By ED RUNYAN runyan@vindy.com
When Krysten Civitelli of Connecticut saw a 1947
graduation photo from the Cleveland College of Mortuary Science
at an antique store near her home, her sense of curiosity
had to be satisfied. Civitelli was
browsing with her mother, when she saw the large, framed item
for sale. It contained about 40 individual photos of the graduates,
but one stood out. “I took a closer look and was surprised
to see that there was one female student,” Civitelli
said in a letter. “Her name said “M. Rossi.”
I just kept coming back to the photo, wondering about who
“M. Rossi” was. I decided to do a little investigating.”
She also bought the photo.
Photo by William D. Lewis
On the Internet, she found an article about
Marie Rossi Vross from Niles, the only woman in her
mortuary-science class, and it contained a photo of her. Civitelli
found a connection between Marie and the Joseph Rossi &
Sons Funeral Home in Niles and wrote a letter. It
told of the graduation photo and said “‘Thank
you’ for putting such a smile on my face and a little
‘curiosity and adventure’ in my life.”
It led to a conversation with Georgiana
Naoum, who explained that her mother, Marie Vross, now
92, retired in 2001 after a 50-plus year career as a funeral
director but still lived in the house at the funeral home
where she and her husband, George, now deceased,
raised Georgiana and her siblings.
Civitelli, who is an author, said learning
about Marie Vross confirmed her theory that Vross had been
a pioneer as a female funeral director. “It was over
the top of what I expected,” Civitelli said. “She
is an amazing woman.” The letter also made Vross wonder
something: How did that graduation photo end up in an antique
store in Connecticut? Vross had a copy of the graduation photo
at one time herself, but over the years it disappeared. Fortunately,
Civitelli offered to send Vross hers. Vross
said her fellow mortuary students came from “all over,”
including the northeast United States, so she suspects that’s
the reason it showed up in Connecticut.
“I was the only woman in that class,”
Vross said of her year-long training in Cleveland a few years
after graduating from high school. “There were a few
before me.” For two years before
her schooling she was an apprentice in the funeral home her
father, Joseph Sr., started in the 1920s after arriving
in Niles from the Scranton, Pa., area. “The
first couple of months, I was kind of bashful, shy, and they
treated me like their sister,” she told The Vindicator
of her Cleveland training. “We had fun and joked around.”
When she was 21, she was old enough to take
the test and get her mortuary license. She passed the test
and continued working with her parents at the family funeral
home. A little while after she and George got married in 1951,
George also joined the business.
Naoum says at the time her mother became
a funeral director, it was rare for a woman. “Back in
the day, most women didn’t work, but she had a successful
career. She was a trail blazer. Now women can do anything.”
When Vross was asked whether she thought
of herself as a pioneer, she just said, “Maybe it was
because I was born into it,” referring to the family
business. Vross said it seemed fairly natural to her to go
into the funeral-home business.
Her main memory was of making a lot of friends.
“They think of you as family when you do all those things
for them,” she said of being a funeral director. “I
got along with everybody.”
After her father died in 1953, “My
mom and I did everything,” she said. Her younger brother,
Joseph F. Rossi Jr., runs the business now.
Marie Rossi Vross from Niles was the only
woman in her 1947 graduation photo from the Cleveland College
of Mortuary Science. The large, framed item was for sale in
a Connecticut shop and its buyer, Krysten Civitelli, looked
into who the woman is — eventually sending the photo
to Vross, now 92, who retired in 2001 after a 50-plus year
career as a funeral director.