Jennie Carolina Mastromarino

(June 8, 1928–April 4, 2019)

Editor’s note: “Love, Sai, sai, sai,” was the Italian phrase with which Henry signed many of his cards and letters to Jennie over the years. Colloquially it means “Always, always, always.” If any readers have corrections or any details and stories to share, please e-mail markamastro@gmail.com

Life, with a capital L, despite all its challenges, trials, pains, and disappointments, in the end is worth celebrating. It is the most basic and greatest gift, and what each and every human being shares, has shared, and will share. Even if at the edges of its beginning and end there might be some momentary discomfort and even some difficulty defining exactly when it begins and when it ends, life is glorious at its core. And beautiful.

The evidence of this appears in the eight billion unique lives, with a lower-case el, currently sharing our home planet. There is one particular beautiful life to be celebrated as it has come to its earthly end, even though its spirit will live forever.

That life began almost a century ago and was blessed with the lyrical name of Giovannina Carolina Frangioni. Her Italian heritage blessed her with certain values that guided her life and redounded to the benefit of many. These included a deep religious faith, the foundation of family, the centrality of food and sociability, and a certain persistence, actually, a stubbornness. Although that beautiful Italian name was Americanized to Jennie Carol and soon extended with an equally poetic surname, the genetic and early life influences forever marked Giovannina Carolina Frangioni Mastromarino.

That name was a mouthful, and the woman was a handful. Born on June 8, 1928, to Giovanni and Maria Frangioni into an Italian immigrant family that had settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she grew up on Warren Street between mid-Cambridge and East Cambridge. The family consisted of a strong patriarch, an equally strong matriarch, and two older brothers, Silviano and Spartaco, and a sister, Theresa, to whom she remained close her whole life. Jennie learned early on where true power lies. When forbidden by her socialist-leaning father to attend Mass (remember she was born less than a year after the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by the state of Massachusetts in Charleston State Prison, only a mile or so away), she apparently defied him and snuck out. When the family opened a grocery shop with money from a settlement given her father’s brother who lost an arm in an industrial accident, she was expected to help out as well as attend school.

She loved school and the freedom and friends it provided. Her classmates gently teased her with the name of “Jennie Greens” referring to her sandwiches of escarole and spinach, favorite Italian vegetables, but she was popular and smart. Undoubtedly, these qualities, as well as the fact that she was Italian, mature for her years, and quite a looker, were what initially attracted a handsome young man from a large Italian family from Revere. When introduced to each other by his sisters, Jennie and Henry knew that it was to be Jennie and Henry with a capital AND. Forever. Love, Sai, Sai, Sai.

Demonstrating the limits of patriarchal power in reality, Jennie’s father signed the permission form for the marriage license. When the clerk said how he could consent to that since she was so young, he replied with a shrug, “They’re in love.” Love, Sai, Sai, Sai.

After Henry returned from the China-Burma-India Theater and was honorably discharged from the United States Army Air Corps, Henry and Jennie were married in St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church at the corner of Cambridge and Fourth streets in Cambridge, on June 16, 1946, by Reverend Augustine Ciuffo. The newlyweds soon settled in the suburb of Melrose north of Boston, about equidistant from Revere and Cambridge. At first they lived in an apartment building built and owned by Henry’s father, which soon became too small as three daughters and three sons extended their couple-hood into a family: Susan (1949), Joseph (1954), Dayna (1956), John (1960), Mark (1961), and Gina (1965). None of them ever heard a word of complaint or resentment about that imposition. Love, Sai, Sai, Sai.

On the contrary, Jenny and Henry’s children were nurtured and treated with selfless devotion and were never wanting. They grew into a family one learning experience at a time, an ongoing work. As a parent, Jennie could model lessons she had learned by observing her own mother’s work. Of course, part of that involved naturally incorporating her mother’s recipes into daily menus. Thank God.

Following the trajectory of most Italian immigrants, the family moved farther from the original urban core and inner suburbs that their parents had called home, as postwar prosperity welcomed them into the emerging white middle class. Jennie and Henry moved the family three times, each time at greater distances. The first, from 32 to 58 Tappan Street in Melrose was the easiest, and represented the first aspiration of the American dream: to become independent homeowners. This new home eventually had an in-ground pool in the backyard and was surrounded by other children or grandchildren of immigrants chasing success. The names of friends and neighbors included the Spezzaferris, Ardagnas, Napolitanos, Johansons, Wongs, Gormans, and Sullivans.

The second move was less than forty miles farther north, just over the state line of New Hampshire, where the newlyweds had honeymooned for two weeks in Glen in 1946 and to which they had occasionally returned on family vacations, such as to the “Allen ‘A’ Resort,” on Lake Wentworth in Wolfeboro, N.H. (Gloucester, Mass., was also a memorable vacation week, during the abbreviated boat years). Jennie continued to center her life on the children in their new home in Londonderry, N.H., with a larger yard and soon another in-ground pool (she owned two pools, but apparently never learned how to swim).

