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Cooking Up A Storm And Sharing Memories With Zita Riley

photo provided I really couldn’t believe it when I was 80 and then I blinked and I was 90!” Expressing her shock, but delight about her current age and status, Zita Riley is ninety years young and still in love with life, family and her passion for cooking.

photo provided Driving from Forrestdale to Brandon in Richard Shortsleeves’ 1926 Model T, Zita remembered another memorable car ride, when she and her family were some of the first to cross the newly opened Champlain Bridge, linking Vermont and New York some 80 years ago.

photo provided Growing up on the farm in Cornwall, necessity taught Zita all her homemaking skills, but grew her passion for cooking into a life long joy and earned Zita the distinction of serving hundreds of children a day their meals for over thirty years.

photo provided After a five year courtship, Zita and Gerald Riley were married in June of 1944 and raised six children together in Addison County passing on the work ethic and joys of family to 8 grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren and the countless who called the Riley house and Zita’s kitchen home over the years.

Tuesday July 19, 2011

By Cookie Steponaitis

Meeting Zita Riley is a lot like meeting your very favorite grandmother. She greets you at the door with a spring in her step, a gleam in her eye and the question asked by every devoted cook, ‘Are you hungry and can I get you something?’ At ninety years strong, Zita Riley is still most at home in a kitchen cooking her favorite recipes and sharing them with those she loves and even those she has just met.

Zita Towle Riley was born in Cornwall, Vermont on June 22, 1921 the youngest of six children on the family farm. She attended a one room school in Cornwall with her siblings Rena, Bill, Francis, Louise and Winifred. Zita loved reading and cooking and remembers well the one day a week the teacher would bring in an oven that she put on top of the potbelly stove and the special treats she would cook for the students. What Zita did not like was when she graduated from the Cornwall school in eighth grade and made the jump to Middlebury High School which was a 7.5 mile walk to school and you carried your books. “There were no backpacks in those days,” recollected Zita. “We carried our books and had no car, so we walked. When my mother got very ill and my sister Gayle took over the farm, I stopped going to school and stayed home to help.”
Help is an understatement! Zita and her sisters took over all aspects of the farm work.

“How we did work,” remembered Zita. “There were no milking machines in those days. I milked ten cows on my side of the barn. My sister milked nine. When we got tired, we just started to sing. It made our workload lighter.” While loading the milk cans at the farm Zita met the man who was to become the centerpiece of her life and family, Gerald Riley. “He started out going with my older sister, actually,” remarked Zita. “But he didn’t like her much so I kind of took over. I went out with him for five years and we were married in June, 1944.” They had six children, Layton, William, Joseph, Timmy, Gail and Loyal who were born during 1946-1962 and Zita and Gerald enjoyed forty-one years of marriage until Gerald’s death in 1985. Today, Zita proudly shares her family has blossomed to include eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Just recently Zita relived a special memory. Her son Loyal had a family friend Richard Shortsleeve arrange a 90th birthday surprise and drove Zita in his 1926 Model T car from Forestdale to Brandon where her children and their spouses waited for her birthday dinner. “I got in and just started grinning,” shared Zita. The ride also triggered a memory of another once in a lifetime car ride. Zita and her family were in one of the first cars to cross the Champlain Bridge when it opened some eighty years ago. “I remember my brother playing on the running board while we waited to cross. It was SO HOT that day. My mother and sister sat in the front seat. We drove, starting and stopping in the line of cars across the bridge.”

In a lifetime that has seen many advances and technological changes, Zita credits the washing machine and the gas stove as the most important in her life on the farm and in her cooking. “My mom was always looking for ways to stretch the dollar,” reminisced Zita. “She got a chance to take in twelve boys from Rensallear that were in Cornwall to build the first road through for three weeks. I would make all of the breads for the guests and took them out some hot homemade bread on a platter. They were so amazed at the bread and the taste. They talked and talked about the cooking and how good it was.”

Just how good it was is a phrase Zita heard pretty much every day of her life. Zita was a constant in the Cornwall and Middlebury Union High School kitchens from 1967-1984 cooking bread, meals, treats, desserts and feeding hundreds of children each day their breakfasts and lunches. Her son Loyal fields comments and questions from friends to this day who inquire, “Your mother is she still cooking and making that bread?” Zita herself remembers children asking her each day, “What are we gonna have tomorrow? Are you making my favorite?” Zita shared that when she is stopping in stores around Middlebury today she often hears, “You know, Mrs. Riley, they don’t get GOOD meals like when you made them for us.” Even granddaughter Dana would come up to the lunch line and ask, “Grandma, what did you make us yummy today?”

The answer to that question could have been any number of things because Zita always cooked for the children at school like she did for her family at home. She even would offer burgers and fries to the drivers who brought the produce to the schools and has one of the best fed Federal Express men in Vermont. Loyal estimates that she has made over 20,000 cornballs in her life as a treat and Zita continues to this day to polish her love of cooking and home crafts. “I learned on the farm from my mother,” she remarked, “but also in school we had Home Economics. It is so important to a family to have nourishing meals and to share them as a family. Nowadays many people can’t cook and even less sit together as a family. That is just so important.”
Whether completing her job of watching the Cornwall skies for enemy planes during World War Two or cooking and working for her growing family on the farm or even slipping the MUHS football teams a few extra scoops of food for lunch on Fridays before a big game, Zita holds to her motto of, “Just because you had bad luck once, don’t give up.” To this day she lives on her own and continues to do all of her own cooking and cleaning .She loves to do fine embroidery and ended the interview by reviewing her prized recipe collection. “We always had a table full,” concluded Zita. “We had our own garden and would annually can seventy quarts of tomatoes, pickles, berries and even picked them wild on Blueberry Hill. It was all about closeness and family.”

Family indeed! The Valley Voice salutes the skill, determination and love that Zita puts into each dish she makes and each person she serves with care. Happy Birthday Zita and may you be able to share with many generations your recipes and your pure joy of sharing food and making a home your pride and joy!

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