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Maria Redo

    OBITUARY

    Volunteer and Bocce Aficionado Maria Redo Dies at 99

    By

    This article was updated on Aug. 25, 2024.

    Maria E. Redo always said she was a city girl through and through, but that she loved Truro more than any other place in the world. And that is where she died, at her summer home off Old County Road, on Aug. 11, 2024 after a recent decline in health. She was 99.

    Maria Redo playing bocce at 96. (Photo by Nancy Bloom)

    The daughter of Ernest Lappano and Mary Spicciato, Maria was born on Jan. 12, 1925 in New York City. The oldest of three sisters, she grew up on 207th Street and Broadway. As a young girl, she was “a huge bobbysoxer,” said her son, Philip. She attended Frank Sinatra shows at the Paramount before he was anything more than a teen idol.

    Maria’s father was a New York State assemblyman who soured on politics and went to work as an assistant district attorney under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Maria followed in her father’s footsteps and was active in local politics.

    She attended Fordham University starting in 1943 and, given the dearth of men at the university during World War II, seized the opportunity to become editor of the student newspaper.

    She graduated in 1947 and enrolled in the graduate program in biology at Hunter College, where one of her instructors was Frank Redo. They married in 1948, and she taught second grade in the New York City schools until her children were born. She later earned a degree in gerontology and returned to teaching as a volunteer at La Scuola D’Italia.

    She and Frank, a pediatric surgeon who predeceased her in 2006 after 58 years of marriage, discovered the Outer Cape in the early 1950s when they randomly chose Provincetown for a week’s vacation.

    Arriving in the dark after a nearly 13-hour drive from New York, Maria was immediately disappointed. She thought the town felt tawdry and rough. It also smelled of fish. And she didn’t like the room they’d been given.

    The following morning, however, she awoke to the brightest sun she’d ever seen. She took a walk by herself, exploring the tiny streets and the working harbor. She bumped into locals and found the Portuguese Bakery, and when she returned to her just-waking husband she had fallen completely in love with Provincetown. For the next decade, they vacationed here each summer until they required more space for a growing family and were introduced to Truro.

    Truro was where Maria felt surrounded by friends and neighbors, by nature and wonder. She loved meeting people from all over the country and from around the world with so many different backgrounds and family traditions but sharing a love of this special part of Cape Cod.

    Maria was an early organizer of the Pamet Harbor Yacht and Tennis Club. She helped organize teen dances beginning in the early 1970s, supported the sailing program, and over the years coordinated and participated in countless lectures, concerts, and dinners. As recently as this year, she was an active member of the Truro Book Club.

    For nearly 40 Truro summers, Maria hosted an open house, potluck, and bocce night every Sunday. Her husband had built a regulation court in the back yard, as her father had done at the family’s summer house in Westchester County in 1930. At bocce night’s height, dozens of people might show up at the Redos’ to play. Maria’s accuracy in placing the ball, even in her late 90s, was spot on.

    Back in New York, Maria was president of the Metropolitan Republican Club; founded in 1902 by supporters of Teddy Roosevelt, the group supported and helped launch Sen. Jacob Javits and New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay.

    In the early 1970s, when women like Bella Abzug emerged as prominent figures in national politics, Maria was asked to run for Congress but declined because, Philip said, “She didn’t think she could win — even though her husband was ready to move to Washington.” She did, however, agree to serve as an alternate delegate to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City.

    Maria did work of national impact as a one-woman volunteer: she conceived and executed a senior citizen discount program in New York City (Community Concern for Senior Citizens) as a response to the inflation crisis of the 1970s. Her program became a national model for other cities, and many of these programs remain in place today.

    An article about her work in the New York Times in 1975 noted that “2,600 supermarkets, restaurants, cleaners, beauty shops, shoe‐repair stores, hardware stores, meat markets and others throughout the city now are giving discounts to the aged as a result of Mrs. Redo’s efforts.” Mayor Abraham Beame awarded her the key to the city.

    Maria and her husband loved to travel, particularly to Italy, where she often toured with Truro friends.

