102-Year-Old Woman Killed in Car Crash

Even though she was 102 years old, Mary Mandile rarely missed her weekly bingo game. Tonight’s game will be marked by an empty seat and a moment of silence as friends and relatives remember the fun-loving woman who was killed in a car accident.

“I’m putting flowers on her chair and I’m not going to let anyone sit in it,” said Jim Hanson, who runs the weekly bingo sessions at the Pope John Paul II Polish Center where Mandile was a frequent visitor. “This is a big, big loss for us.”

Mandile died of internal injuries after the vehicle she was traveling in was broadsided about 5 p.m. Tuesday at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Avocado Avenue in Brea. Mandile’s daughter, Alberta DiLorenzo, 71, was driving her mother home from the eye doctor when she apparently made a left turn in front of an oncoming vehicle, Brea Police Lt. Cliff Tremble said.

DiLorenzo has three fractured ribs and is in stable condition at Placentia Linda Community Hospital, relatives said.

Three Yorba Linda youths who were in the second vehicle--driver George Hatzidakis, 17, and passengers Angelo Hatzidakis, 16, and Brian Labrada, 19--were treated for cuts to their arms and hands, Tremble said.

Everyone involved in the accident was wearing a seat belt, officials said.

While police continued their investigation, relatives and dozens of friends mourned the loss of a woman whom they described as someone who could make others happy just by being in the same room.

“She’s just incredible,” recalled Mandile’s daughter, Rose Forte, 68, as her eyes filled with tears. “I just wish that, at 102, that she didn’t have to go so violently. It should have been more peaceful.”

On Wednesday, Forte described her mother as a cheery homemaker whose priorities were with her family.

Orphaned at age 12, Mandile quit school in the eighth grade to help raise her four siblings, she told The Times in an interview during her 100th birthday party.

She later married and had five children of her own and more than 30 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

Mandile’s husband of more than 50 years, Albert Mandile, died in 1978. Friends said Mandile enjoyed a warm relationship with her children and loved musicals, Lawrence Welk and “Wheel of Fortune.” In her spare time, she kept a current events album filled with newspaper clippings and photos.

“She and her daughters are very close-knit,” Hanson said. “Every Thursday, one or both daughters would take her to get her hair done in the morning, then take her to lunch. After that, they’d wait for bingo. She loved bingo.”

Relatives said they were grateful Mandile lived a full life. Born in the last century, she lived through two world wars, and ushered in the era of radio, television and then the computer. She could recall when automobiles were first introduced.

Her experience, she told Hanson, taught her that there’s no sense screaming and yelling about life’s mishaps.

“You may as well smile, and that’s just the way she was,” Hanson said. “Always smiling.”

Times staff writer Martin Miller contributed to this report.