The keys to a long life? For Rose Guggino, it was faith, family and food.
“It’s the olive oil,” said Josephine Vesper when asked why she thinks her grandmother Rose Guggino has made it to 101 years old. “But also her faith.”
Guggino is a full-blooded Italian, born and raised deep in the heart of South Philly. She spent the first 19 years of her life living on the corner of 16th and Wolf.
“Cooking was my hobby,” Guggino said.
She was famous for her meatballs. She’d even make her own pasta.
“I lived with her when I was in my freshman year of college,” Vesper explained, “and she would make lunch for me and my classmates. She would make me a different soup every day.”
Her family loved her cooking, including her border collie Missy, whom she would feed spaghetti and meatballs.
Guggino, who’s been a resident of Shamong for the past three years and South Jersey for the past 80, met her husband Anthony when she was 18 and married him at 20.
“He was easygoing, you know,” she said of him.
As Guggino worked her job as a dressmaker at a seamstress company called Bombatella’s on Chestnut Street, Anthony was a career employee at the ARCO Refinery in South Philly, now owned by Sunoco.
Sadly, Anthony died in 1986 at the age of 70. The couple was married for 49 years. They had six children: The first was also named Josephine — the name runs in the family — Michael, Tommy, the twins Rosemarie and Angel, and Anthony.
But Guggino had plenty of family to get her through. In fact, she was the third of seven children. Her brothers and sisters?
“There was Charlie (she pronounces it “Chollie” in her thick Philly/South Jersey accent), Angelo, Larry, Carmela, Frances and Josephine,” she said.
Of Guggino’s siblings, only the youngest, Josephine, is still alive. She’s 91 and lives in Virginia.
During the Depression, her father, Fortunado, sold insurance door-to-door for Metropolitan. When people couldn’t pay their bills, he’d pay for them. Her mother, another Josephine, didn’t work.
Guggino has inherited her father’s fondness for people.
“She’s the most social person ever,” Vesper said. “You can put her with anybody and she gets along with anyone. She doesn’t feel shy at all. She talks to everybody.”
“I really enjoy life,” Guggino said.
In her younger years, Guggino was very active. She was on the basketball team in high school and regularly used to practice yoga. She never had a driver’s license, so she walked a lot.
Today, one of Guggino’s favorite hobbies is to sit on the back porch of her Shamong home, where she lives in her daughter’s house, on her favorite white wooden rocking chair and look out at the trees in her backyard.
She still goes to the salon to get her hair and nails done — both of which look great, by the way.
But she only moved to her daughter’s house three years ago; she lived by herself in Merchantville until she was 98.
“She put some tinfoil in the microwave and [we] said you know what? It might be a good idea for you to live with your daughter now,” Vesper said. “I think that was her plan. I don’t think she wanted to be by herself anymore!”
Before Merchantville, she lived in Pennsauken.
Guggino maintained there’s no secret to living old. But she does eat healthy, and she said her faith has helped her immensely. “Just give it to God,” she would say to keep herself from getting stressed out about things.
She believes her ability to effectively manage stressful situations helped her live the wholesome and fulfilling life she’s lived, and greatly contributed toward her longevity and ability to live be 101.
And counting.
