Aunt Mary had a problem dealing with technology and especially with her VCR recorder. She could not figure out how to use it and she would call me – Joe I need help! So I would go upstairs and once more teach her how to record or play videos on the VCR. Several times I put together step by step instructions but it didn’t help. So I “fixed” her VCR many times.

Aunt Mary was always was offering me and my cousins what she thought was advice on what we did even though we didn’t want it. We would respond “O Aunt Mary!” But that didn’t stop her from offering her advice.

An annual family tradition was that Aunt Mary would have an “open house” on New Years day in her small apartment and everyone in the family stopped by some time to share in her baked Lasagna. People came and went throughout the day. People were sitting everywhere but it was a great celebration to begin the new year.

Mary Ragucci passed away at age  99, just 26 days away from her 100th birthday, on Nov 19th 2019. The following homily was given by her nephew Deacon Joe Ragucci at her funeral Mass:

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Aunt Mary has the oldest bed of anyone that I know.  As a teenager my bedroom was directly below her bedroom in our Port Reading home. Many times in the middle of the night I’d hear this CRASH that caused me to jump out of bed.  What happened was the boards that went under the bed frame to hold up the mattress would slide out and fall with a loud noise onto the floor.  Of course, it always happened in the middle of the night.  We continually pleaded with her to “buy a new bed” but it was fruitless.  She could not make up her mind on what to buy so she just kept the same one.  After years of hearing this crash in the middle of the night, my father decided that something had to be done.  So he rigged the bed frame boards so they couldn’t fall off the frame.  To this day, to my understanding, she still is sleeping on the same bed.

Mary Ragucci was afflicted with arthritis at a very young age.  As a result, her fingers began to freeze into a bent position.  If you look at old photographs of Mary you will see her with her “old nose” as she would describe it.  That’s because she had a operation that straightened both her nose and her fingers.   Unfortunately, as she got older her fingers began to freeze in a bent position again.  I could never understand how she was able to type or push buttons with those “crooked” fingers.   But it didn’t stop her. All her fingers are crooked as the joints of the knuckles are frozen in a bent position due to arthritis.