He was born in a province of southern Italy that gets so much snow, one of its biggest winter tourist attractions is its ski resorts.
His most profound childhood memories were of a German soldier waving a bayonet in his mother’s face, dead Allied soldiers, severe hunger, and children from his town losing limbs to scattered grenades.
When old enough he tried to emigrate to Australia, but a grudge against his family led someone to report, falsely, to the Australian authorities that he was a member of the Communist Party, and his visa was denied.
He turned to America, and booked steerage on an ocean liner, but at the last minute, fearing more sabotage, he canceled his ticket and took a plane, though he hated to fly.
Although he had wanted to be a lawyer, the war and the Italian government’s dilatory response to rebuilding the worst war-torn parts of the South left him with a fifth-grade education. After work in construction, he taught himself the intricacies of locksmithing such that we was called to repair the night depositories, safe-depository boxes, and time locks in banks throughout New York State.
One of his more memorable jobs was servicing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Downtown Manhattan. He traveled what seemed like a mile underground to a vault whose door was so thick it was impossible to move manually. He disassembled and repaired the time lock so it would once again open and close on schedule and automatically.
He left the Catholicism of his early years for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod so he could receive the sacraments with his family. Read the rest of this entry »
