Marie Modesta (Aristeo) Giansante was born to Vittorio and Mary Modesta (Di Patrizio) Aristeo in a brick row home at 9 and Tasker Street in South Philadelphia on June 5, 1927. She passed peaceably in North Cape May, New Jersey on July 25, 2026, 99 years later, having lived a full and happy life.
Marie was one of five children. Her brothers, Eugene, Dominic and Victor and her sister Lucy (Tomasette), all of whom she adored, preceded her in death. Fearing that Marie, who was small, would become sickly, her mother arranged for her to spend summers on the Fleming Farm Chester County hoping that the food and outdoor environment would help her become more robust. Given her longevity, it must have worked.
The family eventually moved to North Philadelphia at 6 & Pike Streets where Marie attended Our Lady of Pompeii grammar school and Little Flower Highschool. In 1946, she married Gino Louis Giansante, with whom she had three boys: Joseph (Jayne), Louis (Billie) and Thomas J. (Melissa) and six grandchildren: Joseph, Gino, Victoria, Taylor, Michael and Billie Faye. She greatly enjoyed working, first, after high school, as a clerk at the Land Title Building on Broad Street in Philadelphia and later at the Sears Tower on Adams Avenue and the Roosevelt Boulevard, whenshe moved to the Greater North East.
In 1974 Marie relocated to Cape May, New Jersey, where the husband had kept an offshore fishing boat throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Tired of being rousted off the boat at 4 a.m., when her husband and the boys would go fishing in the canyons, she lobbied for a house of her own in town, which her husband built on Washington Street next to the C-View Tavern.
Over the years Marie developed a passion for travel. She traveled with her husband, family and friends to Aruba, Mexico, Hawaii and Las Vegas and the West Coast U.S. She also traveled with church groups to various shrines and holy places through out the Eastern United States and Canada.
In 1975, eager for a new challenge and in a great leap of faith, she and her husband purchased a restaurant business at the corner of Washing and Perry Streets in what had recently become known as the Cape May Washington Street Mall. The A La Carte, as it was known, was a small French café, run by two teachers who opened only for the summer months in July and August, when school was out. Marie took charge of the operation, enlisted the help of her sister and the rest of her family, hired an incredible staff and built an institution in the town. The A La Carte stayed open year round and helped anchor that corner of the Mall in those early days, along with the other businesses that had opened in the same year. The business was very successful, becoming known throughout the area for its Cheesecake, made fresh by Marie’s sister Lucy. It was sold as Aunt Lu’s Cheesecake.
In the early 1980s, with her parents’ health declining, it was becoming obvious that they could no longer care for themselves and needed her attention. She opted to make modifications to her home along the canal in North Cape May and move them in so she could care for them. Although she did not know it at the time, her mother was suffering from Alzheimers disease. As her mother’s condition grew worse, she spent more and more time with their care. Eventually, she sold the A La Carte in 1987 so that she could devote all of her time to her parents’ care.