Mary Jo Campanello

The fourth of John and Lena Orlando’s five children, she spent her summers working the till at her family’s grocery store and her after-school hours designing sets and props for school musicals like Oklahoma and comedies like A Gap in Generations. Mary Jo was not one to waste time. After graduating high school in 1975, she went on to Sam Houston State University where she received her bachelor’s degree in interior decorating. It was during these college years that she met the love of her life, Larry Campanello, at the Feast of Saint John in Galveston. Even though their life together would take her all over the world and far away from the Margaret Long Wisdom high school theatre, she never stopped making places for people to sing, dance, and laugh.

Interior design was her lifelong passion, and it developed into a philosophy that saw houses not as simple living spaces but spaces where life really happened. She had a special gift for creating beauty and warmth in any living space, even with sparse resources. There is, perhaps, no better example of this than the home she made with Larry: tastefully decorated and delightfully vibrant, everything in the Campanello house had its place, except celebration. That happened everywhere. There was a song for every occasion and a dance for every room, especially the kitchen where cooking was often a secondary activity. Guests would marvel at her designs so often that she wasn’t a stranger to being asked if she could liven up their own home.

When she wasn’t redesigning her home and asking her many children to swap furniture around to see where it looked best, Mary Jo loved to paint landscapes and scenery. She not only loved to paint it, but also to be out in it herself. Gardening, bike riding, and walks during cool autumn evenings were among the activities she enjoyed the most, especially if they were with her family.

Mary Jo believed that her kids could do anything and supported them unconditionally in all of their endeavors. She even took it upon herself to homeschool every single one of them, while also making sure they never missed a dance, gymnastics, or acting class after school. She was a selfless person that worked tirelessly to give her children a beautiful life and home, and few things brought her the joy that simply being with her family did. Birthdays and holidays were all events she loved to celebrate because it meant all of her children being together, and she would never fail to make Christmas extra special for everyone by turning the house into her own winter wonderland.

As a devout Christian, Mary Jo loved Jesus with all her heart and spent her whole life doing her best to show God’s love to those around her. The genuine love that she showed people and the infectious positivity she spread continue to be felt by those she knew and in the spaces she created, something she would attribute all to her Savior. A homemaker in every sense of the word; she did not simply wish the world a better place. She made it one.

She is survived by her loving and devoted husband of 41 years, Lorenzo "Larry" Campanello, children Nina Elizabeth Lewkowski (Kevin), Nicole Michelle Campanello, Josiah Matthew Campanello, Joy Christine Love (Stephen), Sam Michael Campanello, and Annabelle Stephanie Gebauer (David), her mother Lena Orlando, sister Ann Pacini, brothers Vincent Orlando, Sam Orlando, and Mark Orlando.

A memorial service will be held at Cashner Funeral Home, in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday, November 20th, 2021, at 10:00 A.M. Graveside services and burial will follow in Garden Park Cemetery