Maria Luigia Coppola

1936 - 2021

Maria Luigia Coppola

Hyde Park - On February 23, 2021 Maria Luigia Coppola (née Mazzella), loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, died peacefully at home surrounded by her daughters.

Born on the 28th of March 1936 on the island of Ischia in the gulf of Naples, Italy, to Concetta Amalfitano and Giovan Giuseppe Mazzella, she was the oldest of 7 siblings. Despite the hardships during the war and its aftermath, she grew up in a loving family and close-knit community by the sea. After she finished school at 16, she made clothes for one of the shops on the island to help the family make ends meet. She even found work as an extra for the film The Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster, when a Hollywood production company chose Ischia as the filming location.

When she was 19, Maria moved to the United States with her father and her two sisters Enzina and Franca and settled in Marlboro, NY. Soon after that, she met the love of her life and our dad Joseph Coppola on a bus in Newburgh, NY. He heard her speaking the same Italian dialect, so he introduced himself and it turned out that he was from Monte di Procida, a town just across the gulf facing Ischia. That, along with his gorgeous blue eyes, told her that he was the one and 7 months later, on February 16, 1957, they married.

After the hardship of life in war-torn Italy, these were happy years. The rest of her family from Italy joined her in the US and after working for a few years as a seamstress, she and Joe opened up Coppola's Restaurant in Poughkeepsie, NY with two of her sisters, Lina and Franca and our dad's two brothers, Vincent and Tony. She worked alongside her husband in the restaurant as a waitress, bartender, hostess and bookkeeper while raising her children. On her days off, she loved spending time with her extended family at her parents' house in Marlboro, singing Neapolitan songs around the dinner table with everyone's children running around.

For Maria, family was everything. She loved us all so much and every moment together was a reason to celebrate, whether that was going out for dinner, a drive out to Vanderbilt's in Hyde Park, a concert at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, or a shopping trip and a Broadway show in New York City. She loved spending time with her siblings and once they all retired, they would regularly get together to tell stories and sing songs, continuing that sense of well-being when they first arrived in this country.

During her life, she and our dad Joe travelled many times back to their hometowns in Italy making sure that their children and their grandchildren could have a connection with their roots and could get to know their relatives in Italy. She was so curious about the world and even during her widowhood, she continued to travel and would bring along her children and grandchildren to places like the Caribbean, England, France, Switzerland and Greece.

She was the loving mother to Teresa Morgan and her son-in-law Jim of Poughkeepsie, NY, Tina Sucato and her son-in-law Dave of Hyde Park, NY, Nick Coppola and her daughter-in-law Barbara of Charlotte, NC, and Giovanna Coppola and her son-in-law Davide Piccolo of Ischia, Italy. She is the loving grandmother of 9 grandchildren - Joe, Adriana, Joshua, Christina, Marcus, Sabrina, Jenna, Kara and Leah and the loving great-grandmother of 5 -great-grandchildren Martin, Emma, Penelope, Oliver and Luca. In addition to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she is survived by her sisters Lina Coppola, Franca Coppola, Tina Palumbo, Nancy Coen, Antonietta Fattore and Luigi Mazzella.

Her husband Joseph Coppola predeceased her in 1994.

We wish to think all of her carers who helped us make her comfortable at home, especially Rose, Debbie, Cherry and Sophia who were with her at the end. We are grateful for the companionship and friendship they gave to her during her final years with us.

Maria often liked to tell the story of how after filming was over for The Crimson Pirate, she climbed on top of the pirate ship that was anchored off the shore and dove off from the bow. She executed a perfect arch and shot down so deep that the water grew cold around her. She was frightened and thought she wouldn't make it back to the surface, but when she finally emerged, her friends shouted and clapped around her, amazed by the feat she had accomplished.

This is the way we'd like to remember her - vivacious, courageous and resilient, surrounded by people who loved her and cheered her on.

Funeral services and a Mass of Christian Burial were held privately. She is buried in the family plot at St. Peter's Cemetery, Poughkeepsie.

In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Maria may be made to the Alzheimer's Association, 2649 South Road, Suite 101, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 (www.alz.org) or the Hudson Valley Hospice Foundation, 80 Washington St., Suite 204, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601. (www.hvhospice.org)

Arrangements by Sweet's Funeral Home, Hyde Park. To leave an online condolence, please visit www.sweetsfuneralhome.com.