L. Carol Miceli turned her love of sewing into a business that helped pay the bills as she and her husband, a letter carrier, raised their three children in the Town of Tonawanda.
The former L. Carol Yunke, a native of Buffalo’s Fruit Belt neighborhood, could walk into a drapery store, study the design of the window treatments and go home and create the same drapes and valances.
Her remarkable talents provided her only daughter with many memories of Miceli, whose long and happy life ended abruptly after she contracted Covid-19 at a Lancaster nursing home.
On April 18, Miceli, 86, died at Kenmore Mercy Hospital in the Town of Tonawanda three days after she was transferred there from Harris Hill Nursing Facility, Jody A. Toth said of her mother.
“I was glad she was sent to Kenmore Mercy. They let me visit twice. I’d talk to her even though she was unconscious and on morphine. But her heart rate would increase when I was there and the nurses would say, ‘Jody, she knows you are here.’ I took comfort in that,” Toth said.
Even the approximately 14 months Miceli lived at the Harris Hill nursing home before falling victim to the virus were filled with joy because of her love for people, Toth said.
“She would get the quiet ones out of their rooms to participate in the activities,” Toth said. “She was very social.”
Helping weave the social fabric among senior citizens who are sometimes forgotten was only one of Miceli's talents.
While raising her family and working from her Carpenter Avenue home on window treatments, Miceli’s reputation spread throughout the Tonawandas and beyond, according to her daughter.
“People who lived in the expensive homes on Nottingham Terrace in Buffalo were contacting her to decorate their windows,” Toth said.
Miceli’s family members were more than impressed when their old leather couch, in need of renovation, was made new by her.
“She took it apart and used the pieces as a pattern and reupholstered it,” Toth said, “and she had never upholstered anything before that.”
The self-taught seamstress, a 1951 graduate of Girls Vocational High School in Buffalo, also shared her sewing skills with clubs at Kenmore East High School, when her daughter was a student there.
“She made uniforms for the majorettes, the dancers and the color guard,” said Toth, who served as a flag carrier with the Kenmore East color guard.
But after decades of raising a family and working, Miceli decided step back from her window treatment business and enjoy life with her husband, Joseph R. Miceli, to whom she was married for 50 years, the daughter said. He died in 2004.
In addition to her daughter, Miceli is survived by sons Jay J. and Joel R.; nine grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated Saturday at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in the Town of Tonawanda.
