DeDe and Tony proved love never dies
It figured that the biggest laughs and warmest memories at DeDe Marmo’s funeral were centered on her late husband, Tony, whom their surrogate son and eulogist, former state Senate President Bobby Travaglini, correctly likened to a bull in a china shop.
Indeed, Tony was capable of starting a riot at a high Mass while DeDe, a lady of consummate grace and dignity, was just about the gentlest soul anyone in attendance had ever met.
The only thing they appeared to have in common was a love for one another that radiated 60 years until he died in 2008.
She was from Orient Heights and he came from Bennington Street in East Boston.
“We met when she moved to Day Square,” he’d recall, as if savoring a scene from a movie. “I was playing stickball when she walked by with her dog. That’s how it started.”
Tony would become a neighborhood legend on that side of the water, not above riding on a car roof, bullhorn in hand, drumming up support for a candidate.
When Ed Brooke first ran for statewide office in 1960 it was Tony who personally escorted him throughout East Boston, assuring everyone they met that this black guy from Roxbury was a terrific guy as well.
When Eddie King was governor he could be found almost every Friday night at the Marmos’ unpretentious home where Tony held court and DeDe served delicious Italian meals, often rolling her eyes in response to the calamitous repartee of this irascible raconteur who was clearly the love of her life.
Even after a laryngectomy robbed her of her ability to speak, DeDe’s love for Tony would be eloquently expressed in a smile, a glance, a playful poke.
Though she never sought individual attention, she was moved to tears the day another surrogate son who’s a justice of the peace told of how he shared the beauty of their marriage with young couples about to be wed.
And he would do so, he explained, in Tony’s own words.
When he was 86, about to be released from Mass. General Hospital back in 2004, Tony poured out his heart.
“When going home to your wife is the best medicine of all,” he said, “you’re a damn lucky guy. That’s me, even though I have emphysema, and my knees are gone, and I’m arthritic.
“It’s funny how it works. As years go by your eyesight fails, your hair disappears, yet there’s still this feeling of attraction and compassion for each other; it goes way beyond romance to actually being so dependent on one another that without DeDe, well, I wouldn’t want to live.
“I have lung disease, so I like the air dry. But because of her throat she needs moisture in the air. What are you going to do? Somehow we work it out.
“We’ve slept together for 56 years. One reason, of course, is that we’ve always been so much in love. But now it’s more like we’re hanging on to each for safety, for sustaining life, for everything. “I really am a lucky guy.” Three day ago, at 94, DeDe was buried at Tony’s side, the only place she ever wanted to be.
Goodbye, dear friend, and God bless.