War bride uprooted twice during her life
Antonietta Costa was a trailblazer who spent her life defying expectations.
Despite receiving only an elementary school education in her hometown of Maierato, in the Calabria region of Italy, Mrs. Costa built a life in Pittsburgh and ran successful businesses in both the old country and the new.
With no medical training, she overcame steep odds in the care and rehabilitation of her infant grandson, who doctors warned would never walk or live a normal life.
They were proved wrong by the clever Mrs. Costa, who also defied medical professionals when she survived a battle with COVID19, pneumonia and sepsis last year so she could enjoy one final Christmas with her family.
“They didn’t know my mother,” said her son Dr. Frank Costa, a urological surgeon from O’Hara. “She was a remarkable woman.”
Mrs. Costa, of Morningside, died Saturday of heart disease. She was 94.
Growing up, she and her family survived the German invasion and occupation of Italy during World War II.
“The Nazis took ownership of anything they wanted. We were afraid of them, especially the young women,” Mrs. Costa said in an interview in 2016 with the Collective Legacy Project, an organization that collects and preserves life stories of local seniors.
Most of the young women in her town were terrified after hearing stories of young girls being kidnapped by German soldiers and neighbors who were forced to billet them in their homes, said Mrs. Costa in the video, which can be viewed here: http://www.collectivelegacyproject.
By contrast, she said,
American soldiers treated them with deference and respect.
Her father, originally a home builder and Mussolini supporter, bought a cafe and gelato shop during the war. He pulled his daughter out of school after fifth grade, despite a rare recommendation from her school that Mrs. Costa should continue her education.
Instead, she went to work at the family business, where her father taught family members how to shoot a pistol. He converted a storage pit in the floor of the shop into a place to hide from the Nazis.
“He said, ‘If the Germans come at some point and you can’t save yourselves, begin to shoot,’ ” Mrs. Costa recalled.
Shrapnel from a German bomb broke the glass in the family home, and they were forced to wear wooden shoes because of wartime shortages, but the family found ways to adapt, including making black-market bread for the community in wood-fired ovens with grain that farmers secretly withheld.
In their two- bedroom home, Mrs. Costa and two of her sisters slept in a single bed with three other girls taken in by her family.
“Three went to the foot and three went to the head of the bed to sleep at night,” she said in the interview.
After the war, Mrs. Costa took over operations at the shop until she was introduced to her future husband, Pittsburgher Joseph Costa, when he visited his parents, who were her neighbors.
“People started coming over from America trying to find marriage, people whose parents lived in my town,” explained Mrs. Costa, who was close to her in-laws throughout her life. “Each one was trying to find a beautiful girl — a good girl — to bring to America. I was an honest and religious girl — a worker.”
Mr. Costa returned to Italy after four years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, fighting in the South Pacific during World War II.
Though they grew up neighbors, Mr. Costa left for America when he was 16 and Ms. LoPardo — as she was then — was only 10 years old and had no recollection of him.
The couple married in 1951 and settled in East Liberty before moving to Morningside. A cobbler by trade, Mr. Costa died in 2003.
With her considerable skills as a seamstress who could make anything, from a man’s suit to a First Communion dress with the barest of scraps, Mrs. Costa worked in department stores before raising a family.
When Dr. Costa was entering medical school in 1975, he purchased Venice Pizza in Garfield and his parents stepped in to help run the business. Eventually he turned the business over to them.
“My mom helped me take this pizza shop to the next level,” he said. “We worked all day, every day. She just intuitively knew what to do — and people loved her.”
With Mrs. Costa’s homemade recipes and prowess in the kitchen, the business became so profitable over the next 18 years that it helped to put Dr. Costa and his sisters through school.
Mrs. Costa, who became a U.S. citizen in 1985, also kept a vegetable and flower garden, replete with tomatoes, squash, peppers and even a fig tree.
She loved Sunday dinners with her family, including her daughters, Dr. Maria Greco, a retired radiologist from Fox Chapel, and Antoniette Avalli, a Sewickley pharmacist, along with her 15 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
When her youngest child, labor lawyer Rosalia “Lilly” Costa-Clarke, died suddenly of cardiac arrest just two weeks before she was expected to give birth to a son, the grief-stricken Mrs. Costa stepped in to help care for her grandson, who was deprived of oxygen during an emergency delivery in the hospital.
“She uprooted her life 17 years ago — she was almost 80 — but she moved to Philadelphia to nurse this baby, who doctors said would never be normal,” said Dr. Costa, who credited his mother with coming up with her own rehabilitation routine to help the child learn muscle movements and grow stronger. “It truly is a miracle, and we attribute it to the love and devotion and tremendous spirit of my mother. Now he has a happy, normal life.”
A devout Catholic, Mrs. Costa relied on her faith to get her through the most trying times.
“I say all the time, when I die, I want my rosary in my hands. That’s it,” she said at the conclusion of the 2016 recording, for the entirety of which she clutched a string of rosary beads.
“Yes, she had her rosary in her hands and she had rosaries in her casket,” her son said. “She was an incredible woman who sacrificed everything for us.”
She also is survived by another son, Alfonso.
Her funeral was Wednesday. The family suggests remembrances to St Jude/St. Raphael Parish, 1154 Chislett St., Pittsburgh, PA 15206.