Amityville librarian Theresa Zappelloni, 81

In her public life, Theresa Zappelloni was known to countless children as "Miss Terry," the gentle leader of story time at Amityville Public Library whose mission was to instill a love of reading.

To her family, she was the fiercely independent mother who taught her daughters to play sports and get an education, the sister who traveled the world and reveled in New York City's cultural scene, the daughter who achieved her immigrant father's dream.

Zappelloni died on Dec. 1 in upstate Hornell from congestive heart failure and complications of rheumatoid arthritis, her family said. She was 81.

"She loved everything you could think of that stimulated your mind and raised the spirit," said her younger sister, Anne Prisco, of Mount Vernon.

Zappelloni, who lived in Melville for nearly 40 years, ran children's programs at Amityville Public Library for more than a decade. She also worked part-time at the North Babylon Public Library.

She relished working with the children, her daughters said. After her death, her daughter Lisa Warriner found letters children wrote thanking her. One gave a Christmas ornament, a bear holding a book with the inscription: "Miss Terry, world's best librarian. I love story time. Merry Christmas."

Zappelloni worked at the Amityville library until her arthritis forced her to quit in 2003, her family said. Library work was her third and last career, but it was also a throwback to her earliest love, books, which she shared with her children, said her daughter, Laura Zappelloni-Roberts, 44, of Huntington.

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"It was like I was born and raised in a library," Zappelloni-Roberts said.

Yet Zappelloni was no bookworm. Though she stood only 4-foot-8 and weighed barely 80 pounds, she was not shy about voicing her opinion and taught her daughters that "girls can do anything boys can do," showing them how to play baseball, tennis and how to swim, her daughter said.

"She was a firecracker," Zappelloni-Roberts said.

Born in the Bronx in 1929 as Theresa Porco, she graduated in 1950 from Hunter College in Manhattan with a degree in social studies and soon obtained a master's in history, pleasing her father, Frank, a gas station owner who emigrated from Italy.

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"Education was a religion to him," Prisco said.

Theresa Porco married Frank Zappelloni in the 1950s and became a social studies teacher in Nassau County. She quit in the 1960s to raise her younger daughter Laura and also worked for Citibank. She and Frank later divorced.

In addition to her daughters and sister, Zappelloni is survived by a brother, Frank Porco of the Bronx. A memorial service was held Saturday. Zappelloni's ashes were spread, according to her wishes, at Robert Moses State Park, her favorite place for a swim.

"She'd go way out past the waves," Warriner said.