Active and inspirational: Bocce queen still rolling strong

BY SABRINA BYRNES

Healthy, active and at the age of 92, Fedora Tarini is the oldest member of the Copper Cliff Ladies Bocce Ball League.

Tarini, who celebrated her most recent birthday on Feb. 5, has been playing in the ladies league since it first started 30 years ago.

"I like it," she said smiling, through her broken English.

Tarini moved from Italy, where she was a professional dressmaker, in 1949, to Little Italy in Copper Cliff, where she currently resides. She met and married Enrico Tarini the same year and later had two children, John and Mary Ann. Tarini was widowed in 1967.

During the years Tarini has lived in Sudbury, she has worked as a custodian assistant with the Sudbury Rainbow School Board for nine years and in the kitchen at the Italian Club for 13 years. Tarini currently volunteers her time at the club making pasta.

Tarini still remains very active with cooking, cleaning, gardening, bowling in the winter season and of course, playing bocce ball with the ladies.

"She keeps active, in everything - housework, gardening, everything - she does it all," said the woman's niece Lisa Dicaire.

Dicaire has been playing in the Ladies Bocce Ball League for the past 15 years and currently plays on the same team as her aunt. She claims that Tarini is the best player in the league.

"People don't like to play against her because she's too good," Dicaire said. "I'm glad she's on my team this year."

Dicaire commented on her aunt's skills as a bocce ball player.

"She's accurate. She drops the ball, and you know that ball is going to go right where it's supposed to go," she said chuckling. "We can't do that."

Fellow league member Evelyn Medina had the same sentiments regarding Tarini's talents.

"I'm about 30 years younger and I can't play like that," said Medina, who also has been playing with Tarini for 15 years.

Medina thinks it's wonderful that Tarini is still so active at the age of 92.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be like that? She's very healthy," she said.

Tarini's son John said he feels his mother likes the competitive and social aspects of bocce ball, as well as the fitness components to it.

"It keeps her mind active and her body active," he said.

Tarini goes for daily walks and is well-known in the community, stopping for chats along the way. Both her niece and son feel she's quite an inspiration because of the way she's lived her life.

"I think she's a good role model for all of us because of her love of life, her cheerful attitude, her energy," John said.

Dicaire claims that aside from Tarini's bocce ball skills, her aunt is "a very religious person, a very happy person and a very giving person," adding that her five grandchildren are the light of her life.