ANNARINO FAMILY: John and Mary,My Paternal Grandparents
Josephine “Mary” Mescari liked to say she was started in Italy and finished in America, born four days after her parents disembarked from their ship. The Mescari family came from Siracusa, Sicily and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her marriage was an arranged one; she met her fiance’, John Anthony Annarino the day before her wedding. Chaperoned by her aunt, she and John took a brief carriage ride around the block, barely exchanging a word. This set the stage for a failed marriage and eventual divorce.
John Annarino had been born in America, the son of immigrants from Termine Immerese, Sicily. A handsome charmer, the marriage did little to slow his pursuit of female attention. As a young girl, I met many older women who got stars in their eyes when they learned he was my grandfather. The women loved him as much as he loved them. Mary’s sister Annie, who cussed like a sailor, once told me that my grandfather was a wonderful man who would have stayed with Mary if she had not acted like the g.d. Virgin Mary.
Mary bore John five sons: John, Joseph, Joseph, Francis and Angelo. Her second child Joe,named after her father, died in childhood. She then named her third child after him. John was seldom home. When Angelo was four years old and lay dying, suffering heart valve damage from a bout of rheumatic fever, the doctor sent for John to say good-bye to his baby son. He did not come. Angelo, surprisingly, survived. The marriage, unsurprisingly, did not.
Mary left John to live with her parents in Cincinnati. She earned her living washing and ironing altar linens for the church; the boys supplementing her income doing odd jobs at the Findley Market. Eventually, they moved back to Newark where the boys graduated from St. Francis De Sales H.S. Under pressure from an embarrassed Joe, now old enough to be aware his father was “living in sin”, Mary finally divorced John. John gave the boys jobs working for him at his market stall. Angelo would rub his hands to get out the stiffness telling the story of spending hours cleaning celery stalks in ice water. His body never forgot that pain.
Interestingly. divorce did not separate family. Mary, John and his new wife Angeline were guests at Sunday dinners and every holiday gathering at our house, no sign of displeasure or remorse. But, Mary loved John and cried for him in private. And John’s only expressed regret as he lay in the hospital dying, was divorcing Mary. He and Angeline had no children. John had a daughter with Angeline’s aunt, but she has never been acknowledged. At mass one day, shortly after they married, Angelo pointed out his “sister” to Angela. She looked just like Angelo. She was never again mentioned.
ANNARINO FAMILY: Angelo Sr.,My Father
Angelo remained the baby of the family his whole life; Joe often referred to him as “brother”, or more often “baby brother”. Angelo just smiled his impish grin and chuckled, since the title inevitably was used when Joe was questioning something Angelo had said or done which disturbed Joe’s equilibrium,something Angelo delighted in doing. He was suspended from school for continuing smile at the Bishop,after several warnings to stop, which only increased the spread of his grin. Instead of going home with a note, he went to the movies…for the next three days. His mother learned of his suspension when his teacher made a home visit since Angelo did not return after the one day suspension. He laughed when discovered, happy to have had a 3 day school vacation.
After graduating from high school, Angelo hitchhiked to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center with 5 cents in his pocket and joined the US Navy. He learned to swim when he was tossed into a 30 foot deep pool; the same strategy he used teaching his children to swim at Buckeye Lake years later. Before WWII Angelo saw north Atlantic duty,escorting supply ships to Great Britain. On Sunday, December 7, 1941 his ship, posted at Pearl Harbor, was at sea. It was ordered back into harbor after the attack, slowly cruising into a harbor strewn with burning ships and dead bodies. Soon after he began duty in the South Pacific, manning a gun turret aboard various destroyers. His bunk lay atop a bomb, but he slept like a baby. He received 29 bronze stars, numerous battle ribbons and the accolades of Admiral “Bull” Halsey when he jerry rigged his turret after a direct hit to keep on shooting, the only gun kept operational after a particularly damaging battle at sea. The ship had to be towed back to New York harbor for major repairs.
One of a few experts in the emerging field of electronics, Angelo taught electronics at Princeton University while his ship was in dry dock. He and his buddies spent Saturday nights at CCC dances at a Catholic church in Staten Island. One night, a girl he had met the week before introduced him to her best friend, Angela Abbruzzi as a joke, “Angela, meet Angelo!” They danced every dance together. He asked her to marry him.
ANGELO ANNARINO AND ANGELA ABBRUZZI,My Parents
After the dance, Angelo insisted on seeing Angela home. She refused;he ignored her. Her parents did not allow her to attend dances, nor date. She kept shooing him away from her. Every morning, Angela saw Angelo standing across the street from her house where she waited for her bus to work. She would tell him “Go away!”. He would push aside her hand and pay her bus fare, sitting next to her all the way; later, taking the return trip with her at the end of her shift. After a few weeks of this, her Father, who often sat on the porch asked her, “Angela, when you gonna ask that nice a boy to come over here to meet me?”
Dating was pulling Angelo away from a bar and keeping him sober at the ice cream shop, then taking long walks in the park. The first time Angelo tried to kiss her, Angela shoved him so hard the park bench flew over backwards. Once, as he put it “testing her” character, he instructed his cousin Pauline to write Angela a letter pretending to be his wife, and including a photo of her new baby. Angela refused to see him after that letter, until his cousin, his brother, and his Mother all wrote explaining this was another of Angelo’s unfunny stunts. When repeating this story, Angelo giggled and grinned while Angela swatted him with a dish rag.
