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As with any group of Mediterraneans, the word "family" did not designate
merely the related members of a single household. "Family" was always an extended affair – aunts, uncles, cousins - first, second, and thiord – and, of course, the paesani were all "related" because they hailed not ony from the same part of the world, but also from the same tiny corner, San Donato. For the Puccianis, the extended family in America consisted of Peppina's two brothers, Vincenzo and Rafaele, their wives and children living in West New York and Carlo's cousins in Cliffside Park.
The oldest of the Apas, Vincenzo, born in 1877, was a happy-go-lucky, extroverted, dapper gentleman whose tastes ran to politics, opera,
wine, and gourmet food. He had married a village girl, Clementina, in 1903, and then like so many wide-eyed emigrants, had left her and his baby daughter Maria-Luisa, born
1904, in San Donato while he and Rafaele came to Pittsburgh to make their fortunes. In 1908 Vincenzo returned Italy for a brief stay, which was marked by tragedy.
In May 1909 his child died suddenly after an ineptly lanced goiter; two months later the bereft Clementina gave birth to a second child – this time simply named
Maria. Soon the restless Vincenzo departed again for Pittsburgh where he was joined by his sister Peppina. After Peppina's marriage, he and Rafaele, moved to West New
York where his sister and Carlo had set up their home. There in this bel paese on the Hudson, Vincenzo remained for the rest of his life with Clementina and the eleven-year-old Maria eventually joining him in 1920.
He and Rafaele took turns running the cobbler shop and alternately making trips back to Italy, but Vincenzo was less interested in fixing
shoes and more in politics. After securing his United States citizenship, he became the standard bearer of the Italian-American Democratic Club – a well-loved and
respected figure in old-style electioneering. He lobbied for the liberal concerns of his compatriots, supported approved candidates, hosted dinners, organized parades, shook
hands, kissed babies, and master-minded fundraising events. He bequeathed to his intelligent, charming daughter, Maria, this conviviality and quick-witted shrewdness in
civic affairs. Maria was to enjoy a thirty-five-year career as a Party and municipal employee. Already as a teenager, she became her father's constant companion in
community events, which her now consumptive mother was often forced to miss due to the gravity of her health.
In 1928 a pall was cast over all this heady activity by the death of Clementina. The seventeen-year-old Maria, just graduated from
high school, found herself responsible for her father's household, her father's care, and a new secretarial job at the local pipe factory. Borrowing recipes from her neighbors,
she rapidly grew into a creative cook, a competent manager, and a bewitchingly attractive young woman who turned down many a marriage proposal because she preferred her
independence.
Meanwhile, the more serious, dour bachelor Rafaele spent the early decades of the twentieth century making numerous trips back and forth
between America and Italy. On one such voyage in the 1920s, he was sufficiently smitten by a dark-haired San Donatan beauty, Angelina, to marry her and begin a family in the paese. His three children, Vincent,
Louis, and Marietta (as they came to be called when he, too, returned to America with his brood) in 1931 moved with their parents to West New
York and settled a few blocks from Peppina, Carlo, and Vincenzo. After over a decade of transatlantic wandering and after the death of Vincenzo's
wife, at last three of the surviving Apas were unted in the same place. Felicia remained in San Donato, where she married, bore twins, and supervised the family lands.
Finally, the clan set about to enjoy the fruits of their American home.
Vincenzo orchestrated the family fun, hosting huge parties for friends and compatriots, taking the growing youngsters on outings and bringing Italian
culture to his new "village." A passionately devoted member of the Sons of Italy, he organized concerts to which he invited the likes of Mimi and Rosa
Ponselle and even the great Caruso, promising them a home-cooked meal in return for their song. His extensive collection of opera recordings
provided listening pleasure for many a Sunday gathering and became the subject of much squabbling after his death.
But after only a year this joyous time was once again shattered by loss.
Angelina, a victim of pneumonia, died, leaving Rafaele with their three young children – the baby Marietta only four years old. The distraught
husband, who could be – in his best frame of mind - gloomy became positively morbid, shutting himself up in the tiny three-room store
-apartment and despairing of how he could maintain a business and raise the children. Peppina came to his rescue, taking Marietta into her home for
seven months before the girl's older cousin, Maria Apa, offered to adopt her and brought the chub by, curly-haired, bubbly girl to cheer up Vincenzo's home.
The bond that grew between the two women was an inspiringly lasting one
– more like that of mother and daughter than between two cousins - and one which, no doubt, gave the older Maria much comfort and support when
she found added to her duties the nursing of her father. Vincenzo, who suffered a series of strokes in the 1930s, was lovingly tended by his adult
daughter and young niece until his death on August 4, 1941.
