Dorothy DiPaolo, a fixture for more than 40 years at the Taylor Street lemonade stand she started with her husband, died on Sunday, Jan. 28, in Rush Medical Center, said her daughter, Donna Jagielski
Mrs. DiPaolo, 80, who lived in the building next to Mario’s Italian Lemonade, had suffered from pneumonia and heart failure, Jagielski said.
Since 1958, Mario’s Italian Lemonade has been drawing crowds on hot summer nights with the promise of a refreshing Italian ice. The tiny, open-air stand was built by Mrs. DiPaolo’s husband, Mario, with help from his father and some men in the neighborhood, and is open from May 1 to Sept. 15.
Mario’s has always been family-run, and Mrs. DiPaolo was behind the counter every day until about five years ago.
“She never went to a wedding or barbecue [in the summer] for 40 years,” Jagielski said. “If you wanted Mario and Dorothy at your wedding, you had it in the fall.”
Most people assumed Mrs. DiPaolo–like her husband and most of the Taylor Street neighborhood at the time the lemonade stand opened–was Italian. But she was of Polish and Norwegian descent, born Dorothy Talcer on Chicago’s North Side, her daughter said.
More Top Picks Best Electric Dirt Bikes
As a young girl, she was enthralled with ice skating, and an aunt bought her a ticket to see the great Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie perform at the old Chicago Stadium. She and a friend tried to sneak into a second show, but were ejected, Jagielski said.
Soon Mrs. DiPaolo became an accomplished ice skater herself and traveled for two years with the Ice Capades. It was around this time that she met her husband, who ran a small grocery store at Harrison and Leavitt Streets.
“He thought she was like a movie star,” Jagielski said. “He was promised to one of the Italian ladies, but he met her and that was it.”
Mario DiPaolo opened Mario’s General Store next to the family’s home on Taylor Street in 1951, and a short time later started selling lemonade out of a push cart before opening the stand. The grocery store closed in 1963. He died in 1984.
For many years, lemon was the only flavor, sold in a single size. Mario’s today sells a variety of flavors including chocolate, Mrs. DiPaolo’s favorite, as well as nuts, seeds and lupini beans.
“People from out of state would make a point of visiting every year, and they’d all talk to Dorothy,” said Geri Aleman, a friend of the DiPaolo family who worked at the stand in the 1970s. “This was her life, especially after her husband died”
She was a plain-spoken woman, and “if you did not want to know the truth, you did not ask Dorothy,” Aleman said.
Now run by Mrs. DiPaolo’s son–also named Mario but known as Skip–the stand is staffed by her grandchildren. Even after she stopped officially working, Mrs. DiPaolo enjoyed hanging around the stand and catching up with old summertime friends.
“Certain people, that’s the only time you’d see them all year,” Jagielski said. “Everybody stopped by over the years.”
In addition to her son and daughter, Mrs. DiPaolo is survived by five grandchildren.
Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, North and Lathrop Avenues, River Forest.
More Top Picks Best Cedar Pergolas
———-