The News-Times (Sunday)

‘She was a force of nature’

Connecticu­t woman dies at 105 from COVID-19

- By Liz Hardaway liz.hardaway@hearst.com

On Sept. 16, a woman whose lifetime contained two pandemics and two world wars died from the coronaviru­s at 105.

Her daughter, Dorene Giacopini, 61, said shouldn’t have died; Primetta Giacopini may have had a few years left.

“I can’t believe I have to say my 105-year-old mother died a needless death,” Dorene said. “Because this should not still be happening.”

Primetta’s COVID-19 test results came back positive, and she was admitted to the emergency room Sept. 11. She died five days later at around 10 p.m.

When the coronaviru­s pandemic started, Dorene recalled her mom mentioning how weird it was that there was another pandemic happening in her lifetime. Primetta also couldn’t help but talk about her own mother dying from the last pandemic 103 years prior.

“People don’t believe in science anymore,” she said. In her mother’s generation, “science is what solved problems,” the reason people lived longer and “the reason I lived more than a few days,” Darlene said.

In June, Dorene celebrated her mother’s 105th birthday. Primetta was a card shark, regularly beating people half her age in Shanghai Rummy.

Primetta was born in Torrington on June 9, 1916. She knew first-hand the effects of a pandemic, as the flu killed about 675,000 Americans, including her mother, Pasquina Feia, when Primetta was just 2 years old.

After her mother’s death, Primetta’s father didn’t want to raise her nor her younger

sister. Primetta was given to a couple in Torrington while her sister lived in Italy. At age 13, Primetta and the couple moved to a small village called Marchirolo in Italy near the Switzerlan­d border.

She was a seamstress, sewing clothes for mainly wealthier people. Once Italy entered into World War II, the government wanted American citizens out of the country. She didn’t want to leave, though. Her boyfriend was an Italian fighter pilot, she couldn’t speak much English and leaving would prove to be a logistical nightmare.

“My mother was not a shrinking violet,” Dorene said.

But her town wasn’t doing too well; people were mixing saw dust with flour to stretch out the bread supply. In early 1941, state police told her to get out of the country if she knew what was good for her, or she’d end up in a concentrat­ion camp, Dorene said.

At the age of 25, Primetta traveled in a small boat with a group of strangers, carrying

a suitcase full of Swiss francs, and moved back to Torrington. She had various jobs because she was “not easily satisfied,” Dorene said, before nabbing a good paying job at a General Motors factory in Bristol working on Norden bombsights.

In Torrington, Primetta bought a 1940 Chevrolet sedan for just $500, according to the Associated Press. Primetta believed she was the first woman in the town to buy her own car, Dorene said.

Primetta drove her Chevrolet to work, serving as a carpool for others who shared her shifts. One day a blizzard canceled an upcoming shift, leading her co-worker and later husband, Umbert “Bert” Giacopini, to ask her out for the first time.

Primetta was a strong woman with strong female role models, Dorene said. Primetta didn’t want to get married for the support; she wanted to support herself. Primetta married him in May 1945. Using her seamstress

skills she learned in Italy, she made her own wedding dress for just $11.

While at General Motors, Dorene said the two also went on strike quite a bit, but growing up during the Great Depression, Primetta knew how to save money.

When Dorene was born in 1960, Primetta quit her job to be a stay at home mother. The family of three lived on Sunny Lane in Torrington.

Dorene said it was the first street that got swept every spring.

“She would call the city and raise holy hell until they got up there,” Dorene laughed.

Dorene was on crutches for most of her life as she was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal cord doesn’t fully develop, the Associated Press said. Primetta was a headstrong activist for her daughter before people with disabiliti­es were protected by law.

Dorene, who later went to Harvard University, remembers being in junior high in Torrington. The school asked the adolescent to take a lower-level class since they were on the first floor, instead of the accelerate­d class.

Through Primetta’s persuasion, though, the principal moved the accelerate­d class to the first floor on the first day of school so Dorene could attend.

“She was a force of nature,” Dorene said.

While a stay-at-home mother, Primetta served as the Torrington chairwoman for the March of Dimes, a nonprofit that was formed to fight polio, Dorene said.

“She used to always raise more per capita than any town,” Dorene remembered.

In October 1975, the family of three moved from Torrington to San Jose, Calif., thinking the warmer climate would make life easier for Dorene.

In her later years, Primetta mainly lived by herself. She did have a brief stint at a nursing facility, but was kicked out for not following the rules, and setting her own rules instead.

“She was in charge,” Dorene said.

Primetta spent the rest of her time living in her California home with the help from a caregiver. She made a delicious spaghetti sauce, had a sharp memory, but no filter.

“She was very unique,” Darlene said.

On Sept. 8, Dorene received a phone call that the caregiver was feeling sick, so she asked the caretaker and her mother to both get tested.

The next day, Dorene brought homemade bread and grapes from her backyard to her mother, putting them on the front porch. They spoke for about half an hour while socially distanced even though all three had been fully vaccinated. Dorene showed Primetta her new, wheelchair-accessible van.

Twice during that conversati­on, Dorene heard her mother cough in a way she had not heard before.

“That’s when I was pretty sure she had it,” she said.

That’s the last time Dorene saw her mother in person.

Dorene hasn’t made funeral arrangemen­ts yet for her mother. Funeral directors have suggested if she does have a ceremony that there shouldn’t be food or drink.

She knows her mother wouldn’t want that. So, in the meantime, she’s doing small toasts here and there celebratin­g Primetta.

“I do not want to be responsibl­e for more people getting COVID and possibly dying,” Dorene said.

So, Dorene, friends and family are waiting until they can have a more normalized celebratio­n for Primetta.

Plus, “I want to make her spaghetti sauce,” Dorene said.

 ?? Dorene Giacopini / Contribute­d photos ?? Dorene Giacopini, left, and her mother, Primetta Giacopini, right, at Primetta’s 100th birthday party. Primetta is sitting in a 1940 Chevrolet similar to the one she bought when she arrived to the United States at the age of 25.
Dorene Giacopini / Contribute­d photos Dorene Giacopini, left, and her mother, Primetta Giacopini, right, at Primetta’s 100th birthday party. Primetta is sitting in a 1940 Chevrolet similar to the one she bought when she arrived to the United States at the age of 25.
 ?? ?? Primetta Giacopini, left, and her daughter Dorene Giacopini, right, in an undated photo.
Primetta Giacopini, left, and her daughter Dorene Giacopini, right, in an undated photo.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States