Feature Story/Doris Sostilio/by Sara Surber
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Doris Sostilio, an 87-year-old woman, reflects on her life experiences, including her childhood during the Great Depression and her youth during World War II. She has been married three times, has three children, and now lives in Navarre, Florida, with her youngest son while helping to raise her twin grandsons. Sostilio emphasizes the importance of laughter and cherishes her family, expressing her wish to see her grandsons graduate from college.
Feature Story/Doris Sostilio/by Sara Surber
- 1. Sara Surber (650 words) Professor Sonya Smith Feature Story March 31, 2010 Doris Sostilio (850) 936-6551 She sits on a sage love seat wearing her favorite red dress. She said it makes her feel young again. The bright color contrasts with her fair skin and accents her red hair and piercing green eyes. “In my day, I was quite the looker,” Doris Sostilio said with a wink as she adjusted the hem of her dress. With a childlike twinkle in her eye, she recalls some of the more historical moments that shaped her into the 87-year-old woman sitting before me today. “If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said grinning from ear to ear. Sostilio was born on May 12, 1922. She was just a child during the Great Depression and a teen during World War II. Her mother named her after Doris Duke, an American philanthropist and tobacco heiress. She said she came from one of the poorest families in Boston, Mass., and that her mother had a sick sense of humor for naming her after such a wealthy debutante.
- 2. When she was only 12 years old her mother tried to sell her to a man at a taproom(bar) on Dover Street in downtown Boston for $600. At that time, her older brother and her ran away to live with their Aunt Tette and Uncle Herman. In her early teens she began working as a waitress at a restaurant called the Quality Lunch. One day she was waiting on a regular at the little joint when the man suddenly changed his order from chicken to pea soup. So she said she went back and told the kitchen to “hold the chicken and make it pea,” she said laughing hysterically. Her perfume filled the air as she rocked back and forth on the sofa, laughing and gripping her sides. “You got to laugh,” she said with a thick Boston accent. “Life’s too short not to laugh.” “I’m going to have a smoke,” she said as she walked over to her bureau and pulled out an old cigarette case. She lit up as the smoke coiled in the dark and dusty room. When she was 21 years old she met her first husband, Louis Dalthonso, who was a soldier in the war and nine years her senior. She met him at a town meeting when Louis asked her to dance. They were married right away and Louis went on to graduate from the University of Michigan with his doctorate in chemical engineering. Years later, she said he came home late one night so she asked him what he was working on. “It’s this new thing called plastic,” he said. Sostilio and her first husband had three children together; Georgiana who is 65 years old now, Charmane who is 62, and Clark who is 56. Dalthonso died in the late 1960s and left all of his money to her. She went on to marry another wealthy man whose name she couldn’t recall. “Gosh that was so many years ago,” she
- 3. said as her eyes wandered up to the ceiling. “All I really remember about him was he looked like the movie star Allen Ladd.” Her second husband also passed and at 67 years old she remarried Peter Sostilio. She said he owned a lot of real estate and inherited a large sum of money from a previous marriage. Sadly, he soon passed away as well. She said her friends at the American Legion teased her about her husbands’ misfortune. “What did you do to all those husbands,” they asked. “I loved them to death,” she said with an innocent chuckle. She moved to Navarre, Fla. when she was 66 years old to help raise her twin grandsons. Now she spends her days living with her youngest son Clark. “I just want to live long enough to see my grandsons graduate from college,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes.