Jan 3, 2004

Josephine Perrecci celebrates her first hundred years

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Josephine Perrecci was surprised a few days short of her 100th birthday when she went to have her hair fixed at the salon she patronizes. Dee Wigney, the owner of the Golden Hair Pin on Meridian Avenue, planned the surprise for her long time patron. The birthday girl received lunch, cake, balloons and roses and was quite surprised.

Perrecci was born in San Francisco’s North Beach on Dec. 10, 1903. The first thing she recalls is living in a tent “after the fire” destroyed her family’s home. Her mother was from Palermo and her father from a town close to there called Trabia; they came to the United States a few years before and settled in New Orleans before moving to San Francisco shortly before Perrecci’s birth. After the fire, the family moved to Bernal Heights.

She married Andy Perrecci and in 1941 they moved to San Jose to help his brother Joe Perrecci with his business, Mayfair Packaging. “We moved to Willow Glen. We found a house on Hansen, but I didn’t like it because it didn’t have a basement. Several years later we drove down Meridan and turned right on Campbell. My son was standing in the middle of the block. He asked me how I liked the lot,” Perecci said.

She told her husband that he could build her a house on one condition, “that I would be able to do all the planning, and he agreed and I did. I put phone jacks throughout the house, including the bathroom.”

When she first came to San Jose, it was all ranches and orchards, Perrecci said. “Now it’s all houses.”

The Perreccis had two children, Don and Jean. Don is the father of Andy, Gregory and Kristen. Jean’s family includes Gary and Deborah. She has nine great grandchildren. Andy died about 15 years ago and about seven years ago, Josephine asked her grandson to move into her Willow Glen home and she moved in with Don and his wife Genevieve.

Josephine was surprised by all the attention. The spry woman, who only in the past three months began to use a wheel chair, used to treat her friends at the beauty salon with flowers from her garden and food. “Our favorite was her pasta with meatballs, she used to call it better than Robert Redford,” Wigney said.

Perrecci comes by both her pasta making and longevity through her genes, she said. Her grandfather, who made “different kinds of pasta every day,” but was best known for his macaroni, died one week short of his 100th birthday, she added.