They married on on a snowy day, one week before Christmas, Angelo’s Father John paying for an elaborate NYC Italian wedding. Immediately, after the ceremony, Angela and her new husband visited her father in the hospital. Their honeymoon was a trip to Ohio to meet relatives.Soon after their Newark arrival, they learned Angela’s father Angelo had died and immediately returned to Staten Island. They rented a one room apartment and returned to their jobs; Angelo at Princeton, Angela as Executive Asst. to the CEO of a chemical company in N.J. A week after, the true owners of the apartment returned and evicted the newlyweds, who had paid 6 months advance rent due to war-time housing shortage. They moved in with Angela’s mother Louise. Angelo transferred his pay voucher to Angela’s Mother for the duration of his service.
Angelo returned to the Pacific, surviving more battles, and hundreds of kamikaze attacks. Finally, he returned to NYC, packed up his 9 months pregnant wife and moved to Newark to join his brothers in a new venture, The Center Cafe. Family seemed more attractive to him than an offer to become a professor of electronics at Princeton. The baby was home again, with his “baby”. Their first child, Angelo, Jr. was born soon after their arrival.
annarino writes 
BORN IN THE USA, Part 2
These war buddies who mourned those buddies who died in combat, and who treasured those who sat with them in solidarity at our kitchen table, shared more than stories. They shared themselves. Mom and I quietly listened, staying in the background, granting them sacred space.
My dad did not collect war trophies. He collected books and papers, which I read and pored over. My favorites were a book telling the history of the USS South Dakota, and one illustrating the flags of every nation. The first spoke of valor and patriotic duty fulfilled by every sailor aboard. The second helped Dad identify incoming planes, separating enemy from ally. I considered this a most useful tool; one I employ to this day, always searching out tell-tale signs of enemy incursion into my life and the lives of others. It may be one reason I eventually became a lawyer whose favorite tool is cross-examination. I am always looking for the “false flags” flown by lawyers, newspersons, politicians and servants of the people. There have been too many lately.
I read Dad’s folder containing assignment memos and his letters of commendation, held his battle ribbons and medals in my hands, marveling at the battle stars gleaming dully after being carried through the war. I have the Tongan Island bark tapestry he bought from the King of Tonga in exchange for a case of beer he hauled from his ship onto the beach where Tongan women were making such artistry.
My father fought his way through WWII. When he finally returned to his Ohio hometown, my pregnant NYC Mom in tow, he had a new fight on his hands. The fight of all first generation immigrants to find a way to support his family, and protect other such families living in pockets of real estate abandoned by earlier immigrants; along industrial-polluted rivers, smoky rail-road tracks, and industrial waste areas.
Dad and his brothers, who had served in the US Army as cooks joined their brother, excused from duty because of tuberculosis, and a cousin; and opened a restaurant. This restaurant was not a food truck as today’s start-ups. No, they found a vacant alleyway between two buildings, put sawhorses covered by planks between the two buildings, collected a grill and started cooking. They hung supplies held by ropes strung between the two buildings. They soon had enough money to add a roof, then a floor. Eventually they had a full-service restaurant a block long and alley-wide with a half-block long bar and side booths. the space behind held two separate dining rooms, a butcher shop, walk-in freezer, walk-in refrigerator, kitchen and dish-wash area, and storage rooms above and below.
These Italian-American men supported their families; and fed the homeless, emergency workers in the event of community storms, floods, and fires. They cooked for the church and seminary fund-raisers. They contributed in every way they could to the welfare of every person in the community. New immigrants are grateful and hard-working in ways earlier arrivals to our shores have long forgotten. I remember.
My cousins and I spent hours at the Center Cafe, sitting in the family booth or behind the bar talking to our great-uncle with a cauliflower ear about his award-winning boxing career. Dad hung a boxing bag inside our garage and bought us boxing gloves. I sparred with my older brother and punched along with the boys. As a female lawyer, when that was a rarity, I happily and effectively sparred with boys in and out of court. Sicilian and Italian men love their women and make sure they are safe and can defend themselves.
Sitting behind the bar selling candy bars for my Catholic elementary school was fun. Dad instructed me to count how many beers a man consumed, and not to approach him until he had had 2-3 beers. He concluded I would sell more candy that way. I always won a prize for selling the most candy. Dad knew how to buy and sell. Living on a salary of $50 per week his entire work life meant he had to stretch every penny to rear 4 children and send them all to Catholic school. We kids all worked from childhood on to buy comic books, ice cream and penny candy. Later, to pay tuition, go to the dentist, buy clothes, books and phonograph albums. We all contributed because we were a family.
The best part of hanging out in the restaurant was listening to patron conversations, especially listening to the men at the bar. All classes of people ate there. Families felt comfortable bringing their children to a place where drunkenness was not allowed. Dad and his brothers knew their customers who became family to them. I watched Dad order cabs and send men home after ‘cutting them off’. He called wives to explain what to expect, assuring them the salary earned that day was still in their husband’s pocket.
I listened to lawyers, judges, CEOs, insurance agents, grocers, plumbers, factory workers, mechanics, gas station owners et al whose faces and voices I recognized because they came every day for breakfast, or lunch, or after-work drinks before heading home. What a cacophony of human behavior and community thoughts were shared between booths and bar. All orchestrated by Dad and his brothers. The music of the masses sang out for all to hear, if they were listening. It still does. If we listen. And we must listen, looking and listening for false flags.
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