Although a resident of Jersey City for most of her life, Fanny D’Elia is well-known in Bayonne for founding and operating the legendary La Rinasente Macaroni Shop on Avenue C for many years. She is still sometimes called “the Macaroni Lady” by the children of former customers, a fact in which she takes great pride.
In February, she celebrated her 107th birthday, and was honored as part of Hudson County’s “Writing Women Back Into History” celebration, held on March 23.
“I don’t feel 107. I feel just about the way I always have, ” she remarked while meeting with Freeholder Doreen DiDomenico and County Executive DeGise, who presented her with a citation at St. Ann’s Home in Jersey City, where she now resides.
“We had a different soup for every day. Half the neighborhood came in for lunch.” – Fanny D’Elia
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After retiring from operating the shop, she volunteered in the Bayonne schools before she decided to retire.
For several years, when Fanny – who was unavailable for a more recent interview – travelled through the old neighborhood as a van brought her to the Adult Day Care at the Franciscan Home and Rehabilitation Center, she would point out the location of where her shop once stood.
Fanny has never slowed down, even after she turned 100. She continued paying visits to friends in various adult centers, and adopted a cane about a year after her 100th birthday because a heart ailment required it.
For several years before her move to Saint Ann’s Home, Fanny lived in her own apartment in a house that she shared with one of her sons. Married for more than 75 years until her husband’s death at 99 in 1997, she is a proud great-great-grandmother and never shy to show off her family’s photographs.
Born in 1903
Born in 1903 in Stockton, N.J., she was one of seven children and attended a one-room elementary school. She eventually married her husband Frank when he returned from service in World War I. She has two sons, George, 87, and Frank, 85.
Fanny has distinct memories of her early years as “a country girl” before she came to live in the city as a young child, and keeps photographs of her family lined up by height.
“We were all born two years apart,” she said during an interview two years ago. “So none of us could lie about our age and get away it.”
Life in Stockton was hard and future prospects limited. Fanny only went through grammar school because she had to take care of her ailing mother.
“I didn’t go to high school,” she said. “That was four miles away. None of my brothers went to high school. We didn’t have aspirations of being anything. We knew we couldn’t go to college.”
Yet each of the siblings she has since outlived succeeded in their own way. One became a ticket agent for the railroad. Another worked for the highway department. Two of her brothers got jobs in Standard Oil.
Fanny moved to Jersey City just after she got married. She was 18 and called herself a country girl, who was thrilled at coming to the city. At first, she and her husband Frank lived downtown, then in 1928 moved to the Greenville section where they attended Lady of Sorrows Church – which she continued to attend well after her 100th birthday, taking pride in the fact that she was its oldest parishioner.
World War II changed her life
World War II changed Fanny’s life. Both of her sons went into service, and she had a hard time dealing with the empty house. She took a job a company that had a chain of Italian grocery stores in New Jersey and New York. She went to work for the store on Brunswick Street in Jersey City, and moved to Bayonne when the owner started a store on the corner of 22nd Street.
“The man decided to sell all the stores when his son didn’t want anything to do with them,” Fanny recalled. “So I bought the one in Bayonne.”
Eventually, she purchased the building across the street and called the store La Rinasente – meaning New Born, a popular name for stores in Italy, she said.
“It was an all Italian grocery, serving meatballs and soups and a variety of other things.
We had a different soup for every day,” she said. “Half the neighborhood came in for lunch.”
When Frank, one of her sons, came out of service, he and his wife Christine helped Fanny run the business.
1,000 meatballs
For nearly 50 years, Fanny did all the cooking, and became a part of Bayonne’s living history, producing more than 1,000 meatballs a week and homemade sauce to generation after generation of families.
“It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it,” she recalled. “We had good times, and mixed fun with business. When my birthday came around, we always had a cake.”
In 1993, at age 90, Fanny was still going strong. Although she gave up the store, she wasn’t ready to retire and took up work as a lunch aid at Horace Mann School, and worked there until she turned 100.
Looking back, Fanny seems to have no regrets, saying hard work was a key ingredient in her life. She never imagined she would live so long, but loves the fact that she has always done things for herself.
“I mostly take things day by day,” she said. “Whatever comes up, I make the best of it. I overcome things by keeping myself occupied. When I go to bed, I’m planning for the next day. I’m thinking: I’m going to do it, too. That’s my own way of living.”