A Lifetime, A Legacy: Mary Monichetti

Mary Monichetti made juggling family and work-related responsibilities look easy long before our current age of working mothers. Furthermore, family members and friends remember the matriarch behind Mike’s Seafood in Sea Isle City was doing it all pleasantly.

Mrs. Monichetti, 94, died last November encircled by her loved ones and the Hospitaller Sisters of Mercy, a religious order that like the Monichettis branched out from roots in Italy.

“Mom grew up in South Philly” and knew the fish business, says son Mike. Mrs. Monichetti’s family operated Sannino’s Fish Markets, one in Philadelphia’s Italian Market and another in Sea Isle on 43rd Street in the building now housing Basilicos Ristorante.

Mike’s Seafood’s first-generation founders Lodovico Monichetti and his wife Rosina left Ischia, an island off the coast of Naples, in 1911. After rough sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, they landed on Ellis Island, as their grandson Mike Monichetti notes and the market’s menu details. Happenstance led to Lodovico and Rosina Monichetti’s train ride south to Sea Isle City. Because of their Italian heritage, the young immigrants were scornfully told to go live among the rundown shacks in Sea Isle’s desolate back-bay area.

Mike Sr. and Mary Monichetti on their wedding day, July 24, 1949 …

Today, Mike’s Seafood sits on the back-bay property that the founding Monichettis purchased for $500. Their grandson Mike owes thanks to whoever sent Lodovico and Rosina Monichetti to the back bay, he says. That area is now Sea Isle’s restaurant and marina district complete with Mike’s Seafood, “the most sought-out restaurant and fresh and cooked seafood market in Sea Isle City and the Jersey shore,” declares its third-generation owner.

His dad, Mike Sr., often strolled past Sannino’s on 43rd Street after spotting Mary Sannino in the market before finally working up the nerve to ask his future wife for a date, says his namesake. The couple had their first outing on Magnolia Lake in nearby Ocean View.

… and on the dock behind the fish market.

“It was always Mary and Mike, Mike and Mary” during their married years, son-in-law Gerry Deery says respectfully. “They were an inseparable team” when it came to family matters and the business. His wife, Rosemary, notes that after working hard all week, her mom and dad also fit in some fun dancing together on Saturday nights in Tuckahoe.

Mike and Mary Monichetti were wed some 40 years until he died in 1989.

“Everyone says that they miss Mary’s smile,” son Mike says from his corner perch behind the counter at Mike’s Seafood, where his mother spent plenty of time in between managing family matters upstairs in their home above the market.

Daughter Rosemary detailed her parents’ loving relationship and more in remarks she made at Mrs. Monichetti’s 90th birthday party on Mike’s Seafood’s dock.

“The workday started at 3am,” Rosemary says. “Mom made Dad’s ham-and-cheese sandwich, thermos of coffee, and sent him off, but not before calling the T.I. [Townsend’s Inlet] Bridge tender to wake him up so that the Dewey, my dad’s [fishing] boat, could safely navigate through the channel.”

Her mother was also Mike’s Seafood’s “chief financial officer and bookkeeper,” a woman “who did whatever it took to get the job done – everything from icing up the fish market’s showcases to fileting countless 50-pound tubs of flounder,” she adds.

Gerry, her husband of nearly 45 years, describes Mrs. Monichetti as a “very gentle, very kind, hard-working woman.” When the buzzer upstairs indicating that someone entered the store went off, his mother-in-law always stopped whatever she might be doing at home, including eating dinner, and cheerfully went to wait on customers, he says.

“Mary was ‘multitasking’ before it was a word,” he muses.

After the fish store closed, her mom cooked and served “fabulous dinners” for the family, dinners including fried flounder, sliced tomatoes or pasta fagioli (pasta and beans), Rosemary recalls. Her brother Mike remembers some of his mother’s other specialties, like pasta basile (pasta and peas with basil), string beans and potatoes and tomato, and clams linguini. “The best ever were Mom’s homemade ravs,” Mike says, before reminiscing about how he could still see his mother in the kitchen making her raviolis.

Both Rosemary and Mike marvel at their mother’s tender, loving care for them even as she ran the business. After dinner, up went the ironing board. Mrs. Monichetti then ironed the blouses and shirts that her children would wear to school the next day, Rosemary says. Mike talks about his mom’s help with schoolwork in general and homework at night in addition to her cooking, cleaning and washing of clothes.

Mary with son Mike and daughter Rosemary Deery.

All this selflessness came from a mother who, at age 12, bereaved the loss of her own mother.

“What I miss most about my mother is her encouragement to do my best every day in carrying on the family tradition,” Mike asserts.

Love and encouragement extended to family members of every generation. Rosemary and Gerry Deery each talk about the time and attention that Mrs. Monichetti devoted to her seven grandchildren, never missing their events, like baptisms, First Holy Communions, birthday celebrations, graduations, plays, dance recitals and more. Gerry mentions his mother-in-law’s generosity in supporting many charities, especially those close to family members’ hearts like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and various autism support services.

“Mary adored her family” and loved being a great-grandmother, Jennie Hadfield says of the “lovely, lovely lady” who was her “dearest and best friend” for more than 30 years. “Mary accepted everything that came along” when faced with the “bumps of life,” she adds.

“Mary’s faith was the foundation of her being,” Hadfield says with certainty.

Mary loved to dance. Here she is dancing the night away with her son, Mike Jr.

Mrs. Monichetti nurtured her faith at St. Joseph Church, within walking distance from her home. “Mom went to church every day,” says son Mike. Gerry Deery recalls how important it was to Mrs. Monichetti that she participate in online gatherings to pray the rosary and attend Masses from St. Joseph Church when she stayed with the Deerys in their Wilmington, Del., home during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 and 2021.

Attending church together was just one of many pastimes that she and Mary enjoyed as pals, says Hadfield. There were also trips to the Dollar General and celebrations over glasses of wine. “We spent so much time laughing … giggling like girls!” Hadfield quips. “I thank God every day that I had Mary in my life,” she adds in all seriousness.

Her exceptional friend and she had a lot in common including their age, their Italian American upbringing during the Depression and their widowhood, Hadfield notes. As young girls, each was familiar with the traditional festival celebrating the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of many titles for the mother of Jesus Christ, on July 16. Such festivals are celebrated by people of Italian descent worldwide. So, as senior citizens, the pair reveled in attending the annual Our Lady of Mount Carmel festival in Hammonton that dates back to 1875.

Time marches on …

Now Mrs. Monichetti’s remains rest with those of her spouse in Calvary Baptist Church Cemetery, a stone’s throw away from the site of their first date at Magnolia Lake.

Mary surrounded by the people she treasured most, her family.