Estella Clasen, ballroom dancer, retired teacher from Bellport, dies at 74

She ran until she couldn’t. And then she danced.

And while Bellport’s Estella Clasen won multiple awards and accolades in both disciplines, her greatest success, according to her husband and friends, was as an example of someone living life full-out, even during the two years she fought pancreatic cancer.

"The last trip we made was to Europe in September," said her husband, Bob Clasen. "We did a cruise to Spain and England. We walked around Stonehenge. We walked through Barcelona. And I broke down crying one day in England, during dinner at a restaurant. She finally looked at me and said, ‘Would you stop the waterworks?’ "

Estella Clasen died Jan. 8 at her home. She was 74.

Clasen's friend of more than 20 years, Carolyn Musmacher, of Mount Sinai, described her as "bubbly, effervescent, very benevolent and gracious."

"She was very soft-spoken," Musmacher added. "I never really heard her speak loud to anyone at all. And she and Bob had a great relationship. You could just see it when they were on the dance floor."

That would be at places like Dance City in Medford, the American Legion in Sayville, or the USA Dance National DanceSport Championships, where they would be finalists in the ballroom-dance seniors division. The couple, Estella Clasen wrote in a 2020 Newsday guest column, competed in " 'American rhythm’ (cha-cha, rumba, swing, bolero and mambo) and in ‘smooth dances,’ including the waltz, tango, fox-trot and Viennese waltz. We especially enjoy doing showcases in which we can pick our own music and incorporate tricks into our routines."

Before taking up competitive dance, the former high school cheerleader ran 10K and half-marathon races all over Long Island, as well as nationally and internationally, and spent 40 years as a leading member of the Bohemia Track Club. Clasen won her women’s age category in many races, and her local first-place finishes included the 1998 Patrick Flanagan 5K Memorial Run and the 2000 MacArthur Airport 8K. She ran the New York City Marathon in 1998, Bob Clasen told Newsday.

Knee injuries eventually forced her to end competitive running.

Born Feb. 5, 1950, in New York City, one of two children of immigrants Alberto Juan Frankin, a chef from Peru, and Jovina Coccia Frankin, a homemaker from Italy, Estella Frankin at age 2 moved with her family to Shirley. She graduated from William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach in 1968, and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in physical education at SUNY Cortland.

While working as a physical education teacher in the Central Islip Union Free School District, from which she retired in 2005 after 33 years, Clasen completed a master’s degree at Adelphi University in Garden City.

Her first marriage ended in divorce. After settling in Bayport, she married Bob Clasen, an attorney, on Aug. 18, 1990, on the Bay Mist, a partyboat that ran out of Patchogue.

Another passion of Clasen's was the National Circus Project, a Westbury-based nonprofit that teaches children circus skills. At Central Islip’s Charles A. Mulligan Elementary School, one of more than 100 participating schools, Bob Clasen said: "She would teach them things like juggling. She always liked that, helping kids."

The couple, patrons of the arts, donated to organizations including the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, and in 2000 danced together onstage at the BroadHollow Theatre in Bethpage in a community production of Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim’s "Do I Hear a Waltz?"

In addition to her husband, Clasen is survived by 19 nieces and nephews and 25 grandnieces and grandnephews. A brother, Ronald Frankin, predeceased her. A celebration of Clasen's life was held Sunday at Raynor & D’Andrea Funeral Home in Bayport, followed by a chapel service there the next day. She is interred at Blue Point Cemetery.