Carmela Matthews of Plainview dies at 76

Carmela Matthews of Plainview, a homemaker and avid fan of the New York Rangers, Giants and Mets -- in that order -- died peacefully surrounded by her family in a Melville hospice on Tuesday after a three-year battle with lung cancer.

She was 76.

Matthews was something of a sports maverick in the home. Her love for the hockey team puzzled her three sons and daughter because none of them played that sport.

"She got into sports because her sons played them," said her son Steve Matthews of Melville, who is Newsday's thoroughbred racing handicapper. The family reasoned that her interest in football and baseball were understandable because the boys played those sports.

"For some reason, she was a bigger Rangers fan than the other two," he said. "She just got enamored with the Rangers."

Indeed, while she celebrated the Mets' legendary season in 1969 and their triumph in 1986, she was beside herself with joy when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994.

"She couldn't even sit still," Steve Matthews recalled. He added that his mother, who never learned to drive, used to walk two miles from their home to the football field at his high school to watch him play.

The former Carmela Sausa was born in Harlem on Jan. 22, 1935. She grew up in Queens, first living in Flushing and then spending the bulk of her childhood in Astoria, where she graduated from Bryant High School. She began working as a bookkeeper for McFadden Publications, which released glamour and motion picture magazines.

In 1955, she married Wallace Matthews and the couple had a son, also named Wallace, in 1957. The younger Wallace Matthews is a former Newsday sports columnist who works for ESPN. Three other children would follow: Steve in 1958, Christopher in 1961, and daughter Deneen in 1964.

The family moved to Plainview from Astoria in 1962.

Carmela Matthews enjoyed cooking, sewing, playing bingo and online poker, but mostly spending time with her eight grandchildren. She never missed a school performance or sporting event, family members said. She was fond of the occasional trip to casinos in Atlantic City and Connecticut.

Besides Steve Matthews, she is survived by her husband of 56 years, Wallace; her other children, Wallace, of Oyster Bay, Christopher, of Plainview, Deneen Cirruzzo, of Northport, and the grandchildren.

Visitation is Saturday and Sunday at Vernon C. Wagner Funeral Home in Hicksville, from 2-5 p.m. and 7-9:30 p.m.

A funeral Mass will be on Monday at 10:30 a.m. at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Hicksville. Burial will follow at Calverton National Cemetery.