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Wilhelmina “Willy” Peluso and Frank Peluso enjoy their honeymoon in Brussels, Belgium, in September 1945. Ms. Peluso died of COVID-19 on April 10, 2020.
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Obituary: Wilhelmina Peluso was a loud and proud Dutch matriarch

Courtesy of Pauline Peluso

Obituary: Wilhelmina Peluso was a loud and proud Dutch matriarch

Oct. 26, 1923 — April 10, 2020: Ms. Peluso, a resident of Concordia at the Orchard nursing home, died of COVID-19

Wilhelmina Peluso survived World War II, breast cancer and a stroke during her almost 100 years, experiences that ingrained the notion that life’s hardships, though cruel, are ultimately fleeting.

“This too will pass,” was a mantra oft-repeated by the strong-willed, outspoken Netherlands native affectionately known as “Willy.” She never could have known that philosophy would one day be put to the ultimate test by COVID-19.

Ms. Peluso, a Concordia at the Orchard nursing home resident, died of the disease Friday at Butler Memorial Hospital. She was 96.

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“She was just a nice, nice lady and everybody loved her, all the way to the very end,” Ms. Peluso’s daughter Pauline, 67, said.

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Ms. Peluso is survived by her four children — Pauline of Butler, Anita Padrick of Pittsburgh, Corine Geldhof of Juneau, Alaska, and Frank W. Peluso of Loveland, Colo. — 11 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. Her husband, Frank Peluso, died in 1991, and her daughter Christina died in 2018.

She spent most of her life at her Emsworth home before a 2018 stroke that impaired her speech and swallowing abilities led her to seek more around-the-clock care at Concordia at the Orchard.

“Willy was beloved by the Concordia at the Orchard family,” Concordia spokesman Frank Skrip said. “Her passing was a real tragedy and our prayers are with the family.”

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Ms. Peluso was born on Oct. 26, 1923, in Waubach, Netherlands. She was 16 when the Germans invaded and managed to survive the Dutch occupation until the Netherlands was liberated. Though the war was not kind to her or her country, it is the reason she met Frank, an American soldier who was part of the D-Day mission in Normandy, France.

When the Americans liberated the Netherlands, Frank was among the American troops on hand to provide supplies and food to locals. Ms. Peluso thought he was “quite handsome,” and their infatuation with each other was “classic love at first sight,” according to her daughter Pauline.

The two began exchanging letters after Frank left, and Ms. Peluso, whose native language was Dutch, had to seek help translating and responding. The two married in September 1945 and moved to the U.S. once Frank — whose parents lived in Bloomfield — was discharged from the Army. They stayed in Bloomfield at first before settling in Emsworth at 1955.

Though Ms. Peluso didn’t have a formal education, “she was a very smart lady and very well-read,” according to her daughter. She remembered their house always being full of books and her mother, though she was a full-time housewife with five children, keeping herself busy by teaching sewing classes and “always picking up stray people that needed help,” as Pauline put it.

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“The older neighbors have reached out to me and remembered an open back door,” she said. “Cousins and other people coming in and out. She would always hold court on the front porch or in the kitchen.”

Pauline Peluso said her mother was “quiet,” “definitely opinionated” and made sure her kids maintained a healthy perspective about their lots in life.

“She spoke her mind, never minced words and always told the truth,” Pauline said. “The thing that I remember so many times was, ‘You hold your head up high.’ My father sold cheese; we weren’t rich. But I didn’t know it, and she’d always tell me, ‘You hold your head up proud.’ And she was very proud.”

Ms. Peluso was also known for making anyone in earshot laugh with outrageous statements. Pauline Peluso remembers one time when her nursing room attendants asked her mom — who had earned a reputation at Concordia as a playful flirt — if she needed anything, and she responded with, “Tall, dark and handsome.”

Pauline said she worried the extremely social Ms. Peluso wouldn’t take to nursing home life, but she was pleasantly surprised at how content her mother seemed watching TV and crocheting afghans. Pauline would often come over on Sundays to watch football and have a beer.

The last hours of Ms. Peluso’s life, though, were rough on everyone. Her family couldn’t be with her due to COVID-19 concerns, and Pauline said she called the nurses treating her and essentially told them Ms. Peluso’s life story so they could help bring her some semblance of peace before she died.

She hopes her mother’s story will help folks who are still downplaying the severity of COVID-19 understand the harsh reality of the threat.

“The people that don’t think that it’s anything or not happening to them, it’s very real,” Pauline said. “My mom was alive and well until this happened.”

Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxel222.

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First Published: April 14, 2020, 4:31 p.m.

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Wilhelmina “Willy” Peluso and Frank Peluso enjoy their honeymoon in Brussels, Belgium, in September 1945. Ms. Peluso died of COVID-19 on April 10, 2020.  (Courtesy of Pauline Peluso)
Courtesy of Pauline Peluso
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