Mary Ella Ruggeri-Loucks

Mary Ella Ruggeri-Loucks died on a cold, snowy winter day on February 20, 2025. She was 87 years young.

Mary Ella was born in 1937 in the bustling village of Marshallton as one of two daughters of the late William F. Becker and Ida F. Lambert. She was later raised in Lenape and attended school in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, often reminding us all repeatedly about riding horseback to school in the dead of winter with no shoes on her feet along the banks of the Brandywine Creek. She was a graduate of Kennett High School Class of 1955.

In 1956, she married the late Roger R. Ruggeri Jr. and assisted with the daily operations of Roger’s former businesses; first, Roger Ruggeri’s Gulf Service Station located at Gay and Matlack Streets in West Chester, and later with General Sales Company Cadillac-Oldsmobile, where Roger and his brother George worked hard to eventually become the proud owners of the business.

Mary Ella previously worked for The Chester County Hospital as a phlebotomist, the former Grocery Store Products Company of West Chester as a purchasing agent and later for the former Bishop Tube Company of Frazer. In 1972 she accepted a position at A. Duie Pyle Inc. in West Chester which progressed to being promoted to Credit Manager, a position she held with great pride until she retired in 1985 after 13 years of dedicated service with the company. In 1986 Mary Ella temporarily relocated to Roseville, Minnesota and married Wallace Loucks, a marriage that later proved futile. There, she accepted a position with a State Farm Insurance agent for several years. After divorcing and relocating back to Pennsylvania around 1999, she assisted her late sister Dorothy Sizemore in the running of Dorothy’s farm in West Sadsbury until they sold it in 2007. She last resided in the Pocopson Home where she received the utmost of care humanly possible. Even while she was living out of state, Mary Ella always considered Chester County her home.

Famously opinionated and known by all for her outspoken and judgmental personality, Mary Ella had a knack for “telling it the way it was”, even if it meant to your face.  You always knew where you stood with her, and if you didn’t, she would gladly be the first to tell you with her poker face and her pointed crooked index finger. She was unfortunately a diehard democrat.

In the prime of her life, Mary Ella enjoyed gardening and was an avid jogger, often running in local marathon running events. Following in her parent’s footsteps, Mary Ella was also an avid equestrian and third generation foxhunter with The West Chester Hunt. She enjoyed riding horses religiously every weekend at Richard and Margaret Brigham’s former Wind-O-Hill Farm and Eric Renwick’s Downstream Farm, both in Birmingham Township. Downstream Farm would later be picked as the filming location for the hit movie “Marley and Me” in 2008.

She raised three wonderful children and later in life as a divorcee, often worked two jobs as a single mother to raise her children. She was the best mother a child growing up could ever have and her children will continue to tell her stories for generations to come. She had a wonderful zest for country life and enjoyed classic country music, local civil war history, old cars and beat up pickup trucks, and going for rides in the country. A skilled and expert “people watcher”, she also enjoyed sledding and tobogganing in the snowstorms with her children during their early years. Later in life, she enjoyed babysitting and spending time with her grandchildren long into her happy and warm retirement. Unable to remain fully idle in retirement, she loved attending the Brandywine River Museum which temporarily returned her to her happy childhood long past as a previous neighbor to The Andrew Wyeth Family in Chadds Ford.

She was the last surviving member and matriarch of the Becker family from Marshallton and will be lovingly missed by her children Eric D. Ruggeri and wife Jennifer, Suzanne Petruzziello and her husband Joseph, Mark W. Ruggeri, and Alan P. Ruggeri and his wife Joanne all of West Chester, in addition to five beautiful grandchildren who all will miss their “granny” dearly and leaving her whole community wondering where she buried all her money.

A remembrance service of Mary Ella’s life will be held Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 12 noon sharp at The DellaVecchia, Reilly, Smith, and Boyd Funeral Home Inc., 410 North Church Street, West Chester, where friends may call from 10:00 a.m. until the time of service where you are encouraged to re-tell the stories that she can no longer share. Please don’t be 2 hours early as she always was for everything else in life. Her grandson, Daniel E. Ruggeri will officiate.

Interment will be private at the family’s convenience in Bradford Cemetery, Marshallton, which is immediately adjacent to the home she grew up in as a young child. Although flowers are certainly welcomed, memorial donations can be made to The Brandywine River Museum. 

Arrangements by DellaVecchia, Reilly, Smith & Boyd Funeral Home, Inc. West Chester 610-696-1181, www.DellaFH.com