Bethel Park woman celebrates 100th birthday
As Angelina Luisi blew out the candles on her birthday cake, she jokingly said, “I don’t feel a day over 99.”
On July 7, however, the Bethel Park resident turned 100. As Luisi watched fellow residents attempt to break a piñata during her birthday bash at Provincial Bethel Park, an independent senior living community, she credited several reasons for her longevity.
One of 12 siblings growing up in Brookline, she recalled the mad dashes to the dinner table.
“I’d run in there as fast as I could and eat all the desserts,” she said.
Growing more contemplative, Luisi added, “Just lucky, to live to 100.”
Born July 7, 1924, Luisi is the daughter of Pietro and Maria Bonura. She was the 10th of their 12 children and the second to reach the century mark. Her sister, Josie, died two weeks shy of 101.
Luisi said her dad provided for the family and her mother was a great cook – two additional reasons why she has survived to be 100.
“We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. All big meals. Healthy, too,” she said.
Luisi also noted “public school” for her prosperity. Initially, she attended Resurrection Catholic Elementary School but bartered with her father to attend Brookline School, about a mile from her home on Brookline Boulevard.
“I wanted to go there because they had gym (class),” Luisi said. “My dad said, ‘You can go but you had to walk’ and my sister, Josephine, and I did. We walked quite a distance. Up that great big hill and passed the fire house,” she added.
“Mom always told me walking to school, taking gym (classes) and being active were reasons why she was so healthy,” said Luisi’s daughter, Gina. “She was tough. She played sports. Everything. She was a tomboy unlike her other sisters.”
Luisi remembers when her father died. He was 49. Her mother passed at 65.
When asked about her most memorable moment Luisi answered, “When my dad recovered from pneumonia. It eventually got him though.” She also noted how back then parents died at an early age. “Today, you live to be over 100,” she said.
Luisi spent 65 of those years married to her husband, John, who hailed from Canonsburg.
“We met at a picnic at Canonsburg Dam,” Luisi said. “He was the highlight of my life.”
The couple spent their early married years stationed at Camp Lee, now Fort Gregg-Adams, Prince George County, Virginia. Luisi worked in the laundry, tying bundles, while her husband was a barber.
After their tour of duty, they returned to the region and settled in Bethel Park to work and raise a family.
While John owned the barbershop in the South Park Shops until his death at 83, Angelina worked at Red Cap Cleaning, Kaufmann’s Tic Toc Restaurant and the St. Clair Country Club. She was active in the Bethel Park Women’s Club and St. Valentine Church, where she was involved with the Christian Mothers organization, the Altar Society and the Bereavement Choir.
Luisi also reared four children: Joan, 78, who lives in New Jersey; Joyce, who died at 73 in 2020; John, 70, who resides in Florida, and Gina, 67.
Thirteen years ago, when her husband died, Luisi moved into the senior living facility, not too far from the house the family built on Sherwood as well as the home in which they later resided on Broad Street.
“I love it here,” she said. “I’m comfortable. My kids are always around me. I never had a day that I didn’t like it.”
Some 100 residents and staff attended the birthday party that featured a reading from a book compiled of congratulatory notes from Bethel Park Mayor Jack Allen, Gov. Josh Shapiro and state Rep. Natalie Mihalek. Luisi also received a certificate from Smucker’s, which sponsors a segment on “The Today Show” recognizing significant birthday milestones.
“It was a nice party,” Luisi said. “When you have family and friends all together, it’s a wonderful time.
“So, take care of yourself and you can live to be an old lady,” she said in her parting words of advice to the younger ones in the crowd.