NORWICH – The contributions and careers of longtime Holy Family School teachers Helen Capaccio and Val Dragoon will be celebrated at 6 p.m. tomorrow at a picnic-style dinner at St. Bartholomew’s Parish Center’s pavilion, East Main St., Norwich.

The public is invited to honor Capaccio, who is retiring after 22 years of teaching the first grade, and Dragoon, who is relocating to Cincinnati, Ohio after teaching art at Holy Family School for 17 years.

School principal Eugene Chilion said the two have been “cornerstones” of the education program at Holy Family “for a long, long time” and “are certainly going to be missed.”

“We may replace them physically, but all of the little things that they did to help children and encourage them to do their best and challenge them, that’s what’s really going to be missed,” he said yesterday.

Originally from Queens, Capaccio received her education degree and completed graduate work in counseling at Oneonta State College. She was a 4th grade teacher in Franklin, completed a counseling internship in Gloversville, was a middle and high school counselor in Greene, and a medical social worker at the Oxford Veterans’ Home. Prior to coming to Holy Family, she was a stay-at-home mother to her three children.

Capaccio sings in the St. Paul’s Folk group, is a St. Paul’s Eucharist minister and a volunteer at the Northeastern Classic Car Museum. In her retirement, she said she plans to join the Norwich Family YMCA and to continue the hobbies she loves: sewing, crocheting, singing and gardening.

“Holy Family is a warm, welcoming, nurturing ... just generally a really wonderful place to work. The teachers, the administration, the staff ... everybody is very caring. They’re like a family, and the kids are too. I just have remarkable bonds with the children, even after they’ve left,” she said.