Rose Pellegrino has fond memories of her lifelong friend, Donna Bongiovanni
By Cary Shuman
They were best friends for 74 years, from elementary school to junior high to high school through all the good times and life milestones they shared.
Rose Pellegrino was four and Donna Marie Bongiovianni was five when they first met at Dever Park on Gillooly Road in Chelsea.
“That’s the park where we played with our dolls and were in the games of tag,” recalled Pellegrino. “Then it was on to the Mary C. Burke School and Carter Junior High. When my family moved to Revere, we kept in close contact. We each got married in the same year. She met a guy [Anthony “Nino” Bongiovanni] from Italy at Café Paradiso in the North End. Her husband and my husband were friends back in Italy. Our children were the same age and later hung around together and played hockey together.”
Pellegrino has been looking at old photographs of her and Donna Bongiovanni, only wishing that she had more images to cherish of the two of them, unlike today when snapshots and selfies are but a cellphone away.
Pellegrino said it has been an emotional time for her following the passing of her best friend, Donna Marie Bongiovanni, on March 27, 2026.
‘A special family’
Some of Pellegrino’s most treasured memories involve Donna’s parents.
“Her mother [Rose Falzarano Bongiovanni] was unbelievable,” said Rose. “She would make my favorite pie (lemon meringue) and Donna would call me and say, ‘My mother’s made your favorite pie, come on over!”
“We had a lot of fun growing up,” continued Rose. “Her family was truly special in every way.”
They attended the Chelsea High senior prom together with their dates. “A friend of Donna’s asked me to go to the prom, and we all had a wonderful evening. Just being anywhere, anytime with Donna, you knew it would be fun.”
Always kind,
always sincere
Rose said she and Donna Bongiovanni never had a spat during their decades of friendship.
“The whole time we were friends, we never had an argument, and you don’t often find that,” said Rose.
Donna Bongiovanni was always there to comfort Rose during life’s challenging moments.
“I’ll never forget how she helped me through my mother and father’s passing,” said Rose. “When my son died, if it weren’t for Donna, I don’t think I would have made it. She always watched out for me. She was the best you could find – very sincere, honest, trustworthy – everything you could imagine in a person. I really feel she was a saint.”
Enjoying family
gatherings
The Pellegrinos and the Bongiovannis would dine out together and socialize on trips and special occasions such as family birthday parties and graduations.
“Today, there are piles of pictures everywhere between friends. I just wish we had more from our childhood and high school years,” said Rose. “My son and Donna’s son played hockey at the Revere rink together, and you would think we would have tons of photos, but we just don’t. I don’t understand it. We just didn’t take a lot of photos back then like they do now.”
Reflecting on their lifelong bond and strong friendship that was built on mutual respect, a positive outlook, and keeping in constant touch, Rose Pellegrino said, “I’m so blessed to have had Donna Marie Bongiovanni as my lifelong best friend. I remember her 55th wedding anniversary and how happy we all were at that celebration. I can’t say enough about her. I’m so sad about her passing. I’ve lost my best friend, and we’ve all lost a wonderful person who had a heart of gold. People shined their brightest in her magnificent presence.”
The Rev. Xavier Arulraj, Pastor, officiated at the funeral Mass on April 6 at St. Anthony of Padua Church.
Roseann Bongiovanni, daughter of Mrs. Bongiovanni and executive director of Chelsea-based GreenRoots, delivered a heartfelt tribute to her mother, expressing the family’s respect and admiration for its beloved matriarch.
Following are Roseann Bongiovanni’s beautifully composed words of tribute in honor of her mother:
“Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
This quote is from my all time favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. By the showing of love today, on Saturday, in the months of her illness, and on the days after her death, the impact my mother had on so many people is crystal clear. She was so loved.
Thank you for coming to pay tribute to my little mama, Donna. My family and I are so lucky to have had this incredible woman as our mother, Nonnie, wife, sister, niece, aunt and cousin. I know many of you were great friends of hers and know how much she could light up a room with her smile, her voice, her laughter.
Over the years, I have become known as the family eulogist. I don’t take this job lightly as the Eulogy helps us to recall the voice, the light and the joy of our loved ones whom we have lost, and loved so much. This eulogy is the hardest, ever, not only because of who I am eulogizing – my amazing, wonderful, sweet, warm, kind, funny and caring mother – but because it’s hard to give voice to a woman who commanded her voice so brilliantly, so effectively, so loudly and sometimes so continuously.
My mother was the firstborn child to incredibly loving parents, Rose and Angelo. Their story was one of true love. They didn’t have much, but the family had great love. It was from my grandparents that my mom learned very early on about hard work, love and food. It was from my grandmother and her five sisters, where my mom saw how powerfully and loudly women used their voices. The love she witnessed and experienced with her parents was how she based her whole life.
