Dancer formerly of Arlington Heights dies of coronavirus complications

Award-winning ballroom dancer and longtime Arlington Heights resident Anne P. Hamilton died last month from COVID-19 complications.

She was 92.

Hamilton, most recently of Rockford, lived in Arlington Heights from the mid-1980s until 2018. She died Nov. 22, a week after her ex-husband Michael Addante passed away. The couple, who were divorced, had started seeing each other again several years before their deaths, according to their son Steve Addante.

A Tennessee native, Hamilton grew up on a farm and moved to Chicago after high school. She met Addante while taking ballroom dance lessons. The couple began dancing together semiprofessionally - competing in the waltz, fox trot and rhumba - in 1951 and married in 1954, said Steve Addante, one of their four children.

"They loved (dancing) and got really good at it," said Addante of this parents, whose many ribbons and trophies include a first place finish in the Harvest Moon Festival at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom.

The couple encouraged their children to dance, but Addante says that particular skill skipped a generation.

Daughter, dancer, talented cook, wife, mom, grandmother and great-grandmother, Hamilton enjoyed all her roles but especially those that allowed her to interact with children.

"She loved kids til the day she died," Addante said. "If we took her out for coffee and there was child and a mom she wanted to walk over and say hello. That was her favorite role in life."

Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, private family services were held on Dec. 11 with the assistance of Grace Funeral & Cremation Services in Rockford.