Louise S. Rossi

Aunt Lou, I only met you once, but you left abig impression. I thought you were adorable. Enjoy your family reunion in Heaven.

my dear Louise, you will always hold a special place in my heart, love you, Midge

There was more to my Aunt Lou than this obit.

She was one of 10 children born to Stefano and Giovanne Senese.
She was born and raised in Rotterdam Junction and told me so many stories about home.
Aunt Lou would tell me about the big house and the two huge bedrooms upstairs. One for the boys and one for the girls. She told be about the Summer Kitchen out in the back and of the endless canning / preserving fruits, vegetables and sauce. The fruit cellar where everything was kept and how much she disliked going down there.
She told me about her collie mix Jingles. The tricks that he could do and that he was such a good dog.

Then there was her first job , a waitress at a small diner. My Aunt Bertha had to do some fast talking to get them to hire her. They didn’t think she could do the job because she was so small. She had that job for 2 years and she told me the only issue she had was that no matter how many times her sisters or mother tried to fix it , her uniform was always too large.

Aunt Lou was a spectacular cook. No one made meatballs or braciole or sauce like my aunt. She said her secret was that she used raisins instead of sugar to cut the bitterness from the paste.
She also made the best stuffing … ever.

Aunt Lou was a ‘Social smoker’ she said that she didn’t inhale so she wasn’t really smoking , just doing it to be sociable . When Sunday dinner was done , she’d gather up all the plates , bowls and wipe them out w/a paper towel and that towel was put by the left side of the sink.
She’d light a Newport , put it in the left side of her mouth and tilt her head so the smoke would’t get in her eyes. I’d be on the right side of her , drying the dishes and I’d watch that ash getting longer and longer until almost 1/2 of the cigarette was ash. Shes dry her hands , tap the ash intact onto the paper towel , take a puff and put it back in her mouth until the ash was almost to the filter. 9 times out of 10 there were two very long ashes in that paper towel. As a kid , that just amazed me.
Many years passed and I was at the sink w/her drying dishes and said how it just wasn’t the same w/o watching that endless ash at the end of her cigarette.
I had to go in the drawer to find a dry towel and when I turned to get a dish to dry , she poked me in my ribs … I looked to see she had put a straw in her mouth and she said ‘How’s this?’ .

My aunts favorite candy was Fanny Farmer’s ribbon candy. There was always the long white Fanny Farmer box on the end table in the living room. There’d actually be two , the one with assorted chocolates were always visible … the one with the ribbon candy was always hidden off to the side but one of us kids always spotted it.
Aunt Lou loved bananas and red grapes. There were always some on the table in the bowl with walnuts , almonds and hazel nuts in the shell along with various nut crackers & picks.

She worked at Western Union for 45 years (about). It was in the Reynolds Arcade Bldg. by Main & State. She loved the job on the 2nd floor but I remember her not being very happy when she had to work down in the lobby office. She made so many life long friends there. I think retirement was bittersweet for her but she really liked her job and told me stories about it even while she was in Geneva.

Aunt Lou also enjoyed the occasional whiskey sour. Just the one made her happy and a couple extra cherries would make her day.
She was also a huge fan of Burger King’s hotcakes.
I remember her telling me how she had a crush on Gregory Peck and that she loved all of his movies.
She loved listening to Perry Como and you could not drag her from the TV when Lawrence Welk was on.

She and Bill were married for 67 years.

RIP Aunt Lou and thank you for everything.

Lenna