Ann Schamberry, 87, master cook, seamstress

To her family, Ann Schamberry was a master of the kitchen -- her pies, soups and Italian dishes all made from scratch and rivaling the best, especially her cheesecake.

The tasty creations were made with the same flair as the dresses she stitched together for herself, her granddaughters and their dolls, toiling happily on a manual Singer sewing machine.

The daughter of Italian immigrants who came to New York through Ellis Island, Schamberry raised her children with Old World values of respect for others, honesty and the sanctity of family.

She died Friday at a Woodbury nursing home. She was 87."She believed in respect for others," said Jeff Schamberry, of West Hempstead, one of her two sons and director of photography at Newsday. "I never heard her say a bad thing about anybody. She taught us to respect and love your family, because that's the most important thing."

She was born Ann Onorato on May 29, 1924, in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Her parents, Donato and Agata Maria, were both from Potenza in southern Italy, and raised six children in New York.

Schamberry spent most of her childhood in Woodside, Queens, graduating from William Cullen Bryant High School. She landed a clerical job at Equitable Life, an insurance company in Manhattan, where she met a young underwriter named William Schamberry.

He enlisted in the Army during World War II and fought in Europe from January 1943 to August 1945.After the war, on March 2, 1946, the couple married at St. Sebastian's Church in Woodside and settled in Richmond Hill. Their first son, William Jr., was born in 1949; Jeff in 1951.

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In 1954, the Schamberrys bought their first house on 215th Street in Queens Village. That's the home where Ann Schamberry worked her culinary and sartorial magic.

"Her cheesecake was as good as any cheesecake you'd ever get," Jeff Schamberry said. "And the Thanksgiving stuffing she made, everybody still raves. We still try to make it like her but it's not been duplicated yet."

The elder William and Ann Schamberry moved to East Northport in 1982, shortly before he retired from Equitable in 1985. He died in 2003.

"She really never fully recovered from losing him," Jeff Schamberry said. "Those old-school people -- everything they did they did together."

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Jeff Schamberry said his mother's health began to wane in recent years. She lived in an assisted-living facility, then the Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Woodbury.

Survivors include her son, William, of Bayside; a brother, James, of Boston; and three granddaughters. Visiting hours are Monday at Malverne Funeral Home from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. A funeral Mass will be offered Tuesday at St. Thomas Chapel in West Hempstead at 10 a.m. Burial will follow at Pinelawn Memorial Park in Pinelawn.