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Longevity comes in the family genes
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Grace Taranto looks 75, acts 50, and celebrated her 100th birthday Aug. 15.
At 16, she went to work in the mill as a tin sorter.
HOWLAND — Grace Taranto looks 75, acts 50, and celebrated her 100th birthday Aug. 15.
“God let me live this long,” she said when asked the secret to her long life.
She said she doesn’t smoke or drink, but admitted sipping a little of her father’s homemade wine when she was young.
Actually, her longevity is probably in the family genes.
She is the oldest of six children, five of whom are still living in their homes. Grace has been in an assisted-living apartment at Shepherd of the Valley since 2005.
Her brothers, Gaetano (Guy), Donald and Joseph Marino, are all of Warren. Her sisters, Mary Ruggeri and Bessie Sidote, live in Cleveland and Chicago, respectively.
Three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and friends gathered to celebrate on her birthday at Vernon’s Cafe and Banquet Centre.
Grace was born Aug. 15, 1908, in Giosa Marea, Provicia Messina in Sicily. At age 11, she came to the United States with her mother, Sara Colega Marino, to join her father, Salvatore, who had come to the Warren area a year earlier to look for work, which he found at Republic Steel Corp.
He also found work for Grace.
He pulled her out of school at age 14 to help take care of her brothers and sisters and cook meals and clean rooms for boarders in their home, which she said was near Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren. And when she was 16, she went to work at the mill, where she was a tin sorter for some 30 years before retiring.
In 1927, she married Salvatore Serrino, and they had a son, Frank, who died in 2000. Her second husband, Larry Taranto, died in the 1980s.
Grace had only one son of her own, but she helped rear her grandchildren for several years between the time their mother, Jean (Lawlor) Serrino, died of cancer, and their father remarried.
“The best thing was to watch my grandchildren grow up. They were like my own kids,” she said.
Grace has lived a long time and seems to be in good health now, but it has not been all smooth sailing.
She has outlived two husbands and her son, and has twice survived cancer.
“We all have troubles in life,” she said.
But, even at 100, Grace remains vigorous, and according to her granddaughter, Cheryl Gingrich of Austintown, likes to cook and makes the “best spaghetti sauce and meatballs in the world.”
When asked the secret to her great sauce, Grace responded simply, as she did when asked the secret to her long life.
“There is no secret. I just make it like I always did.”
alcorn@vindy.com