Yolanda “Lindy” Stagnaro Dunn, the eldest surviving matriarch of the once-vibrant Santa Cruz Italian fishing colony and who was known as “the Beauty of the Santa Cruz Waterfront,” died peacefully at home, surrounded by the love of her family, on Saturday, December 27. She was 99 and had just spent Christmas with her family.
Born the fifth of eleven children to Cottardo II and Batistina Stagnaro (both natives of Riva Trigoso, Italy), May 28, 1915. She was given the nickname “Lucky Lindy” by a brother following Charles Lindbergh’s flight over the Atlantic in 1927, a week before her twelfth birthday. She was known as “Lindy” the rest of her life.
Raised in the Italian “barranca” on the Westside of Santa Cruz, she barely survived the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918 at the age of three. She attended Bay View Elementary School Beginning in 1920 speaking only her family’s native Genoese dialect and graduated from Santa Cruz High School.
Lindy received awards including the Order of Gregg Artists (shorthand) upon graduation. She also starred in the class play, “Oh Doctor,” in 1933. One of her schoolmates, the late Irene Costella Penniman, was a lifelong friend.
While she loved her extended Italian-American family, she preferred glamour and fashion to the rough-hewn ambiance of the Santa Cruz fishery. Following her elder sister Mary, she was one of the first Italian women of her generation to work in an “uptown” Santa Cruz business as secretary for Finn and Finn Insurance Co. in the 1930s and later, for two decades, at the cosmetics counter at the old Santa Cruz Pharmacy on Soquel Avenue.
Lindy also worked in the family’s speedboat business on the Pleasure Pier during the summers and weekends from the 1930s into the 1950s. Beginning in the late 1960s she served as a hostess and floor manager until 1980 at her family’s upscale restaurant, Malio’s and was a member of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Union. After retirement she occasionally “relieved” her sister Gilda as a hostess and cashier at Gilda’s Restaurant. She also volunteered as a “Pink Lady” at Dominican Hospital.
During the 1930s and 1940s, she was active in several community social organizations. She loved to travel and made several domestic trips via train throughout the United States during that time. During the 1980s she fulfilled a dream by making two visits to Europe.
In 1944, her high school sweetheart and fiancée, Stanley Hopkins, was killed during World War II by at Anzio Beach, in Italy. In 1951, she married the late Frank B. Dunn, a World War II navy veteran who courted her by swimming out to see her at the Pleasure Pier. They had three children.
Lindy was an avid fan of the San Francisco Giants and reveled in their three recent World Series Championships. Lindy also served as the inspiration for several of her son Geoffrey’s film and literary endeavors. Her photo and home-movie scrapbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s were featured in the 2014 “Santa Cruz Is in the Heart Exhibit” at the Museum of Art and History. She was also honored at the Wharf’s Centennial Celebration this past October.
In recent years she loved going out to lunches with her nieces and their husbands. She also loved visiting her daughter Peggy’s family in Sebastopol. She loved focusing on the positive, was always upbeat and was loved by all who knew her. She enjoyed greeting people with a quick and lively, “Hey, hey!”
But mostly Lindy delighted in the various athletic, cultural and social endeavors of her grandchildren. She loved repeating Italian proverbs from her childhood to them. She loved baseball and couldn’t wait for spring training to start each year.
Lindy was preceded in death by her son, Norman James Dunn; her former husband Frank B. Dunn; her beloved uncle, Malio J. Stagnaro; and ten siblings: Cottardo III (“Babe”); Mary; Estrella; Batista (“Dodie”); Malio H. (“Stago”); Joe; Gilda I; Gilda II: Betty; and Robert (“Big Boy).
She is survived by her son Geoffrey Dunn and wife Siri Vaeth Dunn of Santa Cruz; her daughter Marguerite “Peggy” Dunn Heil and husband Joseph Heil of Sonoma County; cousin, Gilda Zolezzi Firenze of Los Gatos; numerous nieces and nephews; and, her four loving grandchildren, Cameryn Judd, Tess Dunn, Sierra Heil and Dylan Dunn.
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Contributions in Lindy’s memory may be made to Cystic Fibrosis Research, Inc., 1731 Embarcadero Road, Suite 210. Palo Alto, CA 94303.