Gotti family gathers around mama Hope for full recovery BY THOMAS ZAMBITO, JOHN MARZULLI, KERRY BURKE AND KATHLEEN LUCADAMO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS A distraught John A. (Junior) Gotti and his siblings spent Thanksgiving at the hospital bedside of their mother, Victoria Gotti, who suffered a stroke this week, the Daily News has learned.
The Dapper Don's widow was "resting comfortably" at world-renowned New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia, where her four children have been visiting her every day, a family spokesman said.
Her daughter, also named Victoria, became concerned Monday when she called her mother, who lives alone in the modest Howard Beach, Queens, home where she raised her children.
Her son, Peter, then went to check in on the mob matriarch, and Mama Gotti was rushed to the hospital later that day, where doctors confirmed she had a stroke, sources said.
She secured a private suite on the ninth floor with a sweeping view of the Hudson River and a flat-panel TV mounted on a white wall.
The raven-haired 64-year-old appeared to be recuperating last night, sitting up in her hospital bed, a white blanket covering her legs, as she talked to a female friend wearing a track suit.
She was slowly eating a Thanksgiving meal laid out on a pullout table.
"I feel good," she told The News later. "I'll be better."
Gotti, who was hospitalized for heart problems in 1996, was rarely seen in public before her high-profile husband died of throat cancer in 2002. But she has since emerged as an outspoken defender of her family.
She was a courtroom fixture at the most recent racketeering trial for Junior, although she missed seeing the proceedings end in a mistrial in September because she was feeling ill.
At one point, she turned every head in the Manhattan courtroom, shouting, "Who the hell do you think you are talking to?" to Assistant U.S. Attorney Miriam Rocah.
The matriarch accused the prosecutor of taunting her by asking, "What the hell are you looking at?"
Junior Gotti, who was overjoyed last month when federal prosecutors announced they would abandon efforts to nail him for allegedly trying to kill radio host Curtis Sliwa, was visibly torn up about his mother's hospitalization - more tormented than he ever appeared at his three trials, sources said.
But the family is cautiously optimistic Victoria will make a full recovery, the sources said.
A family member who answered her hospital room phone yesterday said: "She is a little under the weather. She is perfectly fine." This year has been particularly trying for the Howard Beach grandmother.
When rumors surfaced in February that her husband fathered a love child with a Staten Island woman, Mama Gotti said she would welcome any illegitimate children as family if DNA tests proved they were Gotti kin.
"I hope they are blessed with his good looks," she said at the time. "Any part of John Gotti has got to be a class act."
While a loyal wife for 42 years, she also told The News this year that she fought to protect her kids from mob life and was upset when Junior Gotti followed his dad's lead.
"Sick, furious - you name it," she said. "I pretty much raised my children alone with Johnny being away for years at a time, so it broke my heart."
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Don Cardi
