Julie Wilczek, longtime Moriches Bay diner server who 'never got an order wrong,' dies at 56

She was among the best at what she did.

And what Julie Wilczek did was make you feel like family during all her 28 years of serving meals at the Moriches Bay Diner in Moriches.

"My phone's been ringing off the hook with everybody we ever knew," said longtime diner manager Michael Harney, days after Wilczek died Sept. 10 at her home in Shirley at the age of 56. "She was such a loving, caring, beautiful person. The whole community loved her."

"I can't believe the outpouring from people I didn't even know existed," marveled Wilczek’s daughter, Erica Valsamis, of Sound Beach. "Childhood friends I haven't spoken to since I was 8 have reached out to say, ‘I heard about your mom.’ "

Wilczek, wrote one customer on the diner’s Facebook page, was "always a ray of sunshine. Never writing things down and always getting it perfect. ... [She] made me feel like part of the diner family." Agreed another, "She never got an order wrong no matter how complicated it was, without writing anything down."

"She had an amazing memory," Valsamis concurred. "And she could do long division in her head in seconds. It was ridiculous."

A comforting, multigenerational presence in her nearly three decades at the Moriches Bay, "She was part of the fabric of the diner," said owner Spiro Nikolopoulos. "She saw people dating, get married, have children, and then the children would come in and they're dating. We loved her. We're going to miss her tremendously."

The second of four children of electrician Ronald Lask and nail technician Susan Slater Lask, Juliette Christine Lask was born Sept. 23, 1967, in East Meadow and raised in Levittown, graduating from that hamlet’s Island Trees High School in 1985.

Aspiring to channel her artistic abilities toward a career in architecture, she briefly attended college before dropping out to have son Zachary with her husband, Richard Wilczek. The couple divorced in the mid-1990s. Julie Wilczek and Harney then lived together for 15 years before splitting up, raising Zachary and Erica, who considers Harney her stepfather.

Despite working 12-hour shifts from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., Julie Wilczek "would come on our field trips at school and would always come to our classrooms as one of the parent volunteers," said her daughter.

Getting the kids off to school after coming home from work, "She was usually sleeping when we got back, and then she would wake up and get ready and my dad would come or my stepdad would be there, and then she would leave and do the overnight shift."

Her talent for art expressed itself in the diner’s windows each holiday season, said Nikolopoulos. "All the diners would have a generic painting on the window, like a big ribbon or something. She freehand painted the windows — gingerbread men, snowmen" and such little touches as his children’s names on fireplace stockings. "Her artwork was phenomenal."

"Oh, yeah. It was beautiful," Valsamis said of Wilczek’s holiday window art. "People would be talking about it and I'd be, like, ‘That's my mom.’ "

She described her mother as "very loud and funny — you knew she was there the second she walked into a room," Valsamis said Wilczek also was fearless. "She went skydiving for her 40th birthday. She jumped out of a plane! And she loved all the big roller coasters."

Wilczek also loved Broadway, attending numerous musicals with Valsamis. “ 'Waitress’ actually was one of the recent shows we saw," the daughter added appreciatively.

Wilczek, who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), died unexpectedly but peacefully while sunbathing in her backyard, said Valsamis. No official cause of death has yet been determined. Wilczek had done her regular diner shift, by now morning and lunch, the day before her death, and visited her 3½-year-old granddaughter, Emilia Juliette, after work.

"My daughter was the absolute light of my mother's life," Valsamis said. "She would say, ‘You're cool, Erica. But this little girl, she's my best friend.’ "

In addition to Harney, Valsamis and Emilia, Wilczek is survived by her son, of Patchogue; by her sister, Veronica Steinmann, of Seaford; by her father and her two other siblings, Jacqueline Esposito and Jeremy Lask, all of Arizona; and by her partner of 13 years, Kenneth Needham.

A visitation and service was held Monday at O.B. Davis Funeral Homes in Miller Place.