My mom was a sweet, funloving, well-behaved little girl who helped her parents in the family convenience store, spent quality time with her aunts, uncle and cousins, learned at a young age how to make bows and favors from her grandmother who was a talented and creative florist. As a teen, she hung out with her best friends, many of whom remained lifelong friends like Rose, Louie and Dolores.
My mother was the whole package. Smart, beautiful, kind, meticulously put together and funny. I am sure that is what attracted my dad to her. While out with her friends in the North End, my dad drove up in his flashy car and offered her a ride. Like a good Italian, Catholic girl, she refused. He sped down the street, burning rubber in his trail. Not shortly thereafter, she agreed to go out with him. That one fateful night in the North End turned out to be a lifetime of love, a few months shy of 56 years of marriage. It wasn’t always easy. Being married to a stubborn Sicilian isn’t always easy, but my mother found her ways. When she’d get mad at my father, she’d go out and secretly buy herself something with his money. Why do you think she always had gorgeous clothes, shoes and bags!? And boy could my mother shop!
When she married my father, she gained 6 fabulous sisters. Together they cooked, raised their babies, talked about the difficulties of life, shared memories and fostered the tight-knit relationship that endured right through to her last breath.
My mother put her career aside to be a stay at home mom caring for my brother and me. Some of my best memories are summers at Revere Beach, going to my grandparents house every day, spending Friday evenings with Auntie Louise and weekends with cousins. Everything we did was with family.
When Market Basket opened its original store in Chelsea, my mother was one of its first employees. She worked part-time mother’s hours while we were in school and went full time when we got older. She worked there for over twenty years before moving on to Medical Records at Malden Hospital and Lawrence Memorial Hospital where she worked with her lifelong best friend Rose and where she made new close friends.
Nothing made her happier than her grandchildren. She was blessed with five grandchildren who adore their Nonnie. With each she had a special relationship and a bond that they will never forget. She was in fact the #1 Nonnie.
While my mother’s life should not be defined by her 10-month battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, her fight with the disease is very indicative of her persona.
She was diagnosed in May 2025 – just ten short months ago. There were no telltale signs to forewarn us that she had brain cancer. At a family party last May, my brother noticed she was less talkative, less outgoing and sociable. My mother, not talk? Something had to be wrong.
A week later, when she seemed off, not quite herself, we all started to notice. My father noticed she was forgetting the alarm code. And at two neighborhood meetings about a development she was very upset about, she sat quietly. When I asked my mother why she didn’t talk, she said she was “just listening.” Alarm bells went off in my head. My mother never just sat and listened. She spoke up and made her voice heard.
The final red flag came when she couldn’t articulate the names of family members who were coming over the house the next day.
This is a woman who remembers everyone. She was a walking perpetual calendar. You met her 30 years ago, she not only remembered your name, she knew your kids’ names and likely their birthdays. She remembered everyone’s birthday, anniversary, engagement date, graduation date and more! She even remembered dogs’ birthdays – and she celebrated them with vigor! Every birthday was special. She agonized over getting the perfect gifts, making sure they were beautifully wrapped, she made sure you had balloons so everyone would know it was your special day and of course food. She always made sure you had something special to eat on your birthday.
My mother’s mind was a steel trap – not only did she remember dates, she could do math in her head so quickly that she would get frustrated when salesclerks had to pull out calculators to figure out change or a discount or some other mathematical equation.
She always said to us, “when I can’t remember dates, you know something is wrong with me.” It’s almost like she forewarned us or even herself.
At first, the doctors thought she was totally fine – they thought I was the problem (which I admit, I know I can be), but I said, “you just don’t know my mother.” She seems fine to you, to us, she is off. It almost appears to be early onset dementia. But that description didn’t quite fit either – she knew and understood everything when asked and knew the answers, but she had trouble finding some of the right words to respond. We didn’t know then that there is a medical term for this, aphasia, and that it is a symptom of a neurological disorder. Imagine not being able to find the right word to describe what you want, what you’re talking about, how you feel, what you want to do? Now imagine that for a person who talks nonstop – even in your sleep. That’s right, my mother never snored, but she would mumble in her sleep.
We pushed for more tests and answers to why she couldn’t communicate like she did just a week or so earlier. An MRI a few days later revealed what we never expected, were not prepared for and which felt like a machete to the stomach. Two masses in her brain, one considerably large on the left side of the brain, one very small lesion on the right.
A quick consult with family friend, Dr. Santos, led us right to the ER – immediately, the same night as we saw the MRI results in her medical portal. She didn’t know why she was going into the ER and she didn’t seem overly nervous about it.
