Tammy Tisa remembered

Tisa was put to rest Wednesday at the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Cedarville following a bout with metastatic breast cancer. She was 55 years old.

“What everyone has put forth in her honor is beyond comprehension,” Tisa’s longtime husband John Tisa said.

Her two viewings at Padgett Funeral Home on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning drew scores of family, friends and co-workers, many of whom described her as “a true friend” and said she “did a lot of great service” to the community.

“We all knew her a long time and she will truly be missed,” Fairton Fire and Rescue Chief Steve Bateman said. “She helped out for three years. She was a great help to us, and definitely a friend.”

“She was like a second mother,” Tricia Hepner-Simpkins said.

Tisa helped Hepner-Simpkins get her first job, and from that time on, she was a friend to the family.

“She was just the type of person that if you knew her, you loved her,” Patti Welden said. “She was a good friend and we loved her.”

Appropriately, Tisa was known as “Momma T” among her colleagues.

“We loved her very much and we will truly miss her,” Millville Rescue Squad Chief John Redden said at Tisa’s viewing Wednesday morning. “She meant so much to the Millville Rescue Squad.”

Tisa’s liturgy was held at St. Teresa of Avila Church. It was there that John Tisa had the opportunity to express his feelings to all his late wife’s family and friends.

“My heart will heal, but will never be whole again,” Tisa said. “We were together for 40 years. It was 40 years of laughter, forgiveness and unconditional love. ... From the beginning, I knew I had found something special.”

The two met and forged a love brought that much closer by their mutual love of dancing.
“We did indeed live the dream. We climbed the mountain, swam the ocean and we danced,” Tisa said.

They had a son together, and named him Michael.

Tisa graduated from Bridgeton High School in 1973, and worked with the Prudential before joining her husband as a volunteer with the EMS.

“She was never one to just join, she had to lead,” Tisa said. “She had to strive to be the best and inspire others to do the same.”

She worked with Millville Rescue Squad for 10 years, and was the EMS coordinator for Cumberland County. She was also an assistant chief with Lawrence Township EMS, and her helmet was proudly on display, right by her side the entire day on Wednesday.

After the liturgy, Tisa was taken for one last ride by her home in Cedarville, and by the Lawrence Township EMS before arriving at the cemetery. Before she was lowered into the ground, she received her last call over the scanner from the county, Millville and Lawrence Township.

“The lives and hearts that she touched will forever be inspired to follow in her footsteps,” Tisa said. “ ... I could have lived without the pain of losing her, but I could not have lived without the dance.”