Gussie Theresa Schiavone of 575 Osgood Street, North Andover, Massachusetts died peacefully on Friday, October 23, 2015, surrounded by family. She was 96.
Accursia “Gussie” LaRocca was born in 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, one of six children, to Jacob LaRocca and his wife Lillie Scaturro, both Sicilian immigrants.
She was the last surviving sibling. The family lived in Brooklyn’s diverse Fort Greene and Borough Park neighborhoods, and Gussie attended PS 67 and Brooklyn Industrial High School for Girls, where her skills as a seamstress were honed. Following the early tragic death of her mother, Gussie finished high school at night, working days in the garment industry to help support her family. She eventually became an assistant to the designer at Barbizon lingerie and swimsuits. Gussie was a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and was elected shop steward at her factory local.
It was in a night school Italian language class that Gussie met Rocco Schiavone, to whom she was married for 34 years, and whom she cajoled into dating with the family-famous line “There’s always another train coming along the track.” After World War Two, Rocco entered the fashion industry, achieving international acclaim as a designer of women’s shoes. His work took the family from New York City to North Andover, Massachusetts, where Gussie exchanged the garment industry for homemaking, presiding over a family of four children: Nicholas, a strategic business consultant in New York; Louise, a journalist and professor in Washington, D.C.; Marc, a scientist and college instructor in Cleveland; and Christopher, a research consultant and founder of City Square Associates and BostonChefs.com in Boston. Throughout their married life, Gussie and Rocco also enjoyed theater, art, fashion, cooking, and travel.
Gussie was an accomplished cook, whose painstaking creations were precise and impeccable. She was a woman of quick wit with a unique sense of style and humor, well known within the family to seek a conversation re-set when talk became intense with bridging phrases such as “I like a nice piece of chocolate. Don’t you?” and “There’s nothing like a fresh apple.”
Gussie soldiered on after the sudden death of Rocco in 1979. In the years following Rocco's passing, Gussie was especially proud of her many hours of service as a volunteer in the gift shop of Holy Family Hospital in Methuen. For the last fourteen years, Gussie has resided at the Edgewood Retirement Community in North Andover, where she was beloved by both neighbors and staff. Uniquely creative, amusing, thoughtful, and energetic, a woman who lived through the Great Depression, World War Two, and successive historical and generational world-changing events, Gussie will be missed deeply by family and friends and held in loving memory forever.
She is survived by Christopher Schiavone of Charlestown, MA; Nicholas and Ellen (Gromer) Schiavone of Rye, NY, and their children, Paul Schiavone of Charlestown, Thomas Schiavone of San Francisco, CA, and Elizabeth of Piscataway, NJ; Louise Schiavone and Richard Uliano of Bethesda, MD and their daughter, Christina Uliano of Bethesda; Marc Schiavone and Mary (Sanor) Schiavone of Cleveland, Ohio, and their children Christopher Mathias of Cincinnati, OH, Suzanne Schiavone of Somerville, MA, and Philip Schiavone of Cleveland.
The funeral will be from the John Breen Memorial Funeral Home, 35 Merrimack St., North Andover, where visiting hours will be Friday, October 30, 2015, from 4 PM to 8 PM. A funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday, October 31, 2015, at 10 AM at Saint Michael Church, 196 Main Street, North Andover, with burial at Ridgewood Cemetery. Following the burial, family and friends are invited to a reception at Edgewood Retirement Community, 575 Osgood Street, also in North Andover. Donations in Gussie’s honor may be made to Bread and Roses (BreadandRosesLawrence.org), a non-profit group whose mission is to feed the hungry in the Greater Lawrence area. To send an online condolence or for more information, please go to www.breenfuneralhome.com.