SIMSBURY, CONN. — Noel Olivieri, whose 22-year-old marketing services firm Olivieri Communication Inc. focused on the plastics industry, died May 8 at age 49, after a battle with brain cancer.
The Bloomfield, Conn., resident died at McLean Home in Simsbury. He continued working until late March, said a spokeswoman at Olivieri Communication.
Olivieri, an avid fisherman, will be remembered at a memorial service May 20 at the Mystic Shipyard on Essex Street in West Mystic, Conn. at 3 p.m.
He distinguished himself in the way he treated people, according to those with whom he worked.
Allan Bean, an industrial copywriter in Connecticut, has known Olivieri since the early 1970s. Bean's three-page biography on him starts out: ``Noel Olivieri was fun. To work for, to talk with, to listen to, to be around. His smile, laugh, inner merriment and bright outlook were contagious. His family, colleagues, clients and friends loved him, for he had that rarest of traits. Noel made you feel that he was delighted to be with you. And he made you feel witty.''
Olivieri earned a bachelor's degree in public relations in 1971 from the Boston University School of Public Communication. He worked for an ad agency for five years, then started his firm in 1976.
One major client is Polymer Systems Inc., an auxiliary equipment maker in Berlin, Conn.
``One of the outstanding features I always remembered was, he always wanted more than a business relationship,'' said President Josef Holthoff. ``The people he did business with, they were more than clients and customers. It was very important to him that it was more than a business relationship.''
Toby Royal called him a ``straight shooter.'' Royal worked with Olivieri for nine years while she was manager of marketing communications at Werner & Pfleiderer Corp. in Ramsey, N.J.
``He was very human and it was not just business. We talked about our families, we talked about our problems. He was a truly decent human being, for a business that a lot of time is kind of `slick,''' said Royal, who retired in March from W&P.
Survivors include his wife, Judy, and his daughters Lora April Olivieri and Lisa Noelle Olivieri, of Bloomfield.
Donations can be made to St. Francis Hospital Cancer Center in Hartford, Conn., or the McLean Home in Simsbury.
