Lilia "Lillian" Papa, daughter of the couple who founded Perreca's Bakery in Schenectady 1914, died Wednesday at the Ballston Lake home of her daughter, Maria. The matriarch of the Jay Street mainstay famed for its coal-fired, brick-oven Italian bread was 93. 

Born Lilia Perreca to Salvatore and Carmella DeRosa Perreca, Papa started working in her parents' bakery at age nine. According to a 1989 story by the Times Union's Vinod Chhabra, she was running the cash register when she met the late Dominick Papa, "a bread-line regular" and her future husband. He went on to run the bakery for 30 years with his brother, Robert.