Alice Catherine Roche DeCastro, a resident of Sag Harbor for more than 80 years, died in her sleep on January 17, with her son Bruce and her devoted caregiver, Aldonna, at her side. She was 101 years old.
Ms. DeCastro, one of the eight children of John and Mary Roche, was born on April 13, 1914, and raised on Windmill Lane in Southampton and moved to Sag Harbor after graduating from high school and marrying Walter Beckwith DeCastro. They bought a house on Franklin Avenue where they raised three sons—Walter “Skip,” Bruce and Marc. She and her husband also took her nephew, Jeff, into their home and raised him, too. While Mr. DeCastro worked as a machinist for Agawam Aircraft, Ms. DeCastro stayed home and raised her sons, attending all of their games and helping to raise funds for local causes. She was famous for her macaroni salad, which she always delivered in a huge bowl. She taped her name to the bottom of the bowl so it would be returned, and sure enough, after a week or so, the bowl would show up on the back porch, washed and ready to be used for the next fundraiser.
“Franklin Avenue was lined with houses filled with kids back in those days,” said her son Bruce recently. “We were what they would call free-range kids back then. We spent all of our time over at the park or down by the bay, and in the winter, we sledded down the school hill. Mom and the other mothers on Franklin watched all of us. She was always proud that she was one of the first mothers to take Sag Harbor kids over to the ocean in Sagaponack. We’d go almost every day from 4th of July to Labor Day.”
After her husband died in 1967 and the last of her sons had moved away, Ms. DeCastro began a decades-long career working in children’s clothing stores on Main Street, first at Cracker Barrel and then at Sprouts. She liked to say that over the years she had outfitted Sag Harbor’s children, their children, and their children’s children. After the last children’s store closed, she worked for many years for the Chamber of Commerce at the Windmill at the bottom of Main Street, greeting tourists, handing out brochures, and selling souvenirs. She worked at the Windmill until she was 92 and was often referred to around the village as the “Windmill Lady.”
Ms. DeCastro loved locally grown tomatoes fresh off the vine and often got her supply from “The Tomato Lady” in the village. Her daughter-in-law, Sharon, remembers her as the only person she ever knew who ate tomato sandwiches for breakfast. Ms. DeCastro claimed that Sharon was the only person she knew who ate potato salad for breakfast, but allowed as how Sharon made as good a potato salad as her own macaroni salad she was famous for.
Ms. DeCastro is survived by her sons, Bruce and Marc; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
A funeral was held on Friday, January 22, at 10 a.m. at St. Andrew’s Church in Sag Harbor. Funeral arrangements were under the direction of the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor.
on Jan 21, 2016