Woman who survived 1918 flu, war succumbs to COVID

She lived a life of adventure that spanned two continents. She fell in love with a World War II fighter pilot, barely escaped Europe ahead of Benito Mussolini’s fascists, ground steel for the U.S. war effort and advocated for her disabled daughter in a far less enlightened time. She was, her daughter said, someone who didn’t make a habit of giving up.

And then this month, at age 105, Primetta Giacopini’s life ended the way it began — in a pandemic.

“I think my mother would have been around quite a bit longer” if she hadn’t contracted COVID,” her 61-year-old daughter, Dorene Giacopini, said. “She was a fighter. She had a hard life and her attitude always was ... basically, all Americans who were not around for World War II were basically spoiled brats.”

Primetta Giacopini’s mother, Pasquina Fei, died in Connecticut of the flu in 1918 at age 25. That flu pandemic killed about 675,000 Americans — a death toll eclipsed this month by the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic.

Primetta was 2 years old when her mother died. Her father, a laborer, didn’t want to raise Primetta or her younger sister, Alice. He sent Alice back to Italy, their ancestral homeland, and handed Primetta to an Italian foster family that then relocated to Italy in 1929.

Primetta supported herself by working as a seamstress. Raven-haired with dark eyes and sharp features, she eventually fell in love with an Italian fighter pilot named Vittorio Andriani.

Italy entered World War II in June 1940. In June 1941, Andriani was missing in action; Primetta learned later that he had crashed and died near Malta. While he was missing, she joined a group of strangers making their way out of Italy on a train to Portugal.

In Lisbon she boarded a steamer bound for the United States. She returned to Torrington, bought a Chevrolet sedan for $500 and landed a job at a General Motors plant in Bristol grinding steel to cover ball bearings for the war effort. She met her husband, Umbert “Bert” Giacopini, on the job. They stayed married until he died in 2002.

Primetta gave birth to Dorene in 1960 and received devastating news: The infant had been born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal cord doesn’t fully develop. For the first 50 years of her life, Dorene needed crutches to walk. Worried that Dorene would slip during Connecticut’s winters, the family moved to San Jose in 1975.

This year, during a visit on Sept. 9, Dorene noticed her mother was coughing. She knew her mother’s caretaker had been feeling sick after her husband returned from a wedding in Idaho. All three had been vaccinated. But as she drove away, Dorene guessed that her mother had contracted COVID-19.

“I made sure we said ‘I love you.’” She did the ‘See you later, alligator.’ I think we both said ‘After a while, crocodile,’” Dorene said. “That was the last time I saw her.”

Primetta died two days later, on Sept. 16. She was 105 years old.