Jeanette Parker was able to celebrate her 100th birthday with her family on July 10. Photo from Judy Visconti
A milestone birthday was celebrated at Jefferson’s Ferry in South Setauket recently.
South Setauket resident Jeanette Parker celebrated her 100th birthday July 10. Photo from Judy Visconti
Jeanette Parker, who has called the retirement community location her home for 12 years, turned 100 years old on July 10 and was able to celebrate the momentous occasion with family members, including her three daughters, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
“I don’t know how I got here, truthfully,” she said in a phone interview. “I’m just as surprised as anyone else.”
Her daughter Judith Visconti, of Setauket, was on hand for the celebration.
“I feel I’m very, very fortunate to have my mother still at this stage,” she said. “Not only do I have her, but she’s as smart as could be.”
The centenarian said while she didn’t have advice for longevity, she thinks a few good habits may have contributed to her long life.
“Truthfully, I don’t have any secrets,” she said. “I never smoked, and I never drank much — just once in a while for social reasons — and I was never a big eater.”
Parker, who was born in Brooklyn in 1921, married Charles Parker when she was 21. He was drafted into the Army Signal Corps shortly after they were married, and they were apart for four years. It wasn’t until 1992 for their 50th anniversary that they were able to have the large party that they never had for their wedding, according to Visconti.
Jeanette Parker with her daughters Judy, Anita and Carol. Photo from Judy Visconti
In addition to Visconti, their first child, the couple had two more daughters, Anita and Carol. The children grew up in Queens, and while living in the borough and raising her daughters, Parker was active in Hadassah, an American Jewish volunteer women’s organization. Her husband ran a trucking business with his brother in New York City’s Garment District, and after he retired due to poor health, his wife started working for a real estate business in the city.
The couple moved to Coram in 1982 where they lived in the Bretton Woods condo development to be closer to their children and grandchildren on Long Island. Parker started the Bretton Woods Players. She always enjoyed music and singing, she said, but chose to stay behind the scenes writing and producing the annual musical shows from 1983 to 1992. Her husband painted the scenery for them. The couple also enjoyed playing golf, and Jeanette Parker was on the women’s golf team.
Visconti said her father loved to swim and looked for a winter home in a place where he could do so even during the colder months, and her parents bought a place in Fort Lauderdale. When he found the waters were still too cold in Florida during the winter months, the Parkers looked into a place in Puerto Rico and the two bought a condo on the island in 1989.
A few years after Charles Parker died in 1995, it was on the island of Puerto Rico where Jeanette Parker met Jose Hernandez walking along the beach. The two wound up dating and were together for 11 years, something she believed was her late husband’s intervention because he didn’t want her to be alone.
“I always say my mother was always lucky in love,” Visconti said.
While one of Parker’s daughters lives in Massachusetts and another in Westchester County, she said they stay in touch with her regularly. She was thrilled to celebrate her milestone birthday with her family after them not being able to visit during the pandemic due to COVID-19 restrictions.
When it comes to going through difficult times, Parker had advice.
“Keep busy,” she said. “That’s the main thing. Keep doing things that satisfy you.”
Cris Bottari a resident of The Bristal Assisted Living at Lake Grove celebrates his 100th birthday July 3. Photo from Rubenstein Strategic Communications
On the afternoon of July 3, a few employees of The Bristal Assisted Living facility in Lake Grove were spotted wearing New York Mets shirts. They had a particular reason — they were preparing to celebrate the 100th birthday of one of their residents, who happens to be a big New York Mets fan.
Chris Bottari met retired Mets player Frank Catalanotto at his 100th birthday party. Photo from Rubenstein Strategic Communications
As they prepared, Crispin Bottari, the guest of honor, sat in the game room wearing a Mets T-shirt and a decades-old hat that featured the team’s logo and the Mr. Met mascot. The room is where he and his wife regularly work on puzzles that they later laminate for keepsakes.
The party that night wasn’t the first one for the centenarian. Bottari said a few days earlier his family threw one for him at the Blueblinds Mansion in Smithtown, where nearly 150 guests were in attendance.
“It felt like my heart was bursting when I saw all those people,” he said. “I had tears.”
Born July 3, 1919, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers until they moved to Los Angeles in 1957. He said when he first met his wife, they would go to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn every Sunday and watch the team play.
A few years after the Dodgers departure, he discovered the Mets, initially watching them play at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan before Shea Stadium was built in Queens. He remembers taking his daughter to a 1969 World Series game, the year the Mets won.
“They were misfits at the time, but they played, and they won a pennant, and in ’69 they won the World Series,” Bottari said.
A year ago, he had the chance to watch the team play at Citi Field, where he attended a ceremony honoring World War II veterans. Out of a few people that were invited, he said he was the only one able to attend, and the ballplayers presented him with a flag and a baseball.
