Matawan resident marks her 103rd birthday
Longevity attributed to fresh foods, Oil of Olay and an occasional beer
BY TOM CAIAZZA
Staff Writer

SCOTT PILLING staff Known as the grandma of Madison Center in Matawan, Carmella Fenech celebrated her 103rd birthday last week.

MATAWAN — Carmella Fenech cradles a baby doll she calls Guiseppe. She is all smiles to those around her, but doesn’t let her attention stray for long from the doll in her arms.

“She’s loving and motherly,” Karleen Albright said of Fenech, with the baby in her arms.

Fenech celebrated her birthday last week, and at 103 she is the oldest member of the Madison Center long-term care community.

To Albright and the rest of the nursing staff at Madison Center, Fenech is like a grandmother, a role she has played for almost all of her life.

Born in 1902 in Malta, a Mediterranean island between Sicily and northern Africa, Fenech followed her husband, Edgar Fenech, to the U.S. at the age of 19. Like so many immigrants at the time, she settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., and began to raise a family.

“That’s what Italian women did back then,” Albright said of Fenech’s life as a housewife. “They raised a family and that’s it.”

Fenech and her husband had two children, Ernestine Capodicasa, 77, and Joseph Fenech, 79.

According to Joseph Capodicasa, one of Fenech’s eight grandchildren, his grandmother “lived a very good life.”

She took good care of herself, always insisting on fresh foods — a sign of her Old World upbringing — and a love for Oil of Olay, he said. He credits that for her longevity — that, and the occasional beer once a week.

“She could do a commercial for Oil of Olay,” Capodicasa said of his grandmother’s insistence on keeping herself healthy.

Capodicasa lived in the same building as his grandmother while growing up in Sheepshead Bay, and he can remember the culinary feats she would provide.

“She was a fantastic cook,” Capodicasa said, “all those Maltese dishes.”

Fenech hasn’t lost what is important to her, the things she spent her entire life cultivating.

“When she talks, it’s always about family and food,” said Jessica Ward, assistant director for recreation at Madison Center.

Carmella Fenech has nine great-grandchildren, but some of the staff at Madison Center would argue she has many more.

“We have become extended family,” Albright said.

Carmella Fenech doesn’t say much anymore. According to the nursing staff, she is in very good health for someone her age, but is content with simply blessing the people around her and assuaging her motherly instinct.

It is an instinct she has cultivated for nearly 80 years and is apparent in the way she cares for the doll Guiseppe, which in Italian means Joseph, the name of her son.