She played tennis until 95. She hosted family pool parties. She had a big love for life

BRAINTREE − Jo Sharp always liked a challenge.

As a girl, she wanted to become a nurse, and she did, one known for her kindness.

Raising her three children, she volunteered in a half dozen places in the community. After her beloved husband, Herbie, died at 67, she took up tennis to keep busy, bowled, played cards and worked at the polls.

In her 90s, she began strength training, and even at age 99, her weekly workouts at The Weymouth Club were a priority.

After she died Dec. 31 at age 100, The Weymouth Club described her as "an embodiment of active aging." Its Facebook page tribute said:

"We celebrate not just her centennial life, but the way she lived each day − with enthusiasm, grace and an unwavering zest for life."

As much as her active lifestyle meant to her, Jo Sharp loved nothing better than being with her family, all four generations, especially for one of her July Fourth or Christmas Eve parties.

For 100 years, Josephine Coletti Sharp graced a large, close-knit Italian American family, becoming its beloved matriarch.

Her parents, George and Antoinette (Quintiliani) Coletti, emigrated from San Donato, Italy. She was born at home in Quincy, the oldest of five siblings. She was a 1942 graduate of Quincy High School, a member of the Class of 1945 at Quincy City Hospital's School of Nursing, and a staff member at the hospital for 35 years.

A steady presence at the annual nursing reunions, she was the last of her era among the hospital alumnae. Just four weeks before Jo Sharp died, Jean Marinelli, Quincy High Class of 1943 and a member of the nursing school's Class of 1946, had passed away at age 98.

"Jo was a great nurse," Jeanne Leslie, of Milton, a retired nursing supervisor at the hospital, said. "She had a lot of compassion and she was always really nice, smiling and outgoing. She always looked great and just lived a great life, I think because of all her physical activities. She was so energetic."

A photograph of Jo Sharp in her 20s shows a beautiful woman with a radiant smile. That smile and her caring ways captured the heart of a 10-year-old boy who had his tonsils removed in the hospital in 1943.

“I fell in love with my nurse, Jo, and I thought she was the greatest thing that ever happened," Walter Hoeg, 82, of Kingston, said 70 years later, when he contacted her through The Patriot Ledger in 2014. They were reunited at Quincy Medical Center, where they sat in the lobby, looked at photographs and told stories.

In another photo, taken at her 100th birthday party this past summer, with her son, Alan Sharp, of Kingston, and her daughter, Nancy McGrory, of Braintree, she has the same smile.

"She was one of a kind, a real inspiration for all who knew her," McGrory said.

In addition to her three children − Alan, Nancy and the late Richard Sharp − she had seven grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren, dozens of cousins and many nieces and nephews. She loved having them all around her.

"She was the center of our lives for our generation," her nephew John Picardi, 60, of South Quincy, said.

After his mother, Nina, who was Sharp's younger sister, died 10 years ago, he began taking his "auntie" out for rides every Thursday. They visited Boston's North End, Gloucester, Concord (Louisa May Alcott's home), Cape Cod, Portsmouth, Quincy's holiday lights.

Some years ago, she had a pool built in her backyard for family gatherings. Every Fourth of July, she hosted her famous pool party. To accommodate larger groups inside, her son Alan rebuilt her kitchen, expanded the dining room into a family room and added an outside deck. Every Christmas Eve, the family gathered at Jo's house with countless Italian foods, fishes and spaghetti.

"She kept us all together and in touch," Picardi said. "Every family needs someone to keep people together. I think that is why I loved her so much."

I met Jo Sharp In 2011 when she called with a tip about another senior tennis player, Syd Skoler, who was 92.

“He’s amazing,” she said. “He’s really good and you’d never guess his age.”

Then I learned that she also played tennis at age 88; she continued to age 95.

She had taken up tennis at age 65, when she retired, two years after her husband, Herbie, died. They had met in 1944 when she was a nurse and he had visited a friend, who was one of her patients, in the hospital.

They married a year later, after she graduated from nursing school, and bought the house in Braintree where she remained. After he died unexpectedly in 1987, she was at loose ends, and her daughter, a teacher with summers off, joined The Weymouth Club with her.

In her early 90s, she began working out at the club with a personal trainer, Michele Fay, of Abington, determined to stay strong and independent.

"I saw her three weeks before she passed and she told me, 'I'll be back," Fay said. "Her workouts were a priority and she enjoyed seeing the other people. She always wanted to challenge herself and would leave me messages, 'Keep those three-pound or five-pound weights out for me.'"

Trainer Stephanie Giannaros also worked with her.

Even when Sharp developed lung problems and sometimes used portable oxygen at home, she kept up her club workouts, even though Fay offered to come to her house.

"I love seeing the other people," Sharp once said.

Her sister Diana Picardi, 94, of Braintree, described growing up with Jo, the oldest of four girls and one boy, taking responsibility at an early age. Their parents had both come from Italy and "Jo felt like she had to watch over all of us."

Raising her own family, she volunteered at the League of Women Voters, worked as a census taker and at the polls on election days, and volunteered for the Red Cross, the Pine Street Inn, Father Bill’s in Quincy, the Disable American Veterans-Braintree and local food pantries. She also sponsored a boy in Ecuador through high school.

When both Jo and Diana lost their husbands in their 60s, they began going out for Sunday breakfast together every week and continued that for 30 years, most recently at Newcomb's Cafe at Montilio's in Braintree.

"They would come every Sunday and other regulars got to know them too," Laurie Fuller, a server at Newcomb's, said. "Jo always had eggs and bacon, toast and coffee. The two of them were just wonderful and Jo was just the sweetest."

With several bouts of illness in recent years, she soldiered on, through the isolation of the pandemic, intent on returning to her workouts and enjoying her family. In March 2021, when she got her COVID shot, she said it was so she could continue to see her family.

In her final days, with time to say her goodbyes, Sharp told her family and friends that she was content at the end of a full life, and at peace.

"I'm not the same person," she said when I made my last visit.

"She was ready to go," her sister Diana said. "She wanted to make it to 100 and she did. She did everything she wanted to in life and she said, 'Don't pray anymore for me. I want to go.' She even made it to the last day of the year."

For her devoted daughter, Nancy, it was a particularly wrenching loss. Less than four weeks earlier, she had lost her husband, Eugene McGrory at age 79.

Thank you, Jo Sharp, for your remarkable run, your never-ending kindness, radiant smile, interest in others, sense of humor, spirit of adventure, determination, reluctance to slow down and way of inspiring others to try doing something perhaps they didn't think they could.

You are truly missed.

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Jo Sharp, of Braintree, dies at 100