Rina Bavaresco had some standard operating procedures that rarely varied.
She always wore a beret, and each Saturday she took nieces, nephews and great- nieces and -nephews to City Park.
The menu for those park outings, which included crumbs for the ducks, didn’t vary much. It was salami sandwiches on Italian bread and grape juice in a Thermos.
“She’d let us go into the lake, so we always came home wet,” said Katie Beeler, a niece in Lone Tree.
Bavaresco, a disciplined pianist and longtime teacher of romance languages, died Jan. 30 at Rose Hospital. She was 86.
Bavaresco often gave nieces and nephews a dictionary or thesaurus as a gift, which they didn’t appreciate until later, said Beeler.
In later years, she went modern and gave great-nieces and -nephews Italian-language videos. She was always learning and wanted to pass on that pattern.
She played the violin and classical and flamenco guitar, studied in Mexico, raised vegetables at the Denver Botanic Gardens and loved to go to the opera.
And of course, she always wore a beret.
“She had a dozen of them, all in different colors,” said her sister, Rose Early of Denver.
Bavaresco set up scholarship funds at the schools she attended and set up another for her great-nieces and -nephews. The one stipulation was that they had to study Italian for a year.
Bavaresco was devoted to her family, her Italian heritage, music and teaching.
Family members gathered around the piano to sing when she played. The tradition stayed with everyone.
At Christmas, Bavaresco was not feeling well, but her 2-year-old great-niece, Claire Beeler, took her by a finger and led her to the piano.
No one who met Bavaresco was unaffected by her, said her great-niece, Kayley Morgan of Greeley.
“She was miraculous,” Morgan said.
And no one seems to be able to duplicate the chicken soup that Bavaresco made – a two-day project, said Early.
Rina Fortunata Bavaresco was born in Omaha on Nov. 8, 1920, and earned her bachelor’s degree at Creighton University in Omaha and her master’s in romance languages at Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
She taught Latin, French and Spanish in several schools in Nebraska before moving to Denver. Here, she taught at Kent School, Gove Middle School, Hinkley High School and Aurora Central High School.
In addition to her sister, she is survived by two other sisters, Olga Carroll of Littleton and Jennie Roman of Monterrey, Mexico; six nieces; two nephews; and 17 great- nieces and -nephews.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at vculver@denverpost.com or 303-954-1223.