Now, if you know my mother, you know she was nervous about everything (she often thought I would be stuffed in trunk for fighting against some company or person in power; she was worried about my brother’s health she worried about my father’s medicines; she worried that the neighborhood (any neighborhood, you name it, Chelsea, Billerica, Revere) – was no longer safe, and she worried about the kids. She worried about everything! And yet, when they told her she had a brain tumor, she said something to the effect of, “I do?”
My mother always understated her strength, bravery and power. She often referred to herself as weak and said that she couldn’t fight battles like other people… unless it was a carjacker of course. On the night my nephew, her final grandchild, was born, my parents were carjacked in Chelsea outside of the Dollar Store. Instead of being weak and docile, my mother jumped out of the car, started screaming for help and making a huge scene. The guy ended up getting out of the car and walking away. Emboldened, she chased him down the street saying, “you’re not so brave now are you, trying to intimidate two seniors!”
I digressed…
This woman had a brain tumor the size of an apricot. While other people celebrated Memorial Day with BBQs, she was undergoing brain surgery. She went on to have 3 weeks of radiation together with chemotherapy, followed by five additional rounds of chemo. When the chemo stopped working, she had three infusions of another medicine that offered hope. She was poked, prodded, put in claustrophobia-inducing, loud-clanking MRI machines; she had cat scans, x-rays, multiple medicines and so much more.
She never once, not once complained.
She never said she had pain, never complained about going to an appointment and while she might have jumped with the needle pokes, she never ever pulled away.
If that is not strength, bravery and power, I don’t know what is.
She did all of this, not for herself, but to be with the family. There is nothing more she wanted in the world than to be together with family and loved ones. She cherished her time with her grandchildren whether that was chasing them around the house with the wooden spoon, playing hockey in the kitchen, basketball in the yard, having beauty day, going shopping, spilling the tea, going to school and sporting events, dance recitals and graduations, she loved every minute and never missed anything.
What she loved almost as much as family was cooking (and possibly vacuuming). Yes, the woman loved to cook. And she had a gift. She made the best meatballs in the family – and that’s saying a lot when you’re competing with Sicilian chefs! She could open the fringe, take a quick scan of ingredients and whip up an amazing meal. And if you ever went to her house, she would put out a full spread of food on the table before you even took off your jacket. Before we were done with the first meal, she was already planning for the next one!
Glioblastoma is one of the worst and most aggressive forms of cancer. We didn’t know if she would make it through her birthday, any subsequent birthdays and her favorite holiday of all.
And yet, she made it through every one of our birthdays. She was discharged from the hospital, after her brain surgery, on her 78th birthday and she had the strength to celebrate, not once, but twice! Maybe she knew it would be her last and so she should celebrate more than just once!
She made it to my children’s birthdays in July, my nieces and Sandro’s in September, my nephew’s and dad’s in December, my brother’s in February and Alicia’s and mine in March. We continued our traditions for Thanksgiving and Christmas, as best as we could. And yet, in the back of our minds, we had her voice repeating what she said for so many years, “when it’s my time to die, I want to go at Easter time.” She believed anyone who dies during the Lenten season and Easter goes straight to Heaven.
Again, I am amazed at this woman’s power to fight so hard and so valiantly because she wanted to ensure her place in heaven. She said she missed her mother and father and wanted to see them again. She was going to dance with Frank Sinatra, laugh with Auntie Louise, have churipan with Abuelo and be with all those who went before her, all of whom went too young, too soon and so loved.
I know she is looking on this mass right now and is as happy as she can be. This is exactly what she wanted:
• a beautiful church full of flowers and people she loves ( – Fr. Xavier said at mass yesterday, it is the people who make the church beautiful – and he is right);
• and to have her funeral mass co-celebrated by two priests – one who blessed my parents’ 50th and 55th Wedding Anniversaries and one who offered her Anointing of the Sick and Last Rites –
• And for all of this to happen on Easter Monday.
She couldn’t have gotten her wish any better than she did. And like her favorite blue eyed singer, she’s saying “I did it my way.”
Over the course of last ten months, her verbal communication declined. She confused words more frequently, couldn’t find the words and when she got frustrated, said, “oh I don’t know.” In her final weeks, she lost her ability to speak almost entirely. She didn’t have the strength in her voice to speak, she could come up with only a few words occasionally. This was one of the most terrible things to witness, that one of her most powerful tools was robbed of her. And yet, she continued to communicate with us through squeezes of her hands, her eyes and her heart. She wanted to be there to hear the scoop on politics, she wanted the tea on local gossip, she wanted to know what the kids were up to, she wanted to know what was for dinner, who was visiting and how the weather was. More importantly, she wanted us to know she didn’t want to leave us. What is harder – being the one to leave or the ones who get left?
She always said, “you’ll miss me when I am gone.” If that isn’t the understatement of a lifetime. But we have to remember her voice in our minds and our hearts.
I love you bye.