Brenda Fazzolari keeps her door open. One day, a Homeland Center staff member walked past and said, “Hi, honey!”
“That’s Miranda,” Brenda said. “Everybody’s very friendly here.”
Brenda lives in a bright, neatly arranged skilled-care room decorated with family pictures and devotional images. There, she banters with staff, dutifully performs daily therapy, and welcomes visits from family. After some falls and difficult surgeries, Homeland is receiving the support she needs on the road to recovery.
Brenda was born and raised in Harrisburg, living away from the city for only 18 months. Her father worked for a Harrisburg fruit distributor. Her mother sold ladies’ sportswear in Pomeroy’s, the downtown department store. Sometimes, Brenda would get off the school bus for a visit, stopping at the famous mezzanine Tea Room for its signature treat.
“They had cinnamon sticks,” she remembers. “I would get that and tea.”
At Bishop McDevitt High School, Brenda and her friends went to games, including Friday night football because McDevitt had the area’s only lighted field.
”Then we’d walk down Market Street,” she says. “There were little stores at the corner, and we’d stop and have ice cream.”
Brenda met her husband, Joseph Fazzolari, at a church festival. He had emigrated from Italy at age 20, leaving Calabria to join his uncle and other relatives who came to Harrisburg for work.
“I told him he had to come here to find me,” Brenda jokes.
While some Fazzolari relatives opened bars and restaurants, Joseph was a tailor. He worked at Doutrich’s Clothing Store and, for a time, the exclusive Mary Sachs boutique. Brenda got to select an outfit there once a year. She remembers a suit with a black skirt and white top.
“It wasn’t silk, but it was a smooth material,” she says. “I liked it, and I wore it a lot.”
For a time, Joseph also had his own high-end men’s store in downtown Harrisburg and a tailor shop in New Cumberland.
When their three sons were in school, Brenda joined Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, moving to St. Patrick’s Cathedral during parish mergers in 1995, as an administrative assistant.
“It was a fancy title for whatever needed to be done, but I enjoyed it,” she says.
Her retirement, in 2005, didn’t last long. An acquaintance, the new Dauphin County jury manager, spotted her at Mass and asked if she was looking for a job.
“I was, and I wasn’t,” Brenda says. “I was looking for the perfect job that would suit me and our lives.”
For 18 years, Brenda loved her job of checking in jurors, helping them with their needs, and assisting courtroom tipstaffs. Some jurors groused about being there or would call to ask, “How can I get out of it?”
“That kind of stuff used to drive me crazy,” Brenda says. “If you were on trial, you wouldn’t want people to say that.”
In 2020, Joseph died at home from cancer, under the care of family members aided by Homeland Hospice.
“They were all very nice,” Brenda remembers. “I was glad I had somebody that I could depend on.”
After a fall at home, Brenda went to a rehab facility until her children asked if she wanted to move to Homeland, “which I had always heard was a very nice place.”
Today, her sons, their wives (“They all have nice wives”), nieces and nephews, and eight grandchildren visit often. The latest addition to the family is her baby great-grandson.
Pictures of the Holy Family, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary decorate Brenda’s room. On weeks when Homeland doesn’t hold Catholic Mass, a St. Patrick’s Cathedral deacon comes to offer communion. She attends Homeland’s music programs when she can, but she’s not a fan of bingo.
“They think just because I’m Catholic, I should go to bingo,” she jokes.
She joshes with Homeland staffers. One aide apologized for breaking a pill into two pieces, and Brenda assured him, “I think I can manage it.” Another aide, told that Brenda would be in the Homeland newsletter, said, “Let me get your autograph!”
Brenda has fun watching the mourning doves that flit around a feeder, filled by a resident’s daughter, outside her window.
“I’m happy here because people visit me and call me on my phone,” she says. “They had a picnic here, and all the families were invited. At Christmas, we had a nice party in the dining room. The staff is very friendly. I always get asked about that, and they really are.”
