Beloved, still working at 100 Family surrounds cook at centennial party Wednesday, May 21, 2008 By Kathleen Moore (Contact) Gazette Reporter
Theresa Briggs of Schenectady stands with her nephew Lou Riccitello in the kitchen of his restaurant on Sunday.
SCHENECTADY — Making it to 100 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Theresa Briggs has seen her husband and every one of her siblings die. She struggles to hear and had to give up her car keys. But unlike many people a generation younger, she is still working, still living in her own house and still surrounded by friends and family. As she celebrated her centennial on Tuesday, she said she’s focusing on the positives in her life despite the recent challenges of this past year, in which her age finally caught up with her. An illness last year left her memory fogged and forced her to give up her driver’s license at age 99. Even that blow has a bright side. “I can’t drive — but I have lots of friends who drive me,” she said. Every day, someone picks her up at her house and drives her to Riccitello’s Restaurant on Foster Avenue, run by her nephew Lewis Riccitello. Though it’s difficult for her to get around now, she isn’t giving in. She chats with the customers, helps the servers and even tries to direct Riccitello as he makes his trademark sauces. She still won’t let him make her pepper biscuits, a hard Italian cookie that Riccitello’s customers gobble up by the handful. She bakes them every week for him. Customers and employees at Riccitello’s have volunteered to serve as Briggs’ chauffeur, taking her to the hairdresser, the grocery store and anywhere else she desires. One customer, Cynthia DaMassa of Scotia, said she even drives to Briggs’ house to take her cruising through the neighborhood while her special education students are in therapy each afternoon. Other customers bring her pepper biscuit ingredients to her house so she can make them at home. The baking job, which she picked up after retiring as a shirt presser at the Cluett & Peabody factory in Troy, is the secret to her long life, she said. “I worked all my life. I come down here to help the girls who work here and at the same time I like being around my family,” she said. She still lives alone, but Riccitello has become her primary caretaker. Rather than tell her what she can’t do, he’s offered to do the things she doesn’t want to do. “I don’t have to cook. Lewis takes care of me in every way. I just make some of the fancy things,” she said happily. FAMILY MATTERS She was delighted Tuesday when she saw all the family members who had traveled to Schenectady to celebrate her birthday. Even relatives of her late husband, Charlie, arrived. “I’m so happy. I didn’t think I’d see any of Charlie’s family here,” she said. After her illness last year, she was so frightened by her foggy memory that she begged Riccitello to get Charlie’s relatives to visit. “I didn’t want to forget Charlie’s family,” she said. And she hasn’t — although it was touch-and-go for a while. Charlie’s niece, Ellen Desotell, who will turn 80 next week, was dismayed when she first introduced herself to Briggs at the beginning of Tuesday’s party. “She said hello and I knew she didn’t know me,” Desotell said. “But I got right up in her face and she said, ‘Oh! It’s you! You live in Saratoga, where have you been? I used to see you every day!’ ” Desotell has also stopped driving — two full decades before her aunt — and now relies on her daughter for transportation. Visiting Schenectady isn’t easy. But the two partially deaf women happily sat together and shouted in each other’s ears, Desotell trying to relay other visitors’ comments even though she couldn’t quite hear them herself. Briggs was delighted. “I’m so happy you’re here,” she said, over and over. MANY LOSSES Long life has come with a price — Briggs buried all seven of her sisters and her brother, all of whom were younger than her. “I’m the last one. My sisters are gone, my brother. I had a good man, and he’s gone. All of them are gone now,” she said sadly. As the eldest daughter of Italian immigrants, she helped raise the family. She was the last to get married, marrying so late in life that she couldn’t have children. But her siblings provided her with 30 nieces and nephews. “So she kind of mothered us all,” said niece Donna Locker, who came up from Pennsylvania for the historic birthday. “She was like a mother to all of us.” Locker’s mother — Briggs’ sister — died when Locker was 23 and her youngest brother was 15. Briggs stepped in at once to fulfill all the roles of a mother. “She came to help me with the birth of my children,” Locker said. “When we come visit, we stay in her house. Her home is open to everybody. She just took care of everybody.” Now they’re eager to take care of her, although Riccitello said she’s hardly a burden. He loved her company long before her age made it difficult for her to get out on her own. “We just have a great time,” he said. “We kind of reminisce back here about the old days.” He added that as her nieces and nephews age, they don’t dare complain about the aches and losses of elderly life. “Even though she’s 100, you’ll never hear a complaint from her,” he said. “And because of that, nobody else complains either. If she can get through it, so can we.”
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