Gazebo Dedicated To Longtime Parsippany Mayor Mimi Letts

PARSIPPANY, NJ — Parsippany residents gathered at Veterans Memorial Park Sunday to dedicate the gazebo to the woman who was instrumental in making both the park and the gazebo happen: Mayor Marceil “Mimi” Letts, the city’s first and only female mayor, who led the township from 1994-2005.

Letts, who passed away in 2019, also served as a member of the Planning Board, presidents of the Board of Director of Parsippany’s Senior Citizen Housing Corporation, the Zoning Board of adjustment, the Historical Society, and the Kiwanis Club. She was instrumental in building Veterans Park, the main branch library on Halsey Road, and the Raoul Wallenberg monument.

During the ceremony, Parsippany Mayor Michael Soriano called Letts a “fearless leader who got things done” and said she “invested her heart and soul into Parsippany.”

“There will never be another Mimi Letts,” Soriano said at the start of the ceremony. “Thanks to her passion for improvement, and her steadfast determination, I’m honored to have called her not just a colleague, but a mentor to the end. Parsippany is a far better place because of her leadership, and dedicating this gazebo is long overdue.”

The ceremony was attended by Assemblymember Betty DeCroce, Township Council President Michael dePierro, Township Councilmember Janice McCarthy, and former Parks & Forestry Department Director Joe Jannarone, Sr.

The ceremony featured remarks from Letts’ friends, her sons Howard and Robert, and her husband Howard, who all remembered her as a force of nature who put aside partisan differences to improve the community she loved.

“She didn’t go into politics to become a politician,” said Robert Letts. “This was just the next chapter in her story of helping the town she loved. She was willing to work with anybody – Democrat, Republican, people within the town, neighboring towns – they put politics aside at a time when politics, like today, were very partisan. But they were about getting things done. She was willing to work with anybody to help improve the town for everybody who lived here.”

“She was a true trailblazer and a champion of women’s rights, and she was honest –what you see is what you get,” said her husband Howard Letts. “To my dear wife, partner, friend and lover, you made us all better people, and you will live in our hearts forever.”

Watch the full ceremony below: