Catherine “Katie” Pierro of Riverhead died on June 29 at Acadia Nursing Home in Riverhead, where she had been living since September 2020. She was 94.
She was born Caterina Carmela Tripodi on July 19, 1927 in the Bronx, the daughter of Alfonso Rocco Rosario Tripodi and Natalia Carini.
She grew up during the Great Depression and World War II. When she was young, the Tripodi family moved all around Manhattan, and she often told stories of her childhood, and the adventures that she and her siblings and cousins had.
Eventually, by the time she was 12, the family settled in at 308 East 120th Street in “Italian Harlem.” She was the fourth youngest of 16 siblings and half-siblings (excluding those who did not survive infancy).
By the age of 12 she and Joseph Pierro became a couple, and after a long teenage romance, when she was 21, they were married in September 1948 at Holy Rosary Church in Manhattan.
Their four children were all born in New York City, and the Pierro family lived in Manhattan; Saint Albans, Queens; Manhattan and finally from 1961 in Flanders.
She and Joseph “Chubby” Pierro were married for over 70 years when he died at age 92 in 2019. Pierro loved her children, and while her husband did whatever he could to earn money to support the family, her job was to love and take care of all her children, her family said, noting that is what she devoted her life to.
Pierro loved music, from Frank Sinatra, to Johnny Mathis, to the Beatles. And in spite of her major hearing loss, she danced the night away at age 90, moving to the thump of the beat at the wedding of her son Joe Pierro to Katherine Steinmuller in 2017.
By the 1960s, Pierro and most of her brothers and sisters had settled in the Riverhead-Hampton Bays area, and as adults they loved to get together, tell stories, and play games, while all their children ran around and had a great time together. And when she and her sisters started laughing, it was like an earthquake that was hard to quell, her family said.
She is survived by her sister, Lena Cestaro; her sister-in-law Alberta ‘Tita’ Tripodi; her children, Louis Pierro and his wife Maureen Fahey of Milton, Massachusetts, Joseph Pierro and his wife Katherine Steinmuller of Westhampton Beach, Lorraine Ann Pierro of Riverhead, and Robert Pierro and his fiancée Robin Mudge of Flanders; her grandchildren Joseph, Natalie, Catherine, Evan, Jordan and Shana Pierro; two great-grandsons, Ewan and Gareth Thomas; many nieces and nephews and their families; and many other relatives in the New York and New Jersey area, as well as those in Italy that she never got the chance to meet. She will be remembered, loved and missed by all who knew her, her family said.
Visitiation will be held at Tuthill-Mangano Funeral Home in Riverhead on Thursday, July 7, from 4-8 p.m. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at Saint John the Evangelist R.C. Church in Riverhead on Friday, July 8, at 9:30 a.m. She will be buried at Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary Cemetery in Southampton, together with her parents and her late husband Joseph Anthony Pierro.
Staff Writer on Jul 1, 2022