An Extraordinary Life: ‘She knew how to light up a room’

On Dec. 14, Carmel Perino of Homer Glen drove to Chicago with a friend to see the Christmas lights.

Afterwards, her friend waited in the car while Carmel headed into her favorite Greek restaurant to pick up carryout - and had a heart attack while waiting. She was 72.

Carmel’s youngest daughter Andrea “Onnie” Richter of Virginia felt thankful that, after a life of difficulties, her mother did not experience a difficult death. Instead, she never woke up from a beautiful day and was now with Jesus, Onnie said.

“She was the strongest, most dedicated, most determined person I’ve ever known,” Onnie said. “She encountered a lot of struggles that she seemed to get through the best she could. But she had a lot to deal with.”

But Onnie said it was also difficult to “lose a piece of her heart” the one person she always had with her “through thick and thin.”

“It’s sad that I’m not going to be able to talk to her and have her here in this life,” Onnie said.

Carmel had open heart surgery after Onnie was born and a massive brain hemorrhage in 1999. She was twice divorced, raised three children on her own and never lost her elegance and grace.

“I’d always felt, but I never really realized, that God is always there in times of trouble, that he was carrying me through it, even when I couldn’t walk,” Carmel said in the 2004 story. “I just couldn’t do the things I do without God.”

Carmel grew up in a farmhouse on Will-Cook Road in Homer Glen, on the site where Annunciation Byzantine Catholic Church now stands, in an old-fashioned Italian family where cousins were as close as siblings, according to Carmel’s cousin Frances”Chicki” Nuten of Maple Park.

Chicki said she and Carmel, along with another cousin – Rose – were especially close and remained close in adulthood “like the three musketeers.”

But Carmel also made and maintained long-term friendships.

One friend, Sue Tomala of Homer Glen met Carmel in 1976 at a party. Sue recalled how Carmel had introduced herself, saying, “I just know we’ll be lifelong friends.”

Sue said Carmel would surprise people with homemade cookies or cakes and a little notes that said, “Thinking of you.” Or Carmel might leave thoughtful messages on answering machines. Sue said she and Carmel talked for about 55 minutes on the morning Carmel died. Sue knew Carmel had an issue with the heart valve and needed another surgery and told Carmel, “Please take care of yourself. I don’t know how the world can go on without you.”

“I’m not kidding,” Sue said. “This woman was amazing. Nothing ever kept her down.”

Sue said Carmel loved her flowers and that Carmel’s backyard “was a wonderland.” The one time Sue tried to help Carmel, she couldn’t keep up.

“I’m like, ‘My gosh, you need to hire someone to do this,’” Sue said. “But she enjoyed doing this. She wanted it all to herself.”

Sue said she often went with Carmel to the nursing home when Carmel visited the Sisters who taught her in school. “Once or twice” in the summer, Carmel invited them to her house for a homemade meal and fishing in her stocked pond.

“She’d set up poles and bait for them,” Sue said. “The Sisters, still in full habit, would be all lined up, sitting there, fishing in her backyard. And you can just imagine how much the Sisters loved it, spending a day out in the beautiful sunshine.”

Sue said Carmel’s brother Bruno (deceased), who had Down syndrome, often stayed at Carmel’s house. Carmel took him to the movies, carnivals, the circus and parades.

“Although she was very nice, he could get frustrated with his shortcomings,” Sue said. “But she was so gentle and kind and understanding and patient with him.”

Oz Yangus of New York, Carmel’s grandson, said Carmel was one of his most favorite people in the whole world.

“She was just so sweet and kind,” Oz said. “She had such a way about her. She had such a bright and exuberant character. She knew how to light up a room, but she could put you in your place…she had a spark in her that made everyone like her. And if you didn’t like her, you would respect her.”

Oz said he could always talk with Carmel when he was “in a very bad place.” He could surprise her with a visit, and she’d be happy to see him. As a boy, he baked cookies with her and bicycled with her. He and Carmel had their own saying: “I love you up to the sky and down to the basement.”

When Oz was older, he called her often and tried to spend a weekend with her at least once a month.

Oz said Carmel took him to church with her, one of the reasons why he is still a Christian today. She’d open the Bible for him and help him find his place.

“She was so devout,” Oz said. “If my grandmother could hear me from heaven for at least 30 seconds, I would tell her how much I love her and how much she seriously meant to me and impacted my life. And that she gave me strength as a kid and still gives me strength now.”

In a 2004 Herald New story, Carmel said her health troubles began with an infection in 1980 immediately after Onnie’s birth. The infection traveled to her heart valve, which was replaced through open hear surgery.

That same year, Perino’s husband left her, so Carmel returned to work as a court reporter, took on extra jobs and raised her three children on her own. Onnie said at the time her brother Louis Yangus was 4 and her sister Angela YAngus was 3. Onnie was the baby.

“Five years later the pig valve stopped working and she had to a get a replacement,” Onnie said. “She had that same valve the rest of her life.”

Because the new valve was a mechanical valve, Carmel had to take blood thinners, Carmel said in 2004, which worked well until 1999. That’s when she began bruising and having severe headaches. Carmel, now married again, called her doctor one Friday afternoon and he arranged for her to have a CT scan on Monday.

But the next morning Carmel woke with a severe headache. She was slurring her words. She had forgotten how to wash her hair. In the emergency department, she could sign the consent forms; she could only scrawl “C.” She spent a month in the intensive care unit, had an allergic reaction to a medicine and ran a fever of 106 degrees that caused her skin to peel, Carmel said in 2004.

Carmel spent the second month of her hospitalization in physical rehabilitation She could not use a knife and fork. She could scarcely speak or walk. She practiced writing the alphabet, even though she didn’t recognize the letters. She saved her menu and diligently copied “Cheerios” and orange juice,” Carmel had said.

A year later, she was writing cursive. She relearned how to drive. When her second divorce was finalized, Carmel drove herself to the courthouse, Carmel said in 2004.

In the early 2000s, Carmel often visited the church where her home was located.

“There is such a calm about my being there on that place where I rode horses and now it’s a church,” Carmel said in 2004. “I just go there and talk to God.”

In her later years, Carmel still baked homemade cookies and dinners, including her wonderful Parmesan chicken, and had balcony full of flowers, Onnie said. Chicki took Carmel on her first and only helicopter ride in 2013 and said Carmel “was as excited as a child.”

Perhaps that’s why Onnie saw this image from her airplane window when she flew back to Illinois after her mother’s death.

“When we went through the ceiling of the clouds, I got this beautiful image of my mother, such a sense a peace,” Onnie said. “There was just this radiant light.”