Sally Diane Belardo

Sally Diane Belardo was born in New York City on October 8, 1941, to parents John Luigi Belardo of Bayonne, NJ and Frances Clara Larkin of Jefferson, NH; she died at the home of her daughter Susan Diane Gillette in Weaverville, North Carolina on the morning of August 11, 2018. Thanks to Care Partners Hospice and their wonderful caregivers for helping her transition peacefully.

Sally married Robert Sherwood Gillette on September 20, 1960, in Gulfport, Mississippi at the age of 18 and they started a family moving to upstate New York, then to Queens and finally settling on Long Island.

Sally is a proven descendant of the Mayflower passengers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins; she certainly had the fortitude and wandering spirit of her ancestors.

Sally is said to be the first person to live past childhood with the disease Toxoplasmosis which left her legally blind. Despite her disability and leaving high school at an early age to start a family, Sally went back to school and received a BA in Early Childhood Education at Queens College, City University of New York in the mid- 1980’s.

Sally moved to Charlotte, North Carolina with her youngest daughter Susan in 1993; other family members followed and settled nearby. For a time, Sally owned and operated a coffee shop in Charlotte until her retirement. She eventually moved to be near the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains in Weaverville, NC. She is survived by her children Cheryl Ann (Gillette) Vislay and Susan Diane Gillette, and a grandson Sean Michael Vislay, as well as a step-daughter Alyssa Marie Gillette, ex-husband Robert Sherwood Gillette, her siblings: Louise, Rebecca Linda, John Jr., Victoria, Lisa and Richard and her stepmother Jacqueline Belardo.

Sally had faith in Jesus Christ and preferred to have a releasing of her ashes in a quiet place in the Blue Ridge Mountains rather than a funeral.

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