Windsor Obituary: Lilija Ridolfo, 91

Lilija Ridolfo passed on peacefully at home with family around her at the seasoned age of 91 on Thursday, August 3, 2017.

Born on January 4, 1926 to tailor Antanas Liutkevicius and his wife Jadvyga in Kaunas, Lithuania, she was a bright girl who spoke six languages. She spent her summers in the countryside, loved nature and believed in the importance of family all her life. The advent of World War II brought a succession of Soviet, then German and again Soviet occupation of her country. At one point in her teenage years she had to go into hiding to escape Stalin’s mass deportations to Siberia.

After reuniting with her family she left her country on foot along with many refugees, traveling westward into Poland, then Germany. They barely managed to survive on meager food rations and were put to work in a munitions factory in Bavaria. At the war’s end they were lucky enough to leave the DP camps and streets full of rubble and devastation for a new life in America, after her graduation from Tubingen University.

Lilija briefly worked tobacco in Windsor as well as at Aetna in Hartford before she met and married an Italian-American pilot Giacomo C. Ridolfo. He proposed to her at their first meeting at a wedding. She bore three sons, one of whom died at birth. In 57 years of marriage she saw her husband through a plane accident that left him in a back brace for years and the health issues he faced at the end of his life. She was the “crazy glue” that kept everyone in her family together.

She was a second mother to her sister’s 5 children and cared for her parents all her life. A longtime member of the Women’s Club of Windsor, she will be remembered for her trademark expressions, “Eat!” and “Enough is enough!”

Besides her husband, she was predeceased by her sister Janina Ruutel. She is survived by her sons, Jon Ridolfo and his wife Justyna of Sedalia, CO and Ronald Ridolfo of Windsor; as well as her nephews and nieces and their families, Lily Kress of East Haddam, Carmen Pikul of Enfield, Joe Marchell, Janet Spirodonakis and Joan Perotti of Winsted as well as Ben (FL), Lorraine (CA) and Fred Ruutel (NC).

The Ridolfo family wishes to extend their gratitude to the wonderful staff of Hartford Healthcare Independence at Home and the Hartford Hospice at Home program.

Memorial donations in Lilija’s memory may be made to the charity of the donor’s choice.

Her family will receive friends on Wednesday, August 9 from 4 PM to 7 PM at the Carmon Funeral Home, 807 Bloomfield Ave Windsor. Family and friends may gather at the funeral home on Thurday, August 10 at 9:30 AM to follow in procession to a 10:30 AM Mass of Christian Burial at St. Gertrude Church, 550 Matianuck Ave Windsor, followed by burial in Mount St. Benedict Cemetery, Bloomfield.