The family was summoned for the passing of its oldest son; relatives
scrubbed the tiny apartment, laid out the body, hung a funeral wreath on the door, and silently shared in the age-old ritual of mourning. When it was
over, Maria and Marietta were alone. The older cousin was suddenly cast in the daringly courageous role of a "single parent" responsible for carving out
her own fortune as an active, undaunted – but for those days "curiously unmarried" career woman – as well as nurturing her adoptive daughter.
The latter Maria accomplished with her characteristic foresight, making Marietta the first female Apa to obtain a college education.
VII In the Crucible of Conflict
La Ballata del Contadino
Hai legato I tuoi ricordi
A un aratro cigoloso.
Hai chiuso nella valigia
I pianti dell'infanzia
E con la tua camicia
Che sapeva di pulito,
Sei partito lontano
Con i fiori dentro gli occhi.
You fastened all your memories
To a creaking plough.
You shut your infant tears
In your syuitcase
And with one clean shirt
You set off for distant lands.
The Apa children were not the only ones whose mettle was tested by the
vagaries of fate. While the loss of parents proved a deep personal pain, Vincent, Louis, and Marietta were not alone in experiencing hardship in the
1930s and early 1940s. Together with their cousins in the Pucciani clan and all their paesani, they came to share the universal anxiety and suffering
provoked by the Great Depression and the fearful aftermath of war.
When they moved optimistically into their large new home on 59th Street
in 1929, Carlo and Peppina could not have fully appreciate the turbulence the future would hold for themand for their relatives across the sea. But it
was not long before harsh realities began to intrude into the tight-knit security of the family nest.
The first ominous tidings came when, shortly after the stock market crash,
Carlo's employer, the contractor Ragoni, committed suicide. For the next decade, employment would be tenuous for Carlo, who, though he always
managed to find income-producing labor, was often forced to work long hours at odd jobs because the construction business was in decline. To
make ends meet, the Puccianis rented their ground floor rooms and divided their first floor apartment in half, crowding the family into the four
front rooms and renting out the back three. Peppina worked as a seamtress and took in embroidery at home, setting Rosina and Maria to help cutting
lace. But she also embarked on an economically revised diet of pasta, polenta, minestra, and garden grown vegetables which replaced the
increasingly scarce and over-priced meat.
In 1933 Frank was graduated from West New York's Memorial High
School. There was no question in Carlo's mind that his only son, so bright and gifted, deserved a college education. Nothing – not the moribund
economy and crumbling political forecast, not even the family's own strapped circumstances – was going to prevent realizing this most
cherished of new world dreams. Accepted at the state university of Rutgers, Frank enrolled for the Fall 1933 term while Carlo canvassed his friends for
financial aid to meet the first tuition payment.Ultimately, an acquaintance, the Italian banker Signore Vagioni, lent Carlo $200, a sum which father
and son would work tirelessly to repay – Carlo by increasing his hours and Frank by driving an Armour meat truck during vacations and by tightening
his belt at school. To economize further, the handsome young freshman mailed his laundry home each week rather than pay for the college's
service. There Rosina and Maria meticulously and lovingly washed, starched, and ironed seven crisp dress shirts – symbols of their brother's
white collar prospects – before returning them by post to their adored sibling.
Two years later Rosina became Salutatorian of her Memorial High class,
having narrowly missed taking top honors. Given the practical exigencies of the family situation and given the Italian-American ethos regarding
women, she was forced to forego her scholarship to Jersey City Normal School and abandon her hope of becoming a teacher – the disappointment
underscored b y Peppina's hysterical, melodramatic accusations that her child was heartlessly abandoning her mother. Having taken a double high
school course load of academic and commercial subjects, Rosina, reluctantly resolved to stay at home and go out into the business world.
After a few short stints in local offices, she went to work for a Wall Street judge, one Mr. Lieberman, in a six-day, $6 a week typist's job which she
loathed with a resigned but unmistakable vehemence.
Maria's graduation followed in 1938, and she, too, went to work in a clerical
capacity where her sharp math acumen and passion for precise detail advanced her rapidly through a series of bookkeeping jobs to supervisory
positions – the first one as head of the payroll department on the New York waterfront, where she accurately dispensed daily pay envelopes to hulking
stevedores – and then on to a subsequent position as Office Manager of Hudson County Knitting Mills, where she earned the relatively high
Depression salary of $12 a week. A no-nonsense business woman sporting red-lacquered nails, spike heels, and fashionably fitted suits, she enjoyed
her work and carved out a career for herself that would lead her to increasingly responsible and interesting executive secretary jobs in several major New York firms.
