Adeline Lombardi Tancredo, who died Tuesday at age 92, took pride in being the “Americanized” daughter of Italian immigrants, with a patriotism that helped shape the famous nativist tone of son Tom Tancredo’s political career.
She was the middle child of three daughters born to immigrants who resettled in Denver after leaving San Miguel in Abruzzo, Italy. She relished the bounty of her native country and kept a firm embrace on the Italian culture she inherited.
At age 16, she walked from her West Denver home to her job as a sales clerk at Joslins Department store in downtown Denver, earning $1 a day. She remained at Joslins for 45 years, always tidily garbed in a dress or skirt, with her red hair carefully coiffed.
At home, Tancredo kept the strict culinary tenets instilled by her mother. She eschewed American convenience foods and preferred Italian specialty shops to supermarkets.
Even after she became too elderly to do her own shopping, she gave her children and grandchildren exacting directions about which North Denver butchers, bakers and cheesemongers to patronize.
“We went all over North Denver to get the ingredients for her Easter pie,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Littleton. “We had to get the sausage at Belfiore and get the cheese somewhere else. She gave us not just the directions on how to make it but where to get the ham, the sausage and the ricotta cheese. Lots and lots of ricotta cheese.”
A strict Catholic, she annually gave up chocolate for Lent. Otherwise, whenever someone gave the Tancredos a box of Russell Stover candy, she routinely pilfered a few to hide from her husband, who otherwise easily devoured a pound or more in less than two days.
Adeline Tancredo expressed doubt when Tom Tancredo decided to use her Sunday spaghetti-sauce recipe on the campaign fliers marking his 1976 debut in politics. She worried that “it was a little too ethnic,” he said.
Her ultimate acquiescence marked a departure for a woman accustomed to getting her way by inducing guilt in a deceptively meek guise.
Adeline Tancredo and her husband, Gerald, routinely stumped for their son’s legislative and congressional campaigns. Adeline Tancredo’s strategy relied more on emotion than on logic.
Admitting she knew little of statecraft, she fell back on the guileless antiphon invoked by countless Italian-American mothers.
“I don’t know about politics, but he’s a good boy,” she would say.
Her service will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, 12735 W. 58th Ave. in Arvada, followed by entombment at Crown Hill cemetery.
Survivors include sons Jerry Tancredo of Lakewood, and Ralph Tancredo and Tom Tancredo, both of Littleton; sisters Rose Franks and Eleanor Galterio, both of Arvada; 10 grandchildren; 17 great-grandchildren; and four great-great-grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
