Former Matawan Pastor to be Memorialized on Sunday

A former Matawan pastor who volunteered extensively at Ground Zero in Manhattan after 9/11 will be celebrated in a memorial service at Trinity Episcopal Church Sunday.

The Rev. Denise P. Mantell, who died July 23, at the age of 67, was Trinity’s Rector for 10 years, before retiring in 2009. The church, on Ryers Lane in Matawan, has invited community members of all denominations to Sunday’s 9 a.m. memorial mass, which will be held in place of Trinity’s regularly scheduled 8 and 10 a.m. services. 

Well known in Matawan for her outreach to the wider community, Rev. Mantell was named Citizen of the Year there in 2003, Paul Harris Fellow of the Matawan Rotary Club in 2002, and a Temple Beth Shalom Woman of Valor in 2002. She was named to the Matawan Regional High School Hall of Fame in 2003.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Rev. Mantell was among the first to volunteer at Ground Zero, spending hundreds of hours providing pastoral care and support at St. Paul’s Chapel on West Broadway and the mobile morgue site nearby. Like many of those she served with there, she is believed to have developed lung cancer from exposure to dust at the site.

Rev. Mantell, who was born in Flushing, N.Y., attended The Mary Louis Academy, then Queens College, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978. She earned a Masters of Divinity from General Theological Seminary, in New York City, in 1982. After working at several churches in New York and New Jersey, she was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in 1985 and made Associate Rector of St. Paul's Church in Morris Plains. In 1988 she became Rector of The Church of Our Merciful Savior, in Penns Grove. In 1999 she became Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Matawan before retiring to live with her family in Delaware in 2009.

She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Kim and Neil Carlson, grandchildren Alex and Matthew Carlson, former husband Bob Mantell, brothers and sister Lawrence and Daniel Pariseau and Andree Monroe, and their children. She was predeceased by her son Dorian.