With the girls on their way to becoming independent, Carlo and Peppina
were able to finance Frank's Master's Degree. Having taken his B.S. in 1937, Frank, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and one of the university's most
accomplished tennis players (a sport he continued professionally for several years, winning some New Jersey championships), went on to earn
an M.S. in economics in 1939. It was Rosina who typed his thesis on statistics with its tricky tables, all the while animated by a fierce mixture of
pride in her brother's intellectual gifts and regret for her own unrealized dreams.
But as the 1930s drew to a close,
Rosina found herself banishing thoughts of a different future and concentrated her energies on making the most of
the new freedoms her growing vicacity and confidence and the rapidly changing world were offering.
In 1938 the Lincoln Tunnel was completed, making access to New York and
all its variegated passtimes quicker. In 1940 Frank, who had gotten his first job in Washington, D.C., purchased an automobile which he graciously
used to chauffeur his family about on his frequent weekend visits. In the same year, the Puccianis had their first telephone installed. Gradually,
throughout the decade Carlo had paid his debts, replenished his savings account, reclaimed full use of his house, and now at sixty, he looked
forward to a gentler decade. It was an optimistic hope that proved short-lived.
In 1939 came the declaration of war in Europe and even before America's
entry into the conflict in 1942, the Puccianis had cause to worry about their San Donatan relatives. Their consternation was not unfounded for the
Nazis went on a rampage through San Donato, ransacking Felcicia's granary. Fortunately, however, apart from vandalism, there was no further violence or loss of life.
For the next three years life went on in West New York at an increasingly
frenetic pace. As the shadow of war loomed over America, the economy took an upward turn. For the young people, salaries rose, and leisure time
could be enjoyed with friends in the cinemas, theatres, and dance halls. Maria was dating her high school sweetheart, John Capezzuto. Two years
her junior, "Cappy" had been her classmate when she was sixteen and she had been chosen to tutor him in stenography at home as he was
convalescing from an operation. From the first, Maria was smitten by the tall, curly-haired boy with dancing eyes and a personality that combined
big-bear warmth with mischevious wit and gentle generosity. She was easily conned into passing him English test hints as he sat behind her in class
begging her not to let him fail. They remained close after graduation, and it was not long before they considered themselves "going steady".
Rosina, on the other hand, was more restless and not ready for the same
kind of serious commitment. She preferred a number of close, platonic friendships with boys of varying personalities. There was Martin with his
dreamy poetry and Joe with his hot-tempered urgency, and then there was a green-eyed slim young Sicilian called "John," a knitter who had worked
with Maria at Hudson County Mills, but whose initial overtures she had rebuffed. For the outwardly prim and sociallty ambitious Rosina, the first
meeting with Giovanni Luigi Verdino had not been auspicious. Her sister had introduced them at a party, and he had paused only briefly from
pitching pennies to acknowledge the introduction and then had ended the evening doing a wild, inebriated tarantella on the dining room table. But
something irresistible in his energetic eyes and breezy gusto, something different from her own serious self, attracted Rosina. This young man who
came from a poor Jersey City family of nine, who had divided his childhood between school and working at the mills, who was soft-spoken and
sensitive, yet tough and adventurous, was equally captivated by the young Rosina. Before long they were enjoying occasional dates, though Rosina
refused to settle into a single relationship, preferring the fun-loving freedom of a small group of male and female friends.
It was in this company on December 7, 1942, while dancing at the wedding
of a childhood companion, Sarah Pugliese, that she and Maria heard the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor. America was at war. Within
a few months the gaiety of the sisters' existence was transmuted into sober aestheticism. John Capezzuto joined the Navy where he served as an
optical technician. John Verdino enlisted in the Marines and was shipped to the South Pacific as an aircraft mechanic. Frank was drafted into the
Army Intelligence Service and stationed in New Orleans, where with his fluent Italian and German, he served as a liaison for POWs interned there.
His assignment was made more interesting by the presence of an engaging, chestnut-haired southern girl, Lucile Swoboda, who was working as a
secretary at the military base. It was not long before the two punctuated the monotony of military routine by pleasurable outings to the opera,
symphony or culinary forays into the French Quarter.
Maria and Rosina, deprived of their beaux, were lonelier than their
brother, but with the determination and optimism of their generation, they vowed to do their best to keep up spirits on the home front. They filled
their off-work hours with a mixture of social service and low key escapist entertainment. They served as block air raid wardens. There were dances
at the USO and hours devoted to correspondence and care packages to their "boys" overseas. Then there were the all-girl vacations at the seashore,
the late night, therapeutic "hen parties" or afternoon teas, all of which cemented a sisterhood of strength. But this sorority of necessity proved to
be more than a survival mechanism. In the concluding three years of World War II, Maria, Rosina, and their friends, like so many other women,
laid the foundation for their future by nurturing dreams of patriotism, prosperity, and productivity – all of which became the operative forces of post-war life.
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