This was the obit for my Nona, in the Santa Barbara News-Press on 8 December:
Lidia Louise Vial was born June 21, 1915, and died December 1, 2007. She was the only daughter of 6 children born to Italian immigrants Luigi and Marianna Reginatto.
On December 29, 1935, she married Mario Vial. They had one daughter, Gloria. Mario passed away in 1989.
Lidia lived most of her life in Santa Barbara. For many years she was a trusted employee in various capacities for families in Montecito. She enjoyed her home, sewing, cooking and golf.
She was a member of the Women’s Golf Club at the Santa Barbara Golf Club, YLI, Italian American Boot Club, and Italia Nuova.
Lidia was a woman of great faith her loved her family and friends and was always there for them no matter what their need.
She is survived by her daughter, Gloria Hill, son-in-law Hal Hill, brothers Al and Corado, grandsons David and John Hill, great grandchildren Robby and Sean Hill, Katherine Hill, and Joe Chavez. , and two great grand daughters Allyssa and Kylie Chavez. Also nieces Carol Voorhis, Nadine Nichols, Virleen Hand, Karen Vari and nephews Leon and Mark Reginatto.
Friend may visit at 3:00pm Monday, December 10th, at Welch-Ryce-Haider downtown chapel. The Rosary will follow at 4:00pm. Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Tuesday, December 11th, at St. Barbara Parish at the Old Mission at 10:00am. Interment will be at Calvary Cemetery.
In Lieu of flowers, for those who desire, memorial donations may be made to a charity of your choice.
The full article is still behind a pre-archive firewall, so I’ll take another look in a few months to see if there’s a clean link.
Note that the obit spells Nona’s first name as “Lidia.” That was actually the spelling on her birth certificate, and the one she preferred over the last few years (vs. the “Lydia” she used most of her life). For that matter, her middle name was (according to my mom) actually “Luigia” (sp?) (after her father Luigi), which got anglicized to “Louise” somewhere along the way.
Cool.
One small typo on “Wzs”.
Ummm, why is there a firewall on an Obit?
Yeah, many, many things got Anglicized last century.
Corado, great name. 🙂
Sounds like a life well lived.
It’s a “don’t you want to pay us money to see the obit details” kind of firewall. Tacky.
The “trusted employee in various capacities” thing was kind of fun. Nona did house cleaning and catering and other domestic type of stuff in some very nice households in the area. She did some catering work up at the Reagan Ranch a couple of times (and reported that Ronnie was charming; I don’t recall her opinion of Nancy). As a kid, we we went swimming in the Kaiser (family) swimming pool (with permission, of course), and I inherited quite a number of books that were passed on to Nona by her employers as their own kids grew out of them.
Dave wins the award for best grand-uncle names. Edo, Alphonso, Bruno, Corado, and Unberto. (Did I get that right?) And they all look the part 🙂
I believe its “Umberto.”
Wow, those are GREAT names. 🙂
I had a Grandpa Obert.
Fun name, too.