Rosemarie Mattinson

Our loving and beautiful mother, Rosemarie Massaro Mattinson, passed away peacefully with family at her side on August 8, 2026, at the age of ninety. She was the youngest of eight children. Her parents, Giuseppe (Joseph) and Alfonsia (Florence) Tuttolomondo Massaro, our grandparents, immigrated from Sicily to Ellis Island and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was born.

While on her first vacation as a young adult with a friend who worked for the Cleveland Indians organization, she and her friend traveled to Daytona Beach, Florida, for the Indians’ spring training. By chance, she met Les Mattinson, a self-assured TCU graduate baseball player who had recently signed a contract with the organization. Well, the rest is history!

After marrying and moving to what felt like a foreign land—Texas—they settled in Nottingham Forest in Houston, Texas. This began our mom’s journey of adapting to and learning Southern ways while holding on to her Sicilian heritage, strength, and love of family.

She led a busy life raising three children who were involved in numerous sports and social activities. Being involved in her children’s lives was both a joy and a passion for her. She could go from making family dinners to feeding an entire football team as a Spartan Booster Club member. Whether it was hosting annual parties, surprise parties, poker nights, football parties, or cooking her Italian dinners for a film crew, she welcomed every opportunity to bring people together with warmth, grace, and her ever-present smile.

Life moved forward, and after the kids were out of the house, she began her independence, working outside the home with resilience and eventually landing in the business office of Forest Park Funeral Home & Cemetery, where she will be placed to rest. She so enjoyed working with the ladies at the office, and she continued working well into her late 70s.

Rose, or Mommo to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, found some of her greatest joy in being a grandmother and great-grandmother. The love that her three children were surrounded with and protected by was showered upon their children, and all of them have inherited the Mommo gene of warmth and kind hearts.

I must also say that childhood friends of ours have shared their condolences, but they have also commented on how loving she was to each of them whenever they were around. That love and kindness carried on to the adult friends of the family she came to know throughout her life.

Her beauty was beyond physical; it was her abundance of love, kindness, and acceptance that was so unique, precious, and freely shared with all.

She leaves her three children, Brently Ray Mattinson and spouse Kerry, Kyla Ann Blair and spouse Gary, and Bradly Joe Mattinson; grandchildren Kali Nunnelly and spouse Carson, James Gay and spouse Kensie, Blake Mattinson, and Colton Mattinson and spouse Sarah; and her beloved great-grandchildren, Ryann Rose Nunnelly, Mattinson (Matti) Rae Nunnelly, Jackson Robert Nunnelly, Luke Everett Gay, and Kate James Gay. She will also be lovingly remembered by extended family, who held a special place in her heart.

We are comforted by our belief and faith that our mother, Rosemarie, is now in the warm embrace of her parents and siblings, who all preceded her in death.

We’re all smiling, knowing the party is getting started because grandson Tyler Mattinson is greeting Mommo with open arms!

Visitation will be held at Forest Park Westheimer Funeral Home, 12800 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX 77077, US, on August 15, 2026, from 10:00 am to 11:00 am.

A Committal Service will be held at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery, 12800 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX 77077, US, on August 15, 2026, from 11:00 am to 11:30 am.