Martha Silvestri

Meatballs ranked high on the list of Martha Silvestri's favorite foods, both to eat and make, especially when featured in her family Sunday dinners. But Mrs. Silvestri, an avid cook, also savored life, her family and worship at Holy Family R.C. Church, Westerleigh.

Born Martha Guzzo in Astoria, Queens, she grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where she met and married Lawrence Silvestri. The couple moved to Staten Island in 1963. Until she died on Friday, Mrs. Silvestri lived in the same Livermore Avenue home in which she raised her three children.

Work and helping fellow Staten Islanders also brought Mrs. Silvestri great pleasure: She retired as the bookkeeper for Community Resources in 1997. Since then, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels in Port Richmond and at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeeze.

For fun, she regularly traveled with other Westerleigh AARP members, last vacationing in California.

Mrs. Silvestri also was a member of the Rosarians at Holy Family.

"She loved being around family," said her daughter, Marianne Turnbull, adding, she was "a very happy and pleasant person."

Mrs. Silvestri's husband, Lawrence, died in 1997. She also was preceded in death by her daughter, Laura Coughlin, in 2010.

Along with her daughter, Marianne, surviving are her son, James; three grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

The funeral will be Tuesday from the Casey Funeral Home, Castleton Corners, with a mass at 9:45 a.m. in Holy Family Church. Burial will follow in Moravian Cemetery, New Dorp.

Arrangements under the direction of Casey Funeral Home, Staten Island, NY.