Margaret Lanza, 102, longtime Malverne resident, dies

Margaret Sciallo Lanza, a longtime Malverne resident and mother of three children, died Sept. 6. She was 102.

Lanza lived in Malverne for 70 years and participated in the Mercy League and Sons of Italy, said her daughter, Marie Lanza Wiese, 79, of Head of the Harbor.

Through her 90s, Lanza drove a white Oldsmobile with a plastic flower attached to the car's antenna, said her son, Richard Lanza, 71, of Brookline, Mass. And she continued to bowl - with scores as high as 200 - and go dancing, Wiese said.

"My mother was a very energetic woman," Wiese said. "She was very, very active."

Lanza was born on Dec. 29, 1907, in Manhattan, Wiese said. Lanza dropped out of school at age 14 and went to work in a factory crocheting beads onto dresses, Wiese said.

Her checks went to her father and stepmother every week, who, in return, gave Lanza 25 cents in allowance, Richard Lanza said.

"It was enough to go the movies and get a soda," Lanza recalls his mother telling him.

In 1927, at the age of 19, she married Charles Lanza - who also had to drop out of school at an early age, Richard Lanza said. The family moved to Malverne in the 1930s. The couple was married almost 50 years, until Charles Lanza died in 1977.

All of Lanza's children went to college, said Richard Lanza, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her children and grandchildren have an average of "two college degrees a kid," he said, laughing.

In addition to her two surviving children, Lanza is survived by her brother, Dominic Sciallo of City Island, five grandchildren and seven grandchildren.

Services have been held. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Lanza's name to Mercy Medical Center, Development Office, 1000 N. Village Ave., P.O. Box 9024, Rockville Centre, NY 11571.