Nearly ninety-five years ago, a young girl named Lucy Loglisci made her way from Italy to Stamford. She was only eight years old, and by age nine, she was forced to work at a factory job paying $12 a week. If anyone had told her then that she would grow up to be the toast of Stamford, earning the patronage of stars like Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra and Henry Fonda, she probably would have walked away laughing.
“She had an incredibly tough life,” says her daughter, Annette Cortese, “but humility and forgiveness were outstanding in her. She never made us feel like we needed to help.”
Lucy’s story of struggle—including marrying at seventeen, raising four children and barely scraping by—and her subsequent success as a local business owner is recounted in Life of Lucy, a documentary recently produced by her grandson, Anthony Cortese, who owns Silver Pin Studios in Stamford. It premiered in September during a pizza dinner benefit at the Italian Center, where more than 300 turned out for slices from Riko’s and Pellici’s. Proceeds funded Alzheimer’s research.
In the film, we get a slice of Stamford in the 1950s, when many would make it out to the Starlite Drive-In not just for a movie but also for Lucy’s homemade pizza. Residents followed her to Lucy’s Diner on Prospect Street, a business she opened in 1955 with her son, Ralph. In a matter of just a few years, Lucy’s (and Lucy) were a hit. She moved table to table, between construction workers and Wall Street executives, offering advice in the black-and-white perspective from which she viewed life. But it was no cakewalk—she and her family worked from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. every day. In 1971 the restaurant became JR’s Supper Club and Lounge.
Lucy’s thirty-five years of often grueling work led to an extraordinary outcome. Her legacy reminds us that no kindness is too small, and no family too large, to have real impact on anyone. No one says it better than Lucy herself: “If you have two hands and you’re healthy, you can lift the world.”