Margaret Gatti; had a store in Delanco

When Margaret McCullough was struck by a hit-and-run car in Delanco in 1930, the year she turned 9, she was given up for dead.

"She had a fractured skull, crushed pelvis," and a fractured left leg, her daughter Mary Girifalco said.

"She was taken to the local hospital," her daughter said, which was no more than a house in Delanco.

Pronounced dead by a physician, "she was taken to the morgue. In those days, it was just another spot in the house."

But someone went into that room, saw "the sheet went up and down where her nose was," and saved her.

Her daughter added that throughout her life, Mrs. Gatti "was very resilient."

On Saturday, Aug. 20, Margaret McCullough Hamlin Gatti, 94, of Wilmington, owner of a Delanco variety store in the 1950s and 1960s, died at Ivy Gables, an assisted living community in Wilmington.

The hit-and-run happened in the summer as she was crossing a street near her home. Though Mrs. Gatti "had scars on her body," her daughter said, as an adult "she walked well and had three kids."

The driver was a teenager. In Delanco in 1930, her daughter said, "there weren't a lot of people with cars, so everybody knew who he was." The family recalled no further details about the incident.

But Mrs. Gatti's father, Chester McCullough, "worked as many jobs as he could" to pay off his daughter's medical bills. "He died in a car accident" in Palmyra "a month after the last payment," Girifalco said.

Mrs. Gatti graduated from Palmyra High School. After she married Nicholas Gatti, "my parents opened a variety store in Delanco, which she ran from 1950 to 1968," while he worked in a local factory.

After that, into the late 1970s, she filled orders at the former Macmillan Publishing Co. warehouse in Riverside.

Mrs. Gatti became a Sunday school teacher when she was 16 at the First Presbyterian Church of Delanco, continuing until she was 70, becoming at one time a church elder.

She was a leader for a Delanco Girl Scout troop in the 1960s and 1970s, a member in the 1980s and 1990s of the Riverside Historical Society, and a lifetime member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Delanco Fire Company.

Besides her daughter, Mrs. Gatti is survived by son Paul, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Margaret Gatti McGinnis, died in 1974.

She was predeceased by her former husband, Elmer Hamlin. Her husband, Nicholas Gatti, died in 1981.

A viewing was set from 9 to 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 26, at the Sweeney Funeral Home, 337 Bridgeboro St., Riverside, before an 11 a.m. funeral there, with interment in St. Peter's Cemetery in Riverside.

Donations may be sent to the Ladies Auxiliary, Delanco Fire Company, 1800 Burlington Ave., Delanco, N.J. 08075.

Condolences may be offered to the family at sweeneyfh.com.

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