Rita Agosta
Rita Agosta, a former longtime staff member at Skidmore’s Scribner Library, died on
December 26, 2008, at Wesley Health Care Center in Saratoga Springs. She was 96.
Born in 1912 in nearby Corinth, N.Y., Rita was the daughter of the late John and Marie
Orto. She graduated from Corinth High School and also attended Eastman Business School
and Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y.
In 1969 she joined Skidmore as a catalog assistant, and by the time she retired in
1986, she was the senior staff member in the library.
When Mary O’Donnell joined Skidmore’s library staff in 1972, she was welcomed by Rita,
who was already a family friend of long standing. O’Donnell remembers Rita as “a firecracker—so
funny and very smart.” In those pre-computer days at the library, “the office had
a huge card catalog, along with the matching catalog in the public area. Whenever
the Library of Congress would change a subject heading, the staff had to pull all
the pertinent cards, use electric erasers, type in the new headings, and then refile
the cards.” Rita contributed greatly to such efforts.
Rita was a member of Saratoga’s Senior Citizens Center and St. Clement’s Roman Catholic
Church.
Her husband, Louis Agosta, died in 1981. She is survived by brothers Victor and John
Orto of Corinth, and by two sons: John Scavone of Terra Haute, Ind., and Paul Scavone
of Fairport, N.Y. She is also survived by several grandchildren, great-grandchildren,
and nieces and nephews.
Burial was at Greenridge Cemetery