Peter Magnani

 TRANSCRIPT

Dorothy: My name is Dorothy Magnani and I’m the wife of Peter Magnani.

Kirsten: And my name is Kirsten Magnani, and I am Peter Magnani’s daughter.… Okay so when we played, this is when we were really young, he would always like tussle with us. You know he was really hands on. He spent time with us. Yeah, he was always there for us. I remember him –

Dorothy: He always liked going to Jones Beach.

Kirsten: I was just thinking of that.

Dorothy: Oh yeah.…

Kirsten: I remember also him teaching me how to ride the waves. 

Dorothy: Yeah, he always rode the waves. 

Kirsten: Rode the waves, and he would, you know, we would do it together. But then he would set me, hold me in the water and then let me go when the, when the timing was right – and I would ride, you know, get sand in my bathing suit. But I remember him. Yeah, I would say he was like a big kid. Even when he was doing something serious, he liked to play.

Dorothy: Even his death, you know. He had, he had frontal lobal dementia. He didn’t have anger issues and he didn’t, he wasn’t in pain either. But we bathed him and fed him and dressed him and danced with him.

Kirsten: Yeah.

Dorothy: To Frank Sinatra. But the dancing would just be – I would stand up and we’d put on Frank Sinatra. 

Kirsten: He loved Frank Sinatra.

Dorothy: I used to, I used to play “My Way.” … We just, we just stood and kind of moved, swayed back and forth. It was funny as he was dying and we were, we were sitting here and the minister, the priest came in and said, um, I think this is, if this is the time, if you have any regrets, this would be the time to do something about it … We all looked at each other and we went, I have no regrets. I have, we…

Kirsten: Yeah, I know it sounds like, really, like impossible.