    Her survivors include her children, Philip L. Redo and wife Michelle of Brunswick, Maine and Martha Redo of Franklin, Tenn., and many nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and -nephews.

    In addition to her husband, she was predeceased by daughter-in-law Jenette S. Kerr and her sisters, Lillian Savastano and Eleanor Colletta.

    A celebration of her life was held on Aug. 15, and she was buried that day beside her husband at Pine Grove Cemetery in Truro. The family thanks the Truro Council on Aging for support and guidance.

    Donations in Maria’s memory may be sent to Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, 291 Route 6, South Wellfleet 02663.

    'B' IS FOR BOCCE

    A Truro Bocce Ball Tradition Continues

    For 31 years, Maria Redo has hosted happy hour games at the family home

    By

    TRURO — If there’s a red flag with a “B” waving in front of Maria Redo’s house off Old County Road on Sunday, it means there will be a bocce game that day.

    For 31 years, the Redos have been hosting bocce at their summer home here for family, friends, and neighbors. At first, the games were on Wednesdays and Sundays, but as the years went on and life got in the way, bocce became a strictly Sunday tradition.

    Maria, who is of Italian descent, is 96 now. She has been playing the game ever since she was a child on Manhattan’s East Side.

    At age 96, Maria Redo is still an accurate bocce ball tosser. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    “I grew up with a bocce ball court at my parents’ house,” she says. “I knew bocce.” Her father built a summer house in Westchester County in 1930. It had a bocce court.

    “All the men played seriously,” Redo says. “After that, the kids and wives would play.”

    Bocce is at least 7,000 years old. The earliest evidence of the game is a 5200 B.C. painting of two boys playing, discovered by Englishman Sir Francis Petrial, in an Egyptian tomb, according to worldbocce.org.

    Giuseppi Garibaldi, who helped unify Italy in the 1800s, is credited with popularizing the sport as it is known today. The first Bocce Olympiad was held in Athens in 1896, and bocce has been a part of international sports ever since.

    The game is played with eight large balls that can be made of wood or plastic, but balls of solid resin or stainless steel are favored by serious players. There is also a small white ball called the pallino.

    Two teams of two players each compete on sand or grass. The dimensions of the court don’t really matter for casual games, but an official bocce ball court measures 76 feet long and 12 feet wide.

    The game begins with one player tossing the pallino from one end of the court to the other. Players then take turns tossing their large balls (four balls per team) to get as close to the pallino as possible. That determines the score. When all eight balls have been tossed, the players tally up the points and repeat the process going the other way. Games are played to 12, 15, or 21.

    Redo and her husband, Frank, a renowned pediatric surgeon at New York Hospital, first visited the Cape in the 1950s and built their Truro house in 1968. During that time, Maria says, bocce was unknown here.

    “No one at that time understood the game, but I assured them it was fun,” she says.

    Frank built a regulation bocce court in their back yard. In 1990, they started hosting happy hour with bocce, and it became a tradition.

    Teams form at the beginning of the summer, and the Redos keep the scoreboard. There’s also a scoreboard to keep track of the games throughout the summer. Team members are assigned a little paper necklace with a number and color so there’s no confusion.

    The games started with 8 or 10 couples participating. Thirty-one years is a long time, though. Most of the original players have passed on.

    Frank died in 2006. But Maria, their daughter Martha Redo, and niece Mary Cregan have kept the Sunday games going strong.

    “You never know who’s gonna be here,” Mary says.

    New neighbors and friends have helped make that happen. The family says this summer was one of the biggest groups they’ve ever had. They held a “bocce banquet” on Sept. 5 to celebrate the end of the season.

    After a lifetime of tossing, Maria can still play — and her accuracy is spot on.

    To determine the score when two balls are very close to each other, a measurement is sometimes needed. The Redo family’s official measuring tool is an old empty tomato sauce can with a string attached to it. The can, the necklaces, the scoreboard, and flag have become Redo family relics because they haven’t been replaced in 31 years.

    The games are mostly for fun at the Redo house, but arguments sometimes break out. “Italians take bocce very seriously,” says Maria.

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