantic." They caught the last gasp of the golden age of sea travel, because 1958 was also the year that the passenger jet appeared and changed transportation forever.

The well-dressed young women remembered, more than half a century later, that Cunard Lines had a special service for round trip passengers, which allowed them to stow a suitcase of fresh clothes with the shipping line, for use on the trip home. After six weeks of rotating the same clothes around Europe, Harriette and Phyllis appeared aboard ship looking "bandbox fresh" in their unworn outfits – dazzling their fellow travelers.

When Harriette returned to her teaching post at Amboy High, there was a new history teacher on staff. His name was Michael Deegan, and in 1960, the couple wed. They shared a parish, St. Mary's, and many happy high school memories. The two also shared a passion for travel, and in the years after, they traveled every summer to one exotic location after another, then shared home movies of their adventures with their enthralled family and friends.

Sadly, Michael died young of dementia, but Harriette forged on, becoming a local bowling champ, and meeting her second husband, James Youngs. They married in 2000 and spent a decade traveling to many of Harriette's now-favorite locations. She remembered going to a Bucherer watch boutique in Switzerland, where she had purchased a fine watch on her first trip in 1958, and they happily cleaned and polished up her timepiece 50 years later. She continued to wear it for the rest of her active life.

Harriette was predeceased by her beloved parents, and her two husbands, Mike and Jim. She is survived by her loving nieces and nephews, Kathleen Moran and her husband Richard of E. Windsor; Peggy Jo Donahue and her husband William of Haddon Township; Herbert Ruetsch and his wife Joanne of Hacketstown; and William Ruetsch of Woodbridge, along with nine great-nieces and great-nephews, and four great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews.

A viewing will be held on Thursday, July 11 at 9 a.m. from the Flynn and Son Funeral Home, 23 Ford Ave., Fords, followed by a 10:30 am Mass of Resurrection at Our Lady of Peace Church, Fords, with interment at St. Gertrude Cemetery, Colonia.

To send condolences, visit FlynnFuneral.com. For those who would like to make donations in Harriette's memory, consider a donation to the Alzheimer's Association, at alz.org.