Filomena Campitiello, a beloved wife, mother and grandmother, who embodied the spirit of self-sacrifice and giving, died Wednesday in Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank, N.J. The family matriarch was a 19-year survivor of breast cancer, but she succumbed to the disease after a brave six-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 75. The former Filomena Sena was born to Pietrina and the late Antonio Sena in San’t Angelo, Dei Lombardi, Italy. 

In 1962 she immigrated to America along with her dad and her brother Gaetano Sena — and the family would settle in Brooklyn. After being introduced to Gerardo Campitiello by her aunt, Lina, a courtship ensued and the couple married in 1964 on the main altar of Regina Pacis R.C. Church, the house of worship dubbed the “Mother Church of Italian immigrants.”