Patricia Wills-Abrahams
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by BRETT NORMAN
For 20 years, Patricia Wills-Abrahams guaranteed things ran smoothly at Rockfeller’s Office of Planning and Construction. As office manager, she handled financial statements and contacts with outside contractors and made sure the department’s staff was well provisioned. “In this office, we all do a little bit of everything, and she was really the jack of all trades,” said George Candler, associate vice president, who hired her as his assistant two decades ago. Ms. Wills-Abrahams passed away January 2.
Born June 19, 1940, and raised in Queens, Ms. Wills-Abrahams was a lifelong New Yorker. She had a sharp sense of humor, a direct manner of speaking and canny instincts for working with people. “She had really good judgment about people we dealt with — very clear insight,” Mr. Candler says. She was married to Alan Abrahams, an interior designer who was her second husband, and lived on 34th Street in Manhattan. She brought her own knack for design to her job. “She helped with all sorts of projects,” says Daria Moore, a project manager in the office who worked with Ms. Wills-Abrahams for almost nine years.
Ms. Wills-Abrahams had three daughters and a son from a previous marriage. The department, with a staff of five, “was up to date on all the stories about the families and the grandchildren,” Ms. Moore says. “She was a friend as well as a colleague, and we all miss her,” Mr. Candler says. The funeral service was private. Ms. Wills-Abrahams is survived by her husband, four children and three grandchildren.