Bottari said he doesn’t have a favorite player now, but he lists Tom Seaver among his favorites from the 1969 Miracle Mets.
Bottari meeting Frank Sinatra while serving in Greenland during World War II. Photo from the Bottari family
“Talk about gung-ho,” he said. “They did it the way it should be done.”
While Bottari and his family love baseball, there is another love in their lives — music.
“Music in my family precedes everything, because everyone in my family somehow, someway is musically inclined,” he said, adding he owns a 70-year-old guitar that was given to him by his father that he is unable to play nowadays due to arthritis.
He remembered playing that guitar when he first met his wife, Anne. She was in a group called the Mayfair Trio with her sister and friend, and he would accompany them on guitar. The group would entertain injured soldiers in hospitals along the East Coast.
Bottari said he enjoyed seeing the big bands play in the city when he was a young man. One day he went to the Paramount Theatre in New York City to see Benny Goodman and his band, and he noticed that Frank Sinatra was also billed as playing. He said at the time he hadn’t heard of Sinatra and was surprised to see hundreds of teenage girls screaming and yelling.
During World War II, while serving in the Army with the 417th Engineer Company building airstrips in Greenland, Bottari met Sinatra, who he said would have breakfast with the soldiers every morning for the week he was in Greenland. While Bottari enjoyed having the singer around and took a picture with him, his fellow soldiers, who hadn’t heard about the entertainer, didn’t know what the big deal was and asked what his name was.
“Frank Sinatra,” he told them. “When the war is over, you’re going to hear about him,” he said.
While baseball and music have played a big part in Bottari’s life, family is the most important to him. His father, who was a tailor, immigrated to the U.S. from Italy when he was a teenager. He said his parents met through a matchmaker. At first, his mother felt hesitant about her future husband, because he didn’t speak English, but her mother encouraged her to teach him. The two would sit in the parlor and practice the language. Bottari is one of four sons born to the couple.
The centenarian said he never would have imagined celebrating his 100th birthday. While his mother lived to be 97, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 50, while coming out of a subway station.
Crispin Bottari spending time at his daughter’s home. Photo from the Bottari family
“Fifty years old,” he said. “What is wrong with this picture.”
Bottari said another sorrow in his life was the death of his three younger brothers.
Despite the sorrow of losing his brothers, his own family has brought him immense joy. Sixty-nine years ago, he married his wife, Anne, who is now 94 years old.
He said he was at a dance and when the young woman he was dancing with excused herself to talk to someone else, he started talking to Anne. He asked his future wife for her phone number, and when she said she didn’t have a pen, he said, “I can solve that situation,” and lit a match and used the charcoal to write her number on the matchbook.
As for the secret to a long marriage, Bottari said it’s important to talk to each other.
“If you have a problem, resolve it,” he said.
Anne Bottari agreed and described her husband as an easygoing man. Both also said it helped that they had children who always got along and visit them often, because it keeps them going.
The Bottaris raised their five daughters in Jamaica, Queens.
“One smarter than the other,” he said. “They’re smarter than their father.”
With six females in the house, to get a chance to get into the bathroom before going to work as an accumulator of salaries for the Social Security Administration in the city, Bottari said he would wake up an hour earlier than needed.
Nearly 40 years ago, when their daughters began moving out of the house, the Bottaris relocated to Selden to be near their children, who were starting to have children of their own. The couple now has 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Through the years in Selden, the biggest change Bottari said he has seen is the increase of the numbers of condos and stores in the area.
The couple moved into The Bristal in 2015, but Bottari said they get out often to attend family functions. He loves visiting his daughter and son-in-law, Donna and Matty Kaspak, in St. James and seeing their dog, Cooper. His son-in-law said that Bottari is always there when the family needs them, whether it’s to see his nephew playing with a band or his grandson wrestling.
“The TV goes off, and he’s in the car,” Kaspak said.
When it comes to tips for living a long life, Bottari said he’s not sure he can speak about what to eat or not eat, admitting he loves a hot dog and a beer at a baseball game.
“Each individual person has his own genes that he’s acquired from someone else in his family,” Bottari said.
On the night of his 100th birthday, in addition to family and friends, retired Mets player Frank Catalanotto was on hand at The Bristal, and Bottari received a custom-made Mets hat with his name and number 100 on it and a plate signed by Catalanotto from the facility’s employees.
Marie Mack, front, and her family and friends celebrated her birthday Jan. 27. Photo from Betty Mulligan
By Jane Swingle
Our grandparents Charles Petersen and Anna Kenney were married in 1913 and had three children. Their son, John Anthony, was born in 1917 and lived for 10 days. Their daughter, Marie Gertrude, our mother, was born in 1919 and has been living for 100 years. Mary Catherine was born in 1920 and lived for 24 hours.
