Albertina "Babe" Duarte

Albertina “Babe” Duarte passed December 20, 2023 at the age of 85. Babe lived in Taunton’s Weir neighborhood most of her life, moving to live with family in Dighton for the last 8 years. She had a wry wit, a talent for making strangers into fast friends, and she will be missed.

Babe grew up on Hood Street as part of an extended Cape Verdean family with her parents, sister Anne “Shirley,” brothers Henry “Junior,”  Albert “Pol,” and Kevin, and many aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives nearby. Babe was a teenager when the family moved to a grand, but under-stated, five-bedroom brick home on First Street, so historic that it still has a carriage house today. She graduated from Taunton High School in 1956. For most of her life, she worked at Swank Inc. on Winthrop Street in Taunton. She, along with her historic home and life-long career at a company that has since closed, was part of the resilience and good-natured heart that have seen the city of Taunton through the ups and downs of nearly a century of change. Babe continued working at Swank and living in the home on First Street until 2013. Her parents, sister, and brothers had all predeceased her when she retired from Swank after 50 years of service.

Rather than spend her retirement alone with her immediate family gone and no children of her own, she deepened her relationship with her extended family. She became “Auntie Babe” to an entire community. The last decade of her life was filled with cousins, friends, travel, and new experiences she would not have imagined for herself in the years before. In her retirement, Auntie Babe cruised to Bermuda, parasailed in Florida, tasted wine in California’s vineyards, experienced Niagara Falls from a 54th floor suite, traveled first-class on a train up the Oregon coast, toured the Canadian city of Toronto, accompanied her preschool-aged cousins to Roger Williams Zoo and the New England Aquarium, and summited a mountain in New Hampshire—all while surrounded by family and friends. In her short visits to California and Oregon, she made friends who continue to send her holiday cards and check in with her on social media. When she was not traveling, which became harder in her final years, she especially enjoyed spending time with the children in her community. She loved babies, seafood, music and movies from the 1940s and 1950s, her family, and making new friends. If you knew Auntie Babe, she then found you on Facebook and liked every picture you ever posted. If you did not know her, then know that she would have wanted to like all of your pictures too. She will be greatly missed.

Visiting hours will be held on Wednesday, December 27th, 2023 from 5 to 7pm in the Silva Funeral Home, 80 Broadway (at Saint Mary’s Square), Taunton. Albertina’s Mass of Christian Burial for the repose of her soul will be held on Thursday, December 28, 2023, at 10am in Annunciation of the Lord Catholic Church, 1st St., Taunton. There will be no procession from the funeral home, please meet directly at church. The repass will follow the Mass at The Chateau Restaurant, 48 Bay Road, Norton from 12 to 4pm.