Loretta Cuccurullo

A book called “When Brooklyn Was the World” describes in words and photos the glorious hey-day of that borough and Bensonhurst, where an Italian immigrant couple named Giuseppe and Maria Perna, raised their granddaughter, Loretta, and her younger brother, Vince. Giuseppe, a cobbler, would place young Loretta on the counter in the shop so that she could tap dance for customers and friends. She sang and she danced. She later learned to ride a horse (English saddle) from a friend whose family owned a horse. She swam in the waters of Coney Island and rode the steeplechase and the parachute jump. Loretta would meet Joe Cuccurullo on Christmas night in 1949 at a house party. They were married on October 15, 1950. Loretta was nineteen and Joe was twenty. They remained married until Joe’s death in 2016. Three children, Lou Ann, Gary, and later, Gail were born. She would later become a beloved mother-in-law to Bill Behan (Lou Ann), Michelle Pardes (Gary), and Thomas “Tommy” Klein (Gail). She became a grandmother to Marisa Behan, Joe Czop, and Jack Cuccurullo, and a step-grandmother to TJ and Mike Klein. She became a great-grandmother to Liam then Cyprian Bruce. She lived to see and hold all of them. Loretta’s life, like a grand novel, had many, many chapters. The young mother chapter, the move to the suburbs of New Jersey from Brooklyn chapter, the long, difficult, lonely, and isolated chapter of the children’s school years; the chapter when this stay-at-home Mom took a job selling women’s clothing; the band mother chapter; the tennis years chapter; the race-walking chapter when she won a senior Olympics title in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, the activist chapter in West Palm Beach fighting the builder who wanted to replace greenspace with buildings; the Grammie chapter, the sailing chapter (she learned to sail in her 70s’s!); the chapter on widowhood in Florida and the difficult, final chapter of the last few years of physical decline and suffering. Throughout the years there is one, powerful common theme in her living of life: that every moment of this life is precious and should be fought for. Loretta took on each day with great gusto. She was tenacious; she was determined. She did not “go gentle into that good night.” She “raged, raged against the dying of the light.” A Mass of Christian Burial to celebrate her life will be held on Tuesday, February 21, 2023, at 11:00 AM at St. Ann Catholic Church 985 3rd St. S., Naples, FL. The family requests that any memorial donations in her memory be made to either the Alzheimer’s Association at https://alzfdn.org/, the Harry Chapin Food Bank at https://harrychapinfoodbank.org/, or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation at https://www.cff.org/. To sign her guest register or to leave online condolences please visit www.ShikanyFuneralHome.com.

Loretta Cuccurullo

May 5, 1931 - January 26, 2023