When Bianca Brisk married an American GI in Italy during World War II, she was already schooled in preparing pastas, sauces and steaks from her native Tuscany.
Turkey, however, was a different bird altogether.
“She had never seen a bird as big as a turkey,” said her husband, Lloyd, who is known by family and friends as Frank.
The U.S. Army gave the newlyweds a turkey just days after they were married on Dec. 26, 1945, and Mrs. Brisk offered to cook it as her husband left for work. He had dreams of returning home that day to find a golden basted turkey nestled on a pillow of stuffing.
It was not to be.
“She cut it up and made soup,” her husband remembered with a laugh. “It was pretty good, actually.”
In the years after the couple moved to the United States, Mrs. Brisk mastered turkey and the rest of the Thanksgiving feast, just as she had mastered steak Florentine. And for decades she satisfied her family’s appetites with Old World dishes as well as new American fare.
She filled their hearts at the same time.
Mrs. Brisk, 84, of Homewood, died of pneumonia Sunday, Oct. 23, in Advocate South Suburban Hospital, Hazel Crest.
Her husband wanted to marry Mrs. Brisk, formerly Bianca Cilotti, the day he saw the young woman with blond hair crossing a street in her hometown of Campiglia Marittima, Italy.
“I said hello, and she smiled. And I was hooked right from there,” he said.
It didn’t matter that she spoke almost no English, and his Italian was only what he had picked up during two years stationed in her homeland. It was true love, he said.
“We’d go to the movies, to local dances and mostly meet at her home,” he said. But always with supervision, he said with a laugh. “She had a niece that had eyes as big as saucers. Everything had a chaperon.”
The couple made their way across the Atlantic in 1946 and settled in Brisk’s hometown of Downers Grove. The first two of five children were born while living there. Another child followed in 1949, after they had moved back to Italy for five years. When they returned to the U.S., his job with Illinois Bell had them relocating from Gary to Country Club Hills and, finally, to Homewood.
“She believed that the best way to give love to her family was to be home when they got home from school,” said her daughter Betty. “We never went home to an empty house.”
There she would listen to the day’s events recounted by her children, whom she would call miei tesori–my treasures.
“Just those words made you feel so good and you’d know that everything was OK,” Betty said. “She was just so compassionate.”
In addition to her husband and daughter Betty, Mrs. Brisk is survived by her sister, Raffaella Cilotti; three other daughters, Dr. Barbara Zizic, Josephine Gusberti and Eileen Rochat; a son, Frank; 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday in Ryan Funeral Home, 18022 Dixie Hwy., Homewood. Mass will be said at 9:30 a.m. Friday in St. Joseph Catholic Church, 17951 Dixie Hwy., Homewood.
