Catholic faith, love for people inspired her life

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald
 
   Lena Randazzo Torres, a St. Bernard Parish native and long-time clerk of court in St. Bernard Parish, died March 12. She had just celebrated her 100th birthday on Jan. 29.
      
   Serving God through her work in the Catholic church and with the residents of St. Bernard were Torres’ life-long passions, said her son Sidney Torres III and daughter Lena Torres Nunez.


   “Until the day she died, she was reciting her prayers,” Nunez said, mostly from a St. (Padre) Pio prayer book used so often it was bound with masking tape. “She said the rosary all the time; she was a practicing Catholic” who went to weekly Mass and lit candles for loved ones and kept close religious cards of St. Jude, St. Joseph and other saints alongside family pictures.

   “Miss Lena,” as she was affectionately called, was a Ladies’ Auxiliary member at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Violet that founded the annual Our Lady of Lourdes ball in 1949 to raise money, originally, to buy a new church organ. She was queen in 1958, and Nunez was crowned queen a decade later.

   “She never missed a ball in all the years,” Nunez said, except last year when the ball was canceled due to COVID-19.

   Torres III described how his mother supported all the Catholic churches in St. Bernard and beyond and modeled her life after the St. Jude prayer that encourages people to be calm and kind.

   “Knowing the life she led and the position she held, I realized that this was a guiding light for her, reading it at all times,” he said. “She had the saints right before her all the time – the saints and her family.”

Italian through and through
   Italian Catholic heritage ran through her, descending from the Crifasis, Randazzos and Livaccaris from Sicily who brought the tradition of St. Joseph altars to St. Bernard. Her Livaccari grandmother on her mother’s side hosted altars for years.
   “We all anticipated it growing up,” Nunez said.
  
   Torres held an altar for the past decade and insisted on making all the food – the seed cakes, fig cakes, the pignolatas. It was something St. Bernard Judge Robert Klees mentioned in his words of remembrance at her Funeral Mass March 18 at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Church in Chalmette.
  
  The Sunday before she died, Nunez made Torres a traditional St. Joseph day meal of pasta Milanese red gravy, stuffed artichokes and green beans, using recipes from their Sicilian ancestors.
Lifetime public servant
  
   Torres was the eldest of five children of Sam and Petrina Randazzo in Docville, St. Bernard. Her father was a farmer and overseer of Dr. L.A. “Doc” Meraux’s farm, and she was his bookkeeper before attending Soule Business College.

   After graduating in 1940, she began her career in the St. Bernard Clerk of Court’s office, hired by her friend Mary Elizabeth Nunez’s father, Anthony, who was elected clerk. She moved to the county agent’s office for several years, then returned, when her husband, Sidney Torres Jr., was elected clerk of court. They worked together until his death in 1988, after which she took his seat and was re-elected to the office six times, serving until age 91 in 2012.
 
   Hurricane Katrina proved her mettle. Water inundated all of St. Bernard Parish and its court records. Yet, Torres returned within days to salvage them, Torres III said, and led the recovery efforts. Within weeks, she and her deputy clerk daughter, Lena,  were in the courthouse lobby with no electricity or running water, serving donuts and coffee and providing documents so people could rebuild their lives.

 
“That was her life,” Torres III said. “She knew the people of St. Bernard would not be able to claim their property if they didn’t have a copy of their property title. She felt she owed it to them to get everything they deserved and needed.”

   Shepherding the help of other state clerks, the Louisiana Supreme Court and anyone else she could, Torres salvaged 95% of parish records.

   “She carried on, and they got it done,” Torres III said.

   “She always put her constituents first,” Nunez added.

  “Her dedication and commitment were her trademarks,” said Father Marlon Mangubat at her Funeral Mass.
  
   He recounted her often saying, “I enjoy working, and I enjoy helping people. I tried to do all that I could.’”
  
   Father Mangubat said her lifelong public service reminded him of the Gospel reading selected for the Mass: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Humble, yet tough
  
   Even though she earned a lifetime of accolades, she didn’t talk about them, Torres III said.
  
   “She measured her success by helping people,” Torres III said, even though there were many awards. “She was very modest and humble. Her humbleness, modesty and demeanor really understated her strength. You can’t be in politics for 70 years if you didn’t have strength. I think her strength was always her religion.”
 
   She was buried in the Torres tomb in the historic St. Bernard Catholic Cemetery – Terre-aux-Boeufs Cemetery – across from St. Bernard Church.
   “My mother is going to be buried in the same cemetery as my grandfather’s grandmother (Lena Crifasi Randazzo, who died of yellow fever and was buried in an unmarked, common grave),” Torres III said.  “Lena and Lena. When you think about it, it makes you realize how short a time we have here.”
  
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