Norma Recco, 87, home care founder

Norma Recco devoted nearly half her life to improving home health care. Fittingly, when she died last week, it was peaceful, her family said, in her own bed -- with children and grandchildren by her side.

"That really says it all about home care," said her son, Frank Recco Jr. "That's really what she wished for everyone."

Recco died April 19 in Boca Raton, Fla., at the age of 87. Born in Brooklyn, she lived in Massapequa for 45 years, raising four children and founding a company that now serves five counties and employs 1,200 people.

Recco Home Care Services began in 1970, with Recco using her experience at a temporary personnel placement firm as a model for matching skilled caregivers with the elderly, ill and disabled.

"She just felt, what's better than having family around to care for you?" Frank Recco said. "Rather than an institution where you're put aside or in a corner."

As her company grew, Recco still drove caretakers to their appointments, recalled Taryn Birkmire, now executive director. In the early 1990s, she co-founded the New York State Association of Health Care Providers and helped develop today's stringent industry regulations.

"Without her, I don't know if home health care would be what it is today," Birkmire said. "She fought for everything."

Daughter Norma Anzalone said the company was like a "fifth child." The rest of the family, she added, received the same care from the woman who loved horses and taking her Lincoln on long drives upstate.

Thanksgiving was a favorite holiday, Anzalone recalled, with Recco handing down her mother's sausage-stuffing recipe, helping her grandchildren prepare the menu and excitedly planning annual Friday-after "extravaganzas."

First, it was a Broadway show, and, in later years, when the holiday celebration shifted to Florida, Disney World.

"She was really the head and heart of our family," Anzalone said.

She is predeceased by her husband, Frank J. Recco Sr., and is survived by four children, Frank Jr. of Smithtown, Anzalone of Boca Raton, and Patricia and Michael Recco, both of Massapequa; 14 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Visitation is Monday and Tuesday from 2 to 4:30 p.m. and 7 to 9:30 p.m. at James Funeral Home, 540 Broadway, Massapequa. Funeral Mass will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at St. Rose of Lima Church, followed by entombment at Pinelawn Memorial Cemetery.