Della Maffiola was never the same after her 10-year-old son, Joseph, died in the horrific fire at Chicago’s Our Lady of the Angels School.
The Dec. 1, 1958. blaze killed 92 children and three nuns at the Catholic school in in Humboldt Park.
A few days before the tragedy, Joseph found a Christmas present in the garage that his parents tried unsuccessfully to hide before the big day — a spiffy red-and-white Schwinn bicycle.
Mrs. Maffiola let her son ride it under one condition: Don’t tell dad.
“He was happy as a lark,” she told the Sun-Times in 2008 at a 50th anniversary memorial Mass for victims of the fire. “I always was grateful he rode his bike before he died.”
Following the fire, Mrs. Maffiola, then 31, turned her staggering grief into activism.
Ten days after the fire, she spoke before television cameras at the opening session of an inquest into the fatal blaze.
“What can I say? It happened, but I don’t want it to happen again,” she said. “Everybody has their empty feeling within themselves, and we just don’t want it to happen again in the future. That’s the one thing that I hope, my son didn’t lose his life for nothing.”
The tragedy led to an overhaul of the nation’s fire safety laws at schools.
“She was on the phone a lot and meeting with other mothers and pushing for lawmakers to get the laws changed, and it took a whole village of angry women, but they got things done,” said her daughter, Linda Maffiola-Piatkiewicz, who was three when her brother died.
Mrs. Maffiola died Aug. 8 from natural causes. She was 99.
Mrs. Maffiola’s caretaker, Virginia Patano, was with her at Resurrection Medical Center when she died. Patano told family that she smelled smoke in the room when she passed.
“We felt like that was a sign from God letting us know that my brother came to get my mom and escort her to heaven,” Maffiola-Piatkiewicz said.
“I felt that when she died she finally got what I could never give her. She got my brother back, you see,” she said.
A Mass marking the 68th anniversary of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire is scheduled for noon on Nov. 29 at the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels, 3808 W. Iowa St, said Maffiola-Piatkiewicz, who is helping to organize the Mass.
Mrs. Maffiola was born Feb. 5, 1927, in a small town outside of Venice, Italy.
She came the United States when she was three and grew up in a community of Italian immigrants near Grand and Western Avenues in Holy Rosary parish.
A friend from the neighborhood suggested Mrs. Maffiola accompany her to Savanna, Illinois, to visit her brother, who was in a prisoner of war camp that housed Italian soldiers who’d been captured during World War II. Mrs. Maffiola agreed.
The soldier, Mario Maffiola, who hadn’t wanted to fight and was glad to be captured by the Americans, said on the day he met Mrs. Maffiola “You’re going to be my wife” and Mrs. Maffiola responded “You’re crazy,” Maffiola-Piatkiewicz said.
His prediction came true.
After the war, the two wed and settled in Chicago in a two-flat near Our Lady of Angels parish.
Mario Maffiola, who died in 1998, worked at Radio Steel as a punch press operator.
Mrs. Maffiola worked as an inspector for Motorola Company.
“After the fire and my brother’s death, my mother suffered a breakdown. There was no therapy at the time,” said Maffiola-Piatkiewicz. “My dad kept the family together. I’ve got to say, he was strong as a rock.”
In recent years, Mrs. Maffiola lived with her daughter on the Northwest Side and in La Grange and chafed at pandemic-era restrictions.
“She’d say ‘The Great Depression didn’t get me. World War II didn’t get me. What’s the pandemic?'” recalled her daughter with a laugh.
In addition to her son, Mrs. Maffiola is also predeceased by her daughter, Ann Marie Nabor.
She is survived by her daughter, Linda Maffiola-Piatkiewicz, as well as five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.