A centenarian who survived the pandemic that was the 1918 Spanish influenza has died after contracting coronavirus.
Primetta Giacopini “was a fighter,” her daughter, 61-year-old Dorene Giacopini told The Associated Press Thursday of her mother’s incredible life, which ended on Sept. 16. She was 105.
Surviving the Spanish flu was just one aspect of Giacopini’s eventful century on Earth.
“I think my mother would have been around quite a bit longer” had she not gotten sick with COVID, said Dorene. “She had a hard life and her attitude always was … basically, all Americans who were not around for World War II were basically spoiled brats.”
After her 25-year-old mother in 1918 Connecticut became one of the roughly 675,000 Americans who died of the Spanish flu, then-2-year-old Primetta was sent to live with an Italian foster family.
Dorene said she’s been “reminding myself that she was 105. We always talk about … my grandmother and mother, the only thing that could kill them was a worldwide pandemic.”
Primetta and the foster family relocated in 1929 to Italy, which she fled in 1940 — after initially refusing local authorities’ advice — as the country entered the war and her love, an Italian fighter pilot, named Vittori Andriani, was missing in action. Andriani was later discovered to have died near Malta.
When she returned to Torrington, about 50 miles north of Bridgeport, Primetta began working at Bristol’s General Motors plant, where she ground steel for the war effort and met Umbert “Bert” Giacopini, to whom she was married until his death in 2002.
Dorene was born with spina bifida, in which the spinal cord is not fully developed, in 1960, and the family moved to San Jose in 1975 so that she would not slip during the cold North Eastern winters. Dorene walked with the help of crutches until she was 50.
She recalled her mother’s tenacity when fighting for her, whether at school or in the city where they lived.
Primetta fell ill after her caretaker’s husband came back from an Idaho wedding. Though the trio had been vaccinated, the caretaker had been feeling sick and Primetta was coughing when her daughter visited on Sept. 9.
“I made sure we said ‘I love you.'” She did the ‘See you later, alligator.’ I think we both said, ‘After a while, crocodile,'” Dorene told AP, noting, “That was the last time I saw her.”
Primetta was in the emergency room later that week, diagnosed with pneumonia and eventually, her daughter was made to decide whether she should go on a ventilator, though she was advised that, “Nobody over 80 makes it off a ventilator,” and removed her oxygen.
“She had such a strong heart that she remained alive for more than 24 hours after they removed the oxygen,” said Dorene.
With News Wire Services
