When Fannie Curro turned 70, she started thinking about what she
could do that she hadn’t done before.
When Fannie Curro turned 70, she started thinking about what she could do that she hadn’t done before.
“I said ‘What can I do that I’ve never done in my life?'” she said.
The idea she struck on was to take part in a pageant for women 60 and older – what she refers to as the age of elegance.
She’s been participating in the pageants every year for the last nine years, including the Ms. Senior Santa Clara event held July 23 at the Valley Village Retirement Community. She won the pageant and will represent northern California at the Ms. Senior California of America pageant Aug. 20.
Syni Patterson, of Culver City, and Joni Morris Cardinalli, of Stockton, will also represent the region at the competition in Westminster. Hollister’s Ellen Pieterse placed as a third runner-up.
The judges included Claire Hodgkin, a theater performer and singer; Marilyn Abad-Cardinalli, executive director of the STAR program at Gavilan College; Nanette Staff, a soprano singer who still performs occasionally; Joe Cardinalli, an executive and artistic director of university performances and special events at California State University, Monterey Bay; and Rose Hernandez, director of the cosmetology department and department chair of the vocational and technical programs at Gavilan College.
“We don’t get enough participants,” Curro said, noting that they had nine women compete. “Down in southern California they have five pageants and have no trouble getting contestants.”
Curro said she sees the competition as a chance to meet new people and to show that seniors live active, vital lives.
Curro lived a very full life before her retirement that took her from New York to California, and eventually to Hollister. Curro was born and raised in New York, where she married a New York police officer. But she said her mother had always instilled in her the importance of education because one never knows what might happen
When the youngest of her four children was six months old, her husband died at the age of 35. Curro went to work as a secretary, a career that would take her through the years and to another state. Curro remarried a widow who also had four children, and the couple had another child together. She joked that it was like the movie “Yours, Mine and Ours,” with the blended family. The couple moved with seven of the children – leaving behind a college-age daughter on the East Coast – and settling in the Almaden area.
Curro worked for 43 years as a secretary, completing her career at IBM working for the patent office. She said she has been the secretary for multiple company presidents and CEOs.
After retirement, she was looking for something challenging and that’s when she hit upon the Ms. Senior Santa Clara pageant. She said she was scared the first time she participated because “I was challenging myself.”
“I didn’t have any talent,” she said. “I don’t sing or play a musical instrument. But I can dance.”
Curro said she found a short, beaded white dress on a sales rack at Macy’s, for $10. She asked her dance instructor how she could use it. The instructor suggested a tap routine to “Chicago, Chicago.” But when the instructor put on the music, “La Bamba” was playing.
“I’ve been a Latin dancer since I was 14 years old,” Curro said, adding that her best friend growing up was Hispanic. “I choreographed a routine and placed fourth in the state.”
After Curro injured her shoulder playing tennis, she moved on to a monologue from “Hello, Dolly,” a play in which she had performed the lead role.
Nellie Robinson-Ortega the director of the Ms. Senior Santa Clara Pageant and an executive board of director of the Ms. Senior California of America, Inc., Curro and some other participants of the pageant performed at the Elks Lodge in Gilroy Aug. 4 for Women in Touch, a women’s group based in Gilroy. Other participants included Pieterse, Cadinalli and Carolyn Dougery, of Danville.
Curro wore her Ms. Senior Santa Clara sash Aug. 5, when she modeled at the Knife and Fork cafe, as she does once a month. Sheila Stevens, who owns the restaurant as well as She’s clothing store, hosts the fashion show on the first Friday of the month.
“We need more contestants,” Curro said, of trying to publicize the pageant. “You meet new people all the time.”
