Angela Cundari, 104, shunned red meats and high-fat foods, opting instead for fruits and vegetables. She never smoked a cigarette, never drank socially, and she always kept her mind and hands active.
Mrs. Cundari died Sunday in her Franklin Park home.
“She lived by the old-fashioned standards that you have to live a clean life and work as hard as you can,” recalled her daughter, Josephine Brozman, “And even though she got a little slower with age, her mind never slowed down.”
Mrs. Cundari was born in Cosenza, a small town in southern Italy, in 1892. It was the year Grover Cleveland was elected president and bread cost a nickel a loaf.
Mrs. Cundari’s father died when she was 6 months old. When she was older, she had to help support the family by tending crops on local farms.
“They were very poor and her life was very, very hard; harder than anything we can imagine now,” Brozman said. “She used to tell me these stories about how she’d have to walk down to the river early every morning to wash clothes.”
In about 1911, Mrs. Cundari married Frank Cundari, a Cosenza native living in the United States who had returned to Italy for a visit. After the wedding, Frank Cundari immediately went back to his railroad job in Chicago, leaving his young bride behind.
“They didn’t want to be separated, but there were no jobs in Cosenza so dad had to go back to the United States to make money,” Brozman recalled.
After scrimping and saving for 10 years, Frank Cundari sent for his wife and young child.
“She always used to say that was one of the happiest days of her life,” Brozman said of her mother’s arrival to Franklin Park.
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But those first years also were filled with a certain amount of fear.
Mrs. Cundari, who had lived her 29 years in a tiny southern Italian village, could not speak English. She had to learn English so she could go grocery shopping, deal with schoolteachers and complete other daily chores.
“She learned by reading our library books,” Brozman remembered. “We’d bring them home and before we’d even get a chance to open them up, she’d be sitting there reading them.’
A homemaker, Mrs. Cundari loved gardening, interior decorating, knitting and crocheting.
In addition to her daughter, Josephine Brozman, other survivors include another daughter, Mary Cesario; a son, Frank; six grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Wednesday in St. Gertrude Catholic Church, 9613 Schiller Blvd., Franklin Park.