Jean Bevacqua 1922 – 2021

 

Jean Bevacqua was born Vincenza Oliveri in the East New York/Brownsville section of Brooklyn in New York City in 1922. She was the second of three daughters born to Simone Oliveri and Rosaria Fontana Oliveri, recent immigrants from Sicily, who settled in New York after the end of World War I. When her parents registered her for school, they anglicized her name to Jean. She and her sisters, Antonina (Lena) and Anna (Annie), and their parents lived in a walk‐up tenement apartment building on Osborn Street. Jean attended NYC public schools in Brooklyn. She excelled at art, enjoyed playing handball, and sang in the Our Lady of Loretto church choir. She graduated from Glenmore Junior High School in 1938.   

The family moved to a 4‐family house on Benson Avenue in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in 1939. As was common among many teenagers of the day, Jean left high school to work and help support the family. She worked as a seamstress, making ladies’ dresses, slips, and umbrellas in various factories in Brooklyn and Manhattan, in what was then a thriving garment industry in New York.

In 1946 Jean met Charles Bevacqua after his return from army service in World War II. After a long 5‐year engagement they married in 1951 at age 29 and settled in an apartment in Charles’ mother’s home on 80th Street in the Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights section. In the early 1950s (her early thirties) Jean suffered from mitral valve stenosis, a serious and debilitating heart condition caused by rheumatic fever when she was a child. She underwent what was then a very risky pioneering surgical procedure known as a commissurotomy to repair her heart value. This was in the period before heart‐lung machines were invented, so the surgery had to be done while the patient’s heart was beating, and there was a considerable risk that she would not survive. She came through the procedure very well however and

persevered to make a full recovery. Although advised by her cardiologist not to have children, she was

determined to be a mom. After several years of difficulty, at age 37 in 1959 she gave birth to a son, Frank Bevacqua, her only child.

As a young mom Jean was very active in the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) at PS 204 in Brooklyn. She was for many years a parishioner at the St. Frances Cabrini Roman Catholic Church.

Jean was above all a wonderful, kind, caring, compassionate, gentle and encouraging mother (and later

grandmother). She was a devout and faithful Catholic, who truly believed in and lived, by example, Jesus’ teachings of love, kindness, forgiveness, and serving others. She was always cheerful, optimistic and kind, and always saw the best in people. Whenever there was strife the family, she always tried to be the peacemaker.

Jean lost her husband Charlie in 2005 after 54 years of marriage. In her later years, when medical issues arose again, she addressed them with faith and optimism, which saw her through numerous additional procedures and surgeries in her 80s and 90s. These included 2 heart valve replacements and 2 pacemakers, and each time she recovered to live independently. Thanks to the skills of her fine doctors and surgeons, she was able to see her grandchildren grow up and mature. In the last 2 years of her life, after a fall and subsequent hip surgery in 2018, she was very accepting of her home care arrangements and the kind ladies who took care of her, always remaining cheerful and never complaining.

Jean passed away at the age of 98 from complications due to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID‐19). She will be missed by all of us who loved her. Jean is survived by her son, Frank Bevacqua, daughter‐in law Jeanne Schneider Bevacqua, grandsons Charles Joseph (CJ) and Daniel Bevacqua, sister Anne Tuzza, brother‐in-law Thomas (“Mazzie”) Tuzza, nieces Marie Larsen and Roseanne Tuzza Lonuzzi, nephew Donald Larsen, and 31 grandnieces and grandnephews (at last count).

Her funeral mass is scheduled for Saturday, January 23rd at 10:00 AM at St. Frances Cabrini RC Church, 1562 86th Street in Brooklyn. Interment will follow at Resurrection Cemetery in Staten Island, NY. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations to Jean’s favorite charity, St. Francis Friends of the Poor, an organization of Franciscan friars who provide housing and support services to New York’s mentally ill homeless. (https://stfrancisfriends.org/)