Carole “Molly” Fitzpatrick (Muldoon) died peacefully on May 8, 2026, after a long illness. 

A lifelong Central New Yorker, she was raised by her Uncle Ed and Aunt Mary in Auburn. She fondly recalled Ed's grocery store in Skaneateles Falls. Molly spent her adult life in Syracuse, after graduating from Nazareth College. She worked for many years as an Onondaga County Public Health Nurse, often conducting home visits to help families in need of medical care. She worked in many area hospitals, spending much of her time at Crouse Irving Medical Center. 

She is survived by her sons, Tim (Sue Park) of Berkeley, CA and Peter (Anna Johansson) of St. Helena, CA. Molly is predeceased by her sister Diane, her daughter Nancy, and her husband John Terrance “Terry” Fitzpatrick. 

When she and Terry were courting, he introduced her to his friends as “Molly” because her last name was Muldoon and he liked the way “Molly Muldoon” sounded. She went along with it, so the name stuck. Molly was a loving mother, dedicated to her family. She made sure her kids had opportunities that were not all available to her in the 1940’s in Skaneateles Falls: art classes, tennis lessons, piano lessons, ice hockey, gymnastics, Irish dancing, travelling abroad, etc. She was happy to welcome nieces Mary and Margaret to live with the family during their high school and college years. She admired their free-spiritedness and appreciated the extra warmth, ebullience, and joy they brought to the family. Molly was well-known for her generosity of spirit. She was most comfortable when she was giving her time and energy to the people she loved and to principals she believed in, always aware when someone may be feeling left out or when something seemed off-balance or unfair. She was a problem-solver, and looked for opportunities to help wherever it might be needed. Molly gave time and support to causes she believed in, such as women’s rights, and the resettlement of refugees from other countries to Central New York. Molly was a passionate theater lover, and a dedicated supporter of Syracuse Stage. Every December, she took all of her grandchildren to whatever holiday production was playing, creating a cherished annual tradition and a love of theater in her grandchildren too. One Thanksgiving, Molly invited the whole out-of-town cast of the Syracuse Stage production to her house for a huge home-cooked holiday feast / raucous cast-party. She was also well-known for her cooking skills, especially for the quality (and quantity) of her baked goods. Molly never showed up to a social function empty-handed. She had two extra freezers in the basement that were packed with many mysterious tinfoil shapes concealing a myriad of baked marvels: biscotti, ginger scones, sausage bread, lemon bread, turkey tetrazini; countless cakes and dozens of types of cookies. During the holiday season she would spread the holiday cheer throughout the Syracuse area with lovingly-arranged cookie plates delivered to friends, family, neighbors, car mechanics, and coworkers on every floor of Crouse-Irving Hospital. She enjoyed and valued the relationships she built with her fellow nurses, and kept in touch with many of them after she retired. Molly cherished her many lifetime friends. She enjoyed getting together for potluck parties, playing cards with her bridge clubs, tennis at Drumlins and Sedgewick, travel to the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament in NYC, water aerobics at the YMCA, and having fancy brunches with her nurse posse. A life-long learner, Molly was a voracious reader and lexiphile, and enjoyed filling in NYTimes crossword puzzles. She always had more than a few books out of the library at once and had a book open in each room of the house. While her children were in high school, Molly earned a master’s degree with a perfect 4.0 GPA in business administration at Syracuse University. She was called for jury duty once, and in the voir dire process a lawyer asked her what periodicals she read. She gave a long list and the lawyer said "that can't be true, nobody reads all of those!" She swore it was true (it was) and she was promptly dismissed from the jury pool. Molly’s sense of humor was dry and wry. Sarcasm was another one of her superpowers. Her sharp wit and subtle delivery worked within the rules of common decency and polite manners, while eviscerating loved ones with playful zingers. She also was a firm believer in being prompt with Thank You notes. She would not approve of how long it has taken her sons to deliver her obituary to the paper, but she would forgive us and call us troglodytes.

 A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday August 1, 2026 at 11:00 am, with calling hours from 9:30am-11:00am prior at the Edward J. Ryan & Son Funeral Home, 3180 Bellevue Ave.