Dinner memorializes teacher, benefits her scholarship fund

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Moe Donofrio and her nephew Owen Timlin during the spaghetti benefit dinner for the Maria Viglio Ursuline High School Scholarship Fund at St. Christine Parish Center. Moe helped organize the event and Owen was a student of Maria's in 2004, Sunday June 28, 2009 Lisa-Ann Ishihara

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Bob Viglio and Angela Cimonetti serve Lisa and Eric Rosko during the spaghetti benefit dinner for the Maria Viglio Ursuline High School Scholarship Fund at St. Christine Parish Center. Family and friends working the event, Bob is Maria's brother in law and Angela is a very close friend of the family, Sunday June 28, 2009 Lisa-Ann Ishihara

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Shalynn Keller and her daughter Elizabeth (5) of Boardman during the spaghetti benefit dinner for the Maria Viglio Ursuline High School Scholarship Fund at St. Christine Parish Center. Shalynn and Moe Donofrio helped organize the event, Sunday June 28, 2009 Lisa-Ann Ishihara

By Jeanne Starmack

The scholarship honors the memory of a beloved St. Christine’s teacher.

YOUNGSTOWN — They sat on the curb in front of St. Christine’s Parish Center on Sunday afternoon — five friends taking a break from serving spaghetti and busing tables.

The parking lot was nearly full, indicating a brisk business — yes, the five said, the dinner, a scholarship benefit, had attracted a lot of people.

Inside, people feasted on spaghetti by Fifth Season Catering of Minereal Ridge and on so many homemade desserts made by volunteers that there’s likely going to have to be a follow-up bake sale.

St. Christine’s teacher Marie Viglio would be pleased, because the money raised is in her memory and will allow a child from the grade school to attend Ursuline High School in Youngstown.

There is now talk of making the dinner an annual event, said Moe Donofrio, a friend of Viglio’s who organized the dinner.

There isn’t likely a better way to honor Viglio’s memory — she believed a Catholic education was important, Donofrio said.

Viglio devoted her life to that end for more than 30 years at St. Christine’s. She died at 55, of cancer, in May.

Even after her cancer diagnosis in January 2008, she worked — up until she just couldn’t anymore at the beginning of 2009, said her husband, Tony. The annual science fairs at the school were her project — she came back for this year’s at the end of January, he said.

And the young servers and table busers? They were her students — most of them had gone through her life after her diagnosis with her, he said.

She loved what she did, and after 30 years, “she still connected with the kids,” said Tony.

Outside on that curb, that connection was clearly evident. The five friends, all who’d been in Viglio’s seventh- and eighth-grade science classes in the past two years, talked about what it was like to have her in their lives.

A fast talker with a big Diet Coke from McDonald’s by her side, she could fit 10 prayers into one minute, said Hannah Fulvi, 14, Shane Conway, 15, and Alex Viglio, 15, who is her nephew.

Along with Sam Fabrizio, 16, and Marc Flauto, 15, they remembered her “crazy” diagrams and the 10 pictures of her idol, Albert Einstein, in her classroom.

She loved to sing. And she was fun.

“Every day, it was new,” said Alex.

“You never knew what would happen next,” said Shane.

Viglio not only connected with her students but with many other people in the community, said her brother-in-law, Dave Ditzler, an Austintown trustee.

The medal he wore around his neck, of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, was one of 1,000 that were passed out at her calling hours, he said. They were gone in three hours.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was special to Viglio, he said. She was the first person born in the United States to be canonized, and she established the first Catholic grade school.

“The calling hours were amazing, he said. “There were kids there from Mooney and Ursuline in baseball and soccer uniforms — all St. Christine alumni.”

Tributes from the calling hours are also going toward the scholarship fund, he said.

Donofrio became friends with Viglio when she taught at St. Christine’s from 2002 to 2008. They and others worked on plays, with Viglio as the assistant director who “held it all together.”

“Half the fun of doing those plays was being with Marie,” said Donofrio, who now works in Youngstown schools. She and other organizers just knew that benefiting the scholarship was “the right thing to do,” she said.

Many people helped. “The beautiful thing about St. Christine’s community is, you ask them to do one thing, and they do 10,” she said.