Here, the kids grew older and into adulthood, secure and happy. Only as they began to move out and/or leave for college (another propellant into the rising middle class) was Jennie able to start reengaging with her own self-identity and developing talents and skills beyond the domestic sphere. She became active in local community musical and dance productions. She was an active member of the Londonderry Women’s Club. Her native intelligence, self-control, and compassion and generosity continued to bless her husband and children, as well as anybody who entered her home, and all those within her social sphere and faith community (St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Derry, N.H.), and beyond. She gifted to her children and grandchildren her love of sewing and cooking and for music and dancing and acting. Love, tolerance, and compromise were also their general inheritance.

Beyond, it should be stated here, includes beyond humanity. The Mastromarino family from the very beginning shared their home with numerous other companions, including a couple of rabbits (Pete and Repeat in Melrose, not a successful experiment), but mostly of the canine persuasion: Bambi, Tammy, Kim, Starbuck (long before the brand), Tanya, KimTwo, Buck, and, of course, Lucy. There were never any cats. If Jennie ever even considered owning one (which she probably didn’t, after the pie episode with her mother’s cat, Poochie), she knew Henry would never have consented. And Jennie knew how to choose her battles.

The third and last family relocation, across the country, made the family a bicoastal one and opened up new vistas and opportunities for Jennie to shine in. Whether or not that decision was a battle, it was a difficult decision, and she would never have taken the initiative to uproot herself on her own. The challenge was eased by half of the children moving west with their parents, as well as numerous visits of their friends and favorite relatives. Henry and Jennie loved hosting out-of-town visitors, and Jennie truly bloomed under the harsh sun and glaring lights of Las Vegas.

Mothering is a calling that those truly successful at it can never voluntarily lay down, essentially because it is an attitude, a matter of character, an affair of the heart. Jennie entered the workforce in the 1980s, parlaying her sewing skills and love for amateur musical drama and costuming into a successful career as a seamstress out of the home. She served as a wardrobe attendant for the Hilton’s “Moulin Rouge” and the Stardust’s “Lido” and “Enter the Night” shows, dressing up the performers, as well as dressing them down when required (those who felt the frosty gaze of the “Jennie look” will never forget it). Celebrities she worked with included Aki, Charo, Vic Damone, Don Rickles, and Suzanne Somers. She finished her career as head wardrobe for Wayne Newton at the Stardust. What made her most valuable to her colleagues and employers was not her needlework but her character and people skills. Her “dedication, hard work and willingness to help out whenever needed” (all of which can also be applied to her performance as a mother) were recognized by her being awarded the Stardust’s Employee of the Month in December 1998. Mothering her girls was its own reward, but she did not refuse the perks that came with the award, including one paid day off. Nor did she refuse retirement when the opportunity presented itself in the new millennium. She continued to mother others. Even on the Sabbath, a day of rest, she found more kids to nurture and teach, in her Sunday School class at Prince of Peace Church. Thus did she ease into her life as a grandmother and even great grandmother. Love, Sai, Sai, Sai.

And as widow. As Henry’s health declined, Jennie took more and more upon herself, aided by her local children. The love story of Henry and Jennie was not ended on December 4, 1998, when her Henry passed away at the age of seventy-six. Nor was it completely interrupted, as the spiritual bond between them based on undimmed faithfulness and fifty-two and a half years of shared romance and reality, remained strong. As her own health declined after ninety years , the last two decades without the physical comfort of her life partner, Jennie took graduate coursework in patience. When her body finally failed completely, she posthumously earned sainthood and was awarded the MA degree, Mother of All.

It is hard, therefore to feel true sorrow at Jennie’s most recent and permanent relocation, not merely across country, but to an entirely new country, an entirely new world, promised by her Savior and Heavenly Father. We are sad because we cannot be with Henry and Jennie at this moment, because there is no better place to be than in the arms of a loving mother.

But those arms are currently occupied, which deep within makes us all happy. Outwardly, we are sad because we have not yet learned the lessons of selfless love and Christian charity and perfect patience that living with and without Henry taught her (especially patience), and we mourn for ourselves because there are no shortcuts. Full human perfection is attainable only through, and after, a lifetime of faith, hope, and charity. And it is never too late to start.

Let us rejoice in the thoughts of that joyful reunion, and not begrudge Henry and Jennie what it took him and her a joint lifetime of joys and heartbreaks, challenges and celebrations, successes and failures, life and deaths to achieve. Our mother’s arms are finally fully occupied, finally locked in an eternal loving embrace. And if we listen carefully through our sobs, we can hear Henry whisper softly in his Jennie’s ear, “Love, Sai, Sai, Sai.”