Spanish flu and World War II survivor falls to Covid
Life began and ended with pandemics for centenarian Primetta
She lived a life of adventure that spanned two continents. She fell in love with a Second World War fighter pilot, barely escaped Europe ahead of Benito Mussolini’s fascists, ground steel for the US 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 Spanish flu in 1918 at age 25. That pandemic killed about 675,000 Americans - a death toll eclipsed this month by the 202021 coronavirus pandemic. Primetta was two when her mother died. Her father, a labourer, 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. She eventually fell in love with an Italian fighter pilot named Vittorio Andriani.
Italy entered the Second World War 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 Mussolini’s Italy on a train to Portugal.
This year, during a visit on Sept. 9, Dorene noticed her mother was coughing. Her mother’s caretaker had been feeling sick after her husband returned from a wedding in Idaho. As she drove away, Dorene guessed 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.”