New Hyde Park couple celebrates 70 years

Ann and Dominic Barilla met 75 years ago at a church fair in Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.

“As soon as I saw her, I said ‘that’s going to be my wife,’” Dominc Barilla said, as his wife laughed.

And he was right.

The couple that grew up blocks apart from each other in the Lower East side, but never crossed paths until that day at church, married on Nov. 20, 1941.

“He was persistent,” Ann Barilla said. “He says he knew he would marry me right away, but it took me some time.”

The couple, both 95 years old, celebrated their 70 years of marriage on Saturday with a special ceremony at Holy Spirit Church in New Hyde Park.

“Time flies,” Dominic Barilla said. “The past 70 years went by really quickly.”

But the couple has seen a lot happen in the world during that time. Thirteen presidents took office. The first men walked on the moon. And the attack on Pearl Harbor happened just 20 days after their wedding.

“I was a hanging up a mirror in the living room and my best man called me and said we’re at war,” Dominic Barilla said. “There was no thought of war then. It was a surprise.”

In their own lives, the couple saw a lot happen too.

They raised three daughters. And they are now the proud grandparents of six grandchildren and six great grandchildren. For the couple, family has always been important.

Ann and Dominic moved out of their small three-room flat that cost them $30 a month to rent on the Lower East Side and moved to New Hyde Park in 1962. They said the Lower East Side was a dangerous area at the time.

"Our daughters were prisoners in their home," said Dominic Barilla. "The homeless house was on 3rd Street and we lived on 2nd Street."

But their daughter, Martha Chimienti, remembers it differently.

"Each of them gave me a good example on how to care for elders. My mother took care of her father, he lived with us for a period of time," said Chimienti, 66, of Greenvale. "Grandpa slept in the kitchen, us girls in the bedroom and my parents on a pull-out bed in the living room. It was small, but it was a wonderful time."

Their oldest daughter, Loretta Lennox, 68, of New Hyde Park, describes her parents as caring -- not only for each another and but for others. Her father was a social worker for 33 years before retiring in 1978, but she says he never forgot any of the people he tried to help.

"He's got a list, a file, on all those people that he helped," Lennox said. "He prays for them everyday."