By Emily J. Minor
MANALAPAN — Around town, they called her “Manalapan’s mom” — mostly because she was friendly and kind and downright adorable. “The past four or five years, she gave up the snowbird thing and just lived down here permanently,” says Manalapan Vice Mayor Louis De Stefano, about his mother. “She loved it.”
And the town loved her.
Phyllis De Stefano, the daughter of a New York City sanitation worker, was smart as a whip but never finished high school because she had to drop out and help her parents after the 1929 stock market crash. Mrs. De Stefano died in her sleep in the lovely cottage her son had bought her on Lands End Road. She was 97.
“She always had a funny, upbeat disposition, no matter what was going on,” the vice mayor said. “She was warm and engaging and had a very strong faith.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Aug. 27, 1915, she was the daughter of Italian immigrants, Giovionni and Valleverde Lombardozzi. The parents spoke only Italian at home, but their daughter, Phyllis, learned English quickly once she started school. Her son said she was so quick with the studies that she eventually was able to skip a grade in elementary school.
But when Wall Street crashed, she quit school to work for a laundry. Her $12-a-week paycheck helped the family get by, De Stefano said. “She was always sorry she didn’t go back to school,” he said.
In 1935, at the tender age of 20, she married Arthur De Stefano, another Brooklyn kid who was a year her senior. For a while, the newlyweds lived with her parents, De Stefano said, but eventually they bought their first home in Bay Ridge in 1948. There, they raised their three sons.
Mr. De Stefano died in 1994, and the vice mayor’s two brothers also preceded Mrs. De Stefano in death.
Louis De Stefano, who moved to Manalapan in 1990, said his mother started coming south for the winter shortly after he settled in town. “I convinced her she would like it,” said De Stefano, who called his mother’s time in Florida some of her happiest years.
So beloved was she that in January, the town named a small park after her. The plaque reads: “Tranquility Park. Dedicated to Phyllis De Stefano. Town of Manalapan. 2013.”
The family asks that any memorials be given to the town for the continued beautification of Tranquility Park, which is near Mrs. De Stefano’s Manalapan home.
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