Ida (Castiello) Nigro Bertuol of Revere, who left Italy alone at 19 and kept an open table in America for the next 71 years, has died. Her family did not give her age; the arithmetic puts her at about 90.
She was born in Isernia, in the Molise region of Italy, a daughter of Gaetano and Maddalena (Riozzi) Castiello, one of nine children. She married Euprimo Nigro at 18, and the couple came to the United States a year later. They had two children, Robert Nigro and Isabella Poulin. After Euprimo’s death she married Claudio Bertuol, and they had 25 years together before he died.
Her family remembers her for the things she put in front of people: a glass of wine with dinner, coffee with Sambuca after it, and a house where anyone who came to the door was fed. Generosity, they write, was her defining trait.
She is survived by her son Robert and his wife Mandana, her daughter Isabella and her husband Normand, three grandchildren, Jennifer Poulin, Steven Poulin and Nima Nigro, and three great-grandchildren, Vanessa and Benjamin Forget and Olivia Poulin. Her sister Antonia Mandoline, her brother Gino Castiello and his wife Maria, and her sister Anna Zaccheo and her husband John also survive her. She was predeceased by five siblings: Giuseppina Bevione and Giuseppe, Guido, Giovanni and Robert Castiello.
Visitation is Saturday, September 19 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Paul Buonfiglio and Sons-Bruno Funeral Home, 128 Revere Street, Revere, followed by a funeral Mass at Saint Anthony’s Church, 250 Revere Street, and burial at Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden.
Compiled from information published by Paul Buonfiglio & Sons-Bruno Funeral Home, 128 Revere Street, Revere. Photograph courtesy of the family via Buonfiglio Funeral Home. This is our own summary, not the family’s obituary; read the full obituary and leave a condolence at the funeral home’s page on Legacy.com. Corrections: we will fix any error promptly.