Devout Catholic Millie Tricamo dies at 81

Millie Tricamo cared about two things above all else: her family and her faith, her son David said last week.

Tricamo died Thursday at the age of 81 at Stony Brook University Medical Center. The cause of death is unknown, the family said.

A devout Roman Catholic, she attended Mass twice a day, even in the worst weather. "Even in a blizzard and there wasn't a car on the road, that woman would go," said David Tricamo, a Suffolk Police Department detective sergeant.

David Tricamo recalled going to her Dix Hills home in a severe snowstorm to check on her, but didn't find her there. "I drive to St. Matthew's, and there she is in one of the pews," he said.

Her faith, while strong, was "quietly spiritual," her son said. "She wasn't a preacher."

Tricamo eschewed material things. "When we told her we were going to buy her a car, it took us three years to get her to sit down with us. We finally plopped one in her driveway," her son said.

Tricamo grew up in Bensonhurst in a family of 12 children. She met her husband, Frank, who owned a luncheonette, in Brooklyn around 1960. They married within six months. "She was a perfect catch, and my father jumped all over that," her son said.

They moved to Dix Hills in 1961 and had four children. A stay-at-home mother, she didn't push her children, preferring instead to gently guide them, her son said.

After Frank Tricamo died in 1996, Millie Tricamo focused on her children and grandchildren. A frequent baby-sitter, she made a point of attending every concert, sports game or any activity of her children and grandchildren, said granddaughter Laurie Ann Tricamo.

"She was a great listener," Laurie Ann Tricamo said. "If we had problems, we could always come to her for advice or if we needed a cry. She wouldn't judge."

"She was very protective and proud of us," her grandson, Frank, said.

Besides David, Tricamo is survived by two other sons Frank and Robert; daughter Donna Marie; and two grandchildren.

Visitation is Sunday and Monday from 2 to 4:30 and 7 to 9:30 p.m. at the Claude R. Boyd-Caratozzolo Funeral Home in Deer Park. A funeral Mass will be said at St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church in Dix Hills at 9:45 a.m. Interment will follow at St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale.