PALM BEACH, Fla. — Sheila Laurianna Palandjian of Palm Beach, Fla., formerly of Belmont, Mass., died peacefully at home from Alzheimer’s Disease, surrounded by loved ones, on August 9, 2025. She was 84.
Sheila was born on May 25, 1941, in Boston, the daughter of Lawrence and Edith Kelly. She grew up in Watertown with her four siblings and pledged to her father, before his death when Sheila was 12, that she would always look after her mother and siblings. She used the thunderous left hook she had learned from her father (a former Golden Gloves champion) to protect her family and worked odd jobs in high school to provide for them.
With beauty to match her toughness, Sheila made local newspaper headline “Watertown Girl Wins State Disabled Veterans Beauty Contest,” and as title holder visited patients at Veterans hospitals while still a junior at Watertown High School.
Before graduating, she met the “tall, dark, handsome” foreign college student Petros Palandjian on a blind date. She soon found herself swept away by his ballroom dancing prowess, by frequent weekend dates crashing ethnic weddings where he played accordion as a member of the Jay Anthony Band, and by his mathematical brain and his family values which she shared. She said “I do” and married him on April 24, 1960.
She then moved to Iran to live with Petros’ family, who at first lamented that he had married an American and inadvertently selected the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day as their wedding date. Sheila needed very little time to learn Armenian language and cooking, as well as the tradition of fortune telling, which involved reading coffee grounds. Everyone wanted their cup read by Sheila.
Sheila came to call this period her “college education,” and she became the beloved daughter her in-laws never had. And under the guidance of her mother-in-law Artzvik, she mastered the skill of allowing Petros to believe he was the decision maker.
