Victoria "Vicky" Denninger

Victoria Catino Denninger, Vicky to her many friends, a beloved daughter, sister, mother, and grandmother, passed away on August 15, 2024, in the embrace of her family, after bravely battling for years with severe pulmonary disease. In this final battle she showed the toughness and love for life that made her a pillar to those who loved her and depended on her.
Born on October 16, 1936, in the Bronx, New York City, to Ida and Robert Catino, she grew up fiercely proud of her family's roots in the Campania region of Italy. After graduating from Mount Saint Mary Academy and Marymount College in Tarrytown with a focus on painting, which took her to Rome for her junior year, she served her father's growing carpentry-contracting company in the heart of Manhattan and enrolled but never completed her degree at New York Law School. Her birth had missed by 10 days the New York Yankees' fifth World Series championship and Joe DiMaggio's first (of nine, thank you), but she never forgot getting to see Joltin' Joe play at Yankee Stadium. She savored the Yankees' 22 other championships in her lifetime, and even the 10 World Series losses. You can't win 'em all, she might say, but it's fun to try.
After marrying Jack Denninger in 1964 (they met in Rome!) and having sons John and Tony, the family moved in 1972 from Christopher Street in Greenwich Village to Beacon Hill in Boston, where she resided at Louisburg Square for 52 years.
In the 1980s, she returned to work as a legal secretary and recommitted herself to painting, first under the mentorship of painter Joel Babb at the Museum of Fine Arts, who also introduced her to Sumner, Maine. There he and his wife Frannie became close friends and neighbors after Vicky bought the house across the street from them and transformed it in the ensuing decades to a painter's studio and home.
When in Maine, she returned to a childhood love of horseback riding, in addition to her painting, and also loved to grow her own food (not to mention pumpkins for the grandchildren), and care for the land. Vicky was a lifelong traveler, avid reader and movie lover, and looked forward to celebrating 40 years of sobriety in May 2025 with some of the dearest friends she made in her life.
Vicky is survived by her older sister, Roberta Lubeck, her two sons, John and Tony Denninger, her daughters-in-law, Helen Haley and Samina Iqbal, and her grandchildren Jacob, Grace, Joya, and Ayla, who were the light of her life.
Vicky has left us with her courage, as she dared to make major changes at key points of her life and never backed down from a fight, her wisdom, as she knew to accept life and embrace life as it actually is, on her own terms, and ultimately her serenity, as she faced death as she had faced life, with poise, self-confidence, affection and much, much humor.
A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 10AM in St. Ignatius of Loyola Church, Chestnut Hill, followed by interment in Newton Cemetery.