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Gardella, Barbara Marie May 20, 1940 - August 2, 2022

Barbara Gardella

Former Reporter, Reporter Dispatch

Homemaker

1940-2022

Former Yonkers and Tuckahoe resident Barbara Gardella died Tuesday, August 2, 2022 in Danvers, Massachusetts, after a long illness. She was born Barbara Marie Strollo on May 20, 1940 in the Bronx, in New York City. She was born to Joseph Strollo, a butcher, and Angela Cilento Strollo, an office worker and homemaker. While both parents were born in New York City, her father’s family emigrated from Sorrento, Italy and her mother’s family from Naples, Italy, arriving at Ellis Island in the early 1900s.  In her formative years, she lived in a large house near West Fordham Road in the Bronx with her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.  She later lived with her parents in Yonkers. She attended and graduated Catholic schools, Saint Nicholas of Tolentine High School in the Bronx, and Good Counsel College in White Plains, New York. She studied journalism in college, and worked as a reporter for a local newspaper, the Reporter Dispatch in White Plains.  During that career, she wrote news articles and conducted interviews with public figures, including New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and actor Rock Hudson. She met her husband, Richard Gardella of White Plains, a fellow reporter at the Reporter Dispatch.  They wed in 1965 at St. Joseph’s Church in Bronxville, New York.  She and her husband made their home in Yonkers, New York from 1965 to 1982 and in Tuckahoe, New York from 1982 to 2022.  She bore and raised two sons, Richard Jr. and Peter. She was active in her Catholic parish of St. Joseph’s Church and in her sons’ school life at St. Joseph School in the 1970s and 1980s, volunteering as the school’s cultural director and as a Cub Scout den mother. In the 1980s, she volunteered for Jansen Memorial Hospice of Eastchester, as a hospice patient volunteer and as a volunteer writer and editor for the organization’s newsletter.  She enjoyed annual family vacations to Maine and Cape Cod, as well as other family travel trips throughout the U.S. and to Canada, Italy, New Zealand and the Virgin Islands. She also enjoyed traveling with her husband to various destinations, through events relating to his second career as a municipal lawyer affiliated with the International Municipal Lawyers Association. In her spare time, she edited and proofread her husband’s frequent articles and columns, for Municipal Lawyer newsletter, Westchester County Bar Association’s Westchester Lawyer and the White Plains High School Alumni Association.  She was an avid reader, and also enjoyed following baseball, as a New York Yankees fan, and horse-racing.  She had a great love of horses and of dogs. She was an excellent and creative cook who enjoyed preparing traditional Italian dishes from recipes handed down by her mother and grandmother.  She enjoyed shopping at Italian markets on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.   She had an excellent sense of humor and enjoyed many occasions of laughter and merriment with her husband, children and grandchildren. Her most abiding accomplishment was the constant love and support that warmed and sustained her marriage, her family and her home for 57 years. “She was my boss,” said her husband Richard, later a municipal lawyer for the Village of Scarsdale and the City of Rye, recalling her long stewardship of her family and household in an interview last week. She had a very strong Catholic faith and was an observant Catholic who attended Sunday Mass weekly with her husband. She was predeceased by her father, Joseph Strollo, in 1979, her mother, Angela Strollo, in 1983 and her sister, Joanne Murtaugh of Tuckahoe, in 1998.  She served as the primary caregiver for her mother and sister during their long illnesses. In 1998, she accompanied her sister, terminally ill with ovarian cancer, along with her sister’s husband, James Murtaugh, to southern Italy to see their ancestral homeland.  She is survived by her husband, her two sons, Richard Gardella Jr. of Baltimore, Maryland, and Peter Gardella of Wenham, Massachusetts, a daughter-in-law, Lila White Gardella of Wenham, a grandson, Richard Gardella of Kingston, Rhode Island, and two granddaughters, Grace Gardella and Claire Gardella of Wenham. A Catholic Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Joseph’s Church in Bronxville on Saturday, August 13 at 9:45am.

Mass:  9:45 am, Saturday, August 13, 2022, St. Joseph's Church, Bronxville, NY

Condolence(1)

  1. REPLY
    David Cartenuto says

    A truly wonderful person. Dick, we send you our deepest wishes, and our prayers for you and your family during this difficult time.

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