The Bedford Park apartment home of Mary Vallati, the outspoken community activist who died at the age of 102, captures the character of an altruistic community leader.

There’re the portraits of her family, including a vintage photo of her mother, Catholic imagery, personally crocheted items, and proclamations from various elected officials that adorn the walls of her living room. Words like “role model” and “community leader” were the watchwords for Mrs. Vallati.

Mrs. Vallati never sought the recognition, wasn’t motivated by it, her daughter Linda McCauley, recalled. Her faith and love lay in the community. “She didn’t want the glory,” McCauley said, speaking to the Norwood News from her mother’s living room. “All her life she was in the background. And she took that background role on. When she did have a lot to say, and when she got to say it, watch out.”

Mrs. Vallati passed away on Sept. 12 from pneumonia.

She was born July 18, 1915 in Collinsville, Illinois, a town known for its horseradishes. Mrs. Vallati, the oldest of four children, left Collinsville in 1927, moving north to the Bronx with her siblings and mother. She settled in the neighborhood of Belmont at the age of 12, in a time when the borough transitioned from farmland to the beginnings of urban industry. Mrs. Vallati found verdant pastures on Mosholu Parkway, living on the first floor of a mid-rise building near Perry Avenue for decades thereafter.

In 1940, Mrs. Vallati married Charlie Vallati, a construction worker, and had three kids—Dennis, Linda, and the late Richard Vallati.

Mrs. Vallati had balanced the demands of a mother with her career as a customer service representative at New York Telephone Inc., known as Verizon today. Like most mothers, Mrs. Vallati groomed her kids with a mix of undeniable love and the fear of her infamous wooden spoon. Imposing discipline went beyond her kids. Even the neighborhood kids were aware of that spoon.

“…[O]ne day Dennis stole the spoon and broke it in half, which prompted grandma to bring out a metal spoon,” said Jamie McCauley-Iacocca, Mrs. Vallati’s granddaughter, at the Sept. 15 funeral held at St. Philip Neri Church in Bedford Park.

Mrs. Vallati was a regular at St. Philip Neri Church, practicing the Catholic teaching of doing unto others as they themselves would like to be treated. “She looked for the good in everyone. Never had a negative thing to say about anyone,” said McCauley-Iacocca.

Her sense of tradition extended to her civic engagement side. Dennis couldn’t quite pinpoint why. “She was always that way,” he recalled.

Mrs. Vallati entered the world of civic engagement during the 1970s, serving as a tenant leader for a building on Decatur Avenue near Webster Avenue. She eventually joined the Bedford Mosholu Community Association (BMCA), the civic body that functioned much like Mrs. Vallati—a neighborhood guardian.

“Mary was a trooper,” recalled John Reilly, then a community organizer for the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition. “She went to meetings in the bitter cold or the pouring rain.”

“Mary was always on the forefront whenever there was something to be done or a meeting to go,” Barbara Stronczer, current president of BMCA, said.

Her notable moments included taking part in a demonstration against the closure of the C-Town on East 204th Street between Valentine Avenue and East Mosholu Parkway South in 1998. Sydney Katz was the owner of the C-Town, who also owned the Foodtown on East 204th off Bainbridge Avenue in Norwood.

“Early one morning, many of us could not go because we had work. Mary was out there before eight o’clock in the morning. And then after that, as a follow-up, on a rainy day, we were picketing Foodtown on 204th Street because our supermarket had closed. Thank God we were successful in reopening the supermarket on that side of Mosholu.” (Norwood News, 2017)