Valley women walk in memory of breast cancer victim

By ELISE FRANCO

BOARDMAN — Mary Ann Allegretto lost the battle with breast cancer when she was 69, but everyone who knew her said she’d never want to be remembered for being sick.

In fact, many people never knew she had cancer until after her death.

Kristy Taaffe, 30, of Boardman, said Mary Ann, who she’d met only a handful of times, never spoke of her illness and didn’t want pity from anyone. She didn’t know it then, but meeting Mary Ann in Lariccia’s Italian Market Place two years ago would leave a lasting impression.

“The brief time I knew her was very close to the end of her life,” Taaffe said. “I never knew she had cancer until afterward.”

Mary Ann, who was from Youngstown, was diagnosed with stage IV inflammatory breast cancer in February 2003. Doctors gave her six months to live — a standard amount of time for someone with such a progressive type of cancer.

Her son, Michael Allegretto, said she lived for almost four years after her diagnosis, but that’s just the kind of person she was.

“She battled strong — you would never know by seeing her that she was battling as hard as she was,” he said. “She never let the cancer run her life. She ran her own life with the cancer.”

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com