Marie, who eventually married to become Marie Mack, always wanted a sibling and was told as a child that if she put salt on a windowsill, she would get a brother and if she put sugar on a windowsill she would get a sister. She said she remembers that at one time she had sugar or salt on 11 windowsills. Unfortunately for Marie, she remained an only child, and Jan. 18 of this year she celebrated her 100th birthday. A surprise birthday party was held for her Jan. 27 with over 90 guests in attendance.
Marie Mack during her birthday celebration Jan. 27. Photo from Betty Mulligan
She was loved dearly by her father who in 1898 joined the Navy during the Spanish-American War at the age of 15. She remembers him having a dry sense of humor (we’re sure she herself got this from him). He was a good cook and she always looked forward to a batch of potatoes, eggs and onions after work. Her dad loved coming out to Long Island to vacation and in 1928, when Marie was 10 years old, he bought the house in which she currently resides. They had spent their summers in the same house beginning in 1924, the same house that was the Mount Sinai Post Office and General Store from 1908 until 1922.
Her mother was very different from her father. She was very melancholic most of the time unless she was taking the Putnam Avenue trolley to downtown Brooklyn to go shopping. She crocheted beautiful baby outfits for her grandchildren and loved going to the movies. Marie said her mother had a beautiful smile and always wondered why she didn’t smile more often.
They lived at 83 Saratoga Ave. in Brooklyn in what was known as the “Railroad Flats” where they paid a monthly rent of $25. As a child she remembers the iceman delivering blocks of ice two to three times a week to keep their food cold. Milk was delivered at 4 a.m. and they had dumbwaiters so they didn’t have to carry everything upstairs. They lived on the third floor and once Marie even put our sister Elizabeth, “Betty,” in the dumbwaiter so she didn’t have to carry her up all those stairs.
In 1934 Marie saw our future dad, John Howard Rogers,working in a candy store and continued to eyeball him until they finally started dating in 1935. They went to their first prom at the Hotel George and she remembers wearing a pink taffeta long gown, silver shoes and our dad gave her her first corsage. They continued to see each other and in 1941 they were married and had their reception at her home on Saratoga Avenue. Our sister Ann Marie was born in December 1942, but our dad left soon after she was born for the Pacific front in April 1943. He did not see his daughter again until 1945 when he returned from the war. During the time that he was away our mother moved back in with her parents — she had only 35 cents to her name. She became an air raid warden and was given a certificate for selling war bonds.
When dad returned from the war, they became very busy making a family and in 1946 Elizabeth was born, followed by Nancy in 1951, Jane in 1953, John in 1954 and Thomas in 1956.With this expanding family they could no longer live in Brooklyn so they moved to Woodhaven in 1948, then to Rockville Centre in 1962 and eventually to Mount Sinai in 1968.
When asked when her favorite years were, Marie told us during the 1950s when she was raising her children. She got us through chicken pox, measles, mumps, ear infections, the teen years and the death of our father in 1969. She went back to work in 1970 at the Probation Department in Yaphank and remained there until 1977 when she married Bernard Mack. She again lived in Woodhaven for a short time after they were married but moved back to her home in Mount Sinai.
In 1996 when going into her attic to open a window she fell through the ceiling and shattered her knee, which required surgery and many months of rehabilitation. During this time Bernard passed away, but she rallied around again with her children pushing her to recover and get well.
She often wonders why she has lived so long. On many occasions she has said: “I’m not good enough to go to heaven, not bad enough to go to hell, so I guess I’m still here to torment all of you.”
Marie Mack during her birthday celebration Jan. 27. Photo from Betty Mulligan
When we think about her life spanning 100 years, we are astounded with all the changes that she has experienced in her lifetime. She was born before most people had electricity in their homes. She remembers gas lamps still being used, when there was no TV, no computers, no cellphones and when it cost 2 cents to mail a letter. She has lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, 9/11 and 18 presidents. She was even born before they started slicing bread in 1928.
She credits her long life to her family for keeping her – in her words – “Alive, alert and stimulated.” She’s had many bumps along the way, especially the passing of our brother John and our sister Ann Marie, but she’s always had a positive attitude and has always wished our father could have been with her to share this journey. What amazes all of us is her incredible memory – she remembers names of friends when she was a child, teachers’ names, games she played, street names where she used to live, movies, actors, books she read and all the places she has ever worked. As a child she enjoyed going to Coney Island for hot dogs, the hurdy-gurdy man who played the accordion with his monkey, putting hot bricks in her bed at night to warm her feet and attending the World’s Fairs in both 1939 and 1964.
When asked what important lessons she wanted to pass on to her children, her 12 grandchildren and her eight great-grandchildren, she told us to always remember how important family is, to be respectful, considerate and always take the time to listen. She was the best teacher of these lesson and we couldn’t have asked for a better mother.
Jane Swingle is a resident of Norwich and echoes the sentiments of her siblings, Betty Mulligan, Nancy Rogers and Tom Rogers. Their mother Marie Mack has lived in Mount Sinai for close to 50 years.
