Although she lives near the West Orange border, Michele Dippold Connolly of Herbert Terrace is Livingston to the core. Born in Basking Ridge, she moved to Livingston with her family at the age of five, and has lived here ever since.
When they first moved to town, the Dippolds lived on Walnut Street, and Michele attended Squiertown School. They later moved to East McClellan Avenue, and she attended Harrison School before moving on to Heritage Middle School and then Livingston High School.
Her favorite thing about living in Livingston, she says, was growing up with close friends in her neighborhood. She and her friends spent a lot of time riding bikes, playing kickball, and "hanging out." In October, they would all go trick-or-treating together, and in the summer, they would walk to Northland Pool every day. "That was the most fun," she reflects.
It was this close-knit community of family and friends that has kept here in town all these years.
Michele works at Morristown Medical Center as patient liaison in the Inpatient Oncology Unit. It's a tough and demanding, but immensely rewarding job, she says. Service must run in the family. Her sister, Stefani Banzhaf, also works at Morristown Medical Center, where she is the patient navigator at the Valve Center at the hospital's Gagnon Cardiovascular Institute. Their brother, Anthony Dippold, is a retired Livingston police officer.
Her husband, Craig Connolly, is a former township employee who served as foreman of the Water Division of the Department of Public Works for 17 years, and continues to serve as a volunteer firefighter with the Livingston Fire Department, as he has for the past 18 years.
Michele has two sons, Luke, 18, who will be graduating from Livingston High School this month, and Ben, 16, a sophomore. The family also shares their home with three rescue dogs: an eight year old pitbull/Rottweiler mix named Nina (who had been running loose in the dead of winter until they managed to round her up on Northfield Road); a six year old beagle/hound mix named Holly; and 3½ year old boxer/Labrador mix named Chip.
Like her family members, Michele is no stranger to hard work in the service of others.
She has worked in the medical field for 24 years. For the first 13 of those years, she worked in plastic surgery, with mastectomy and breast cancer patients. She has been the patient liaison on the oncology unit at Morristown Medical Center ...
