Anna Puleo, mother of 6, grandmother of 18 and great-grandmother of 14, went home to God on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2010. She was 86 years old.
Anna was the sister to 9 other siblings. The fifth child of ten born to Salvatore and Mary Gennetti, her family has been a fixture of the Edgeworth section of Malden for more than 100 years. She met John, the great love of her life, at the Malden Converse Rubber Shoe Company where she and many of her family worked. They married on July 7, 1946. They settled in Malden where they had grown up and raised their 6 children. Their home became the center of a family that grew over the years to include their children’s spouses, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. While sit-down dinners may have become harder, somehow the family always found ways to get together whenever they could. And Anna and John were “Mom and Dad” to them all.
After more than a decade at Converse and at Brigham’s, Mom began working at the Highland Café in the late 1950s. After retiring from the Police Department in 1980, Dad joined Mom on a more regular basis at the Highland Café. They purchased the restaurant, the oldest continuous running restaurant in Malden, in 1980. Patrons and friends could always find Mom and Dad seated at the restaurant Friday nights having dinner at the end of the evening. These dinners were always social events where visitors stopped by to talk. Mom knew them all. Each patron was a part of the extended family. Meeting Mom at the Highland Café was like visiting home. Each person felt that they were an important part of her life and that Mom cared, and they were right. It was this caring that brought them back week after week. And week after week they could find her either having her dinner at a table in the corner, or manning the phone. If a takeout order was called in to the Highland Café on a Friday night, it was taken by Anna Puleo.
Mom worked there for more than 40 years and was a fixture, as much a part of the restaurant as the pizza. The renovation of the restaurant in 1987 included a mural of their grandchildren playing, painted on the wall of one of the dining rooms. Even after their sons took over the running of the restaurant, Mom and Dad still enjoyed their Friday night dinners at the Highland Café.
Mom always believed in the power of a family to carry you through life’s hardest times. She was an active member of the Saint Peter’s Parish in Edgeworth but it was her family that formed the biggest part of her life. She remained a part of her brothers’ and sisters’ lives. She had a loving relationship with each of her multitude of nieces and nephews. She was a part of each life she touched, and she touched many. Whether a child needed help babysitting, or a grandchild was acting in a school play, Mom was there. Mom’s well known calendar hung at the door was filled end to end with important dates, each and everyone based on a family event. It was often said that she no longer worked full time at the Highland Café because 18 grandchildren were a full-time job. For Mom, motherhood and grandmotherhood were her career and her calling. The arrival of great-grandchildren was simply another blessing in which she found fulfillment and joy.
How appropriate that she said goodbye on Mother’s Day.
The Funeral will be held from the A. J. Spadafora Funeral Home, 865 Main Street, Malden on Wednesday, May 12th at 9:30 a.m. A Mass of Christian Burial in celebration of and thanksgiving for her life will follow at 10:30 a.m. at the Immaculate Conception Church, 600 Pleasant Street, Malden. Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend. Visiting hours will be on Tuesday, May 11th from 3–8 p.m. Interment will be in Forest Dale Cemetery, Malden.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Anna’s memory may be made to Sawtelle Family Hospice House, 320 Haverhill Street, Reading, MA 01867 or John and Anna Puleo Scholarship Fund, c/o Pope John High School, 888 Broadway, Everett, MA 02149.