Ex-owner of trailer court was top bowler

4/1/2001

Olive L. Struffolino, longtime owner and manager of an east side mobile home park, who was acclaimed for her bowling skill, died Friday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. She was 90.

She died from complications of poor circulation, her daughter, Marie Deck, said. Mrs. Struffolino had both legs amputated because of diabetes.

She owned Mound View Trailer Court, on Drouillard Road near Woodville Road, in what is now Oregon, from the early 1940s until the early 1980s. She and her husband, Jim, lived in a house on the property, and “my mother ran everything,” her daughter said.

She was unfazed by late night phone calls from residents with plumbing or electrical problems. She'd call a relative of hers to make repairs, and “she would have [the resident] in for coffee while it was being repaired,” her daughter said.

Her son, Cliff, said: “She just liked being around people is all. Even at the last of her days, she talked about the people from the trailer camp from years ago.”

Mrs. Struffolino's husband helped found Rossford Recreation, a bowling alley of which he was general manager for many years. The couple bowled together - and separately. They bowled a record-setting 592 game in a mixed doubles tournament in 1950; he bowled 279, she 242. Her high at the time was 256 in a 648 series.

“She was athletically inclined, that's all,” her son said.

She continued bowling until about a decade ago. At a granddaughter's suggestion, the Tuesday night women's league at Rossford Recreation was named “Ollie's Follies” in Mrs. Struffolino's honor.

She grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Toledo when her husband got a job in the Libbey-Owens-Ford Co. glass factory in Rossford. She worked for the Electric Autolite Co. during World War II.

She was an expert cook, especially of Hungarian and Italian food, her daughter said. But, her son added, “she could cook in any language.”

She was a seamstress and made her children's and grandchildren's clothes. She liked to fish and could happily spend hours on Lake Erie, even if the perch she was after didn't bite.

Her husband died Oct. 31, 1982.

Surviving are her daughter, Marie Deck; son, Clifford; sister, Anna Asel; 11 grandchildren; 22 great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great grandchildren.

The body will be in the Sujkowski Funeral Home of Rossford after 2 p.m. tomorrow. Services will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Sacred Heart Church, of which she was a member.

The family requests tributes to the Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg Township.