Regina M. Matta, who patched up D-Day survivors as a World War II Army nurse and later ran Route 8's venerable Venus Diner with her husband, died Thursday at the Elmcroft of Saxonburg assisted-living center. She was 89.

Mrs. Matta and her late husband, John, operated the diner in Hampton from 1967 to 1982, a popular stop, open 24 hours a day, for homemade pies and other eats in the busy corridor near the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Their two sons joined them in the operation before the family sold it.

Mrs. Matta, wearing a blue or pink smock, presented a smiling face out front to the customers while her husband oversaw the kitchen. The couple, who lived in Middlesex after uprooting themselves from the Mon Valley, were often at the steel-and-glass, 72-seat restaurant 60 hours a week.

Together, the couple "had 15 of their best years of their lives with the diner," said their son, David, of Middlesex.

"She was very outgoing and friendly," he said of his mother. "We had a customer who said she always had something good to say about everybody. We had a lot of long-term staff that she looked upon as extended family."

After the couple retired, Mr. Matta's health declined. As a former nurse, Mrs. Matta dedicated many years to taking care of him at home before his death in 1989.

She grew up in Port Vue and graduated from McKeesport High School before training in the nursing program at McKeesport Hospital. She graduated after World War II started and promptly enlisted in the Army. Her two younger brothers served during the war, one of them at Pearl Harbor when it came under attack.

"Her history was that of caring and giving," said another son, Daniel, of Penn Township. "The service to the military just came as part of what was in her."

Stationed at an Army hospital near London, Mrs. Matta spent the latter part of the war tending primarily to wounded members of flight crews who were brought back to England after combat missions.

"I remember her telling me that was the hardest part, watching the kids all shot up," said David Matta.

She became a first lieutenant by the time of her 1945 discharge. She had little to do with nursing thereafter, while raising her family and working with her husband at the Red Coach Inn in Monroeville before taking up the diner operation, which had already been open for a decade.

The Venus Diner continued under different owners after the Mattas but was recently trucked to Ohio for refurbishing and relocation to a new site.

In addition to her sons, Mrs. Matta is survived by a daughter, Adele Trerice of Plum; a brother, Daniel Lazorchick of Bethesda, Md.; seven grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

A Mass and burial took place yesterday.

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