I find the stories about people immigrating to our country fascinating... when we fostered Hoang, a Vietnamese boy nearly 30 years ago the unbelievable saga of his boat trip out of that communist war-torn country and into a refugee camp in Thailand was something that left a permanent impression on Dick, myself and our kids. We likewise were very interested when Joe began to recant the story of his parents' marriage and immigration to the United States. One day while in Sicily a couple of weeks ago we were headed to my brother "Bud's" (Charles) hillside vineyard on the Northeastern slope of Mt Etna when we stumbled upon the Nicolosi church where Joe's parents, Salvatore (Samuel) Tropea & Josephine Bruno were married back in 1934. I promised after posting a FB picture then to include a post of the blog about a portion of their lives when they married and immigrated to the US.
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| The Lava Fields South of Mt. Etna |
Joe's grandfather, father and brothers were farmers & stone cutters in Sicily. Stone cutters? I really didn't have a full understanding of that trade or skill until we came to Sicily and saw everything that was made from lava stone left from the eruptions of nearby Mt Etna. It goes without saying that, for hundreds of years, large stone bricks/blocks have been cut from the lava formations and used in the construction of many things including churches, homes, government buildings, monuments, and roadways. In 1913 before the onset of the first World War One one of Samuel's brothers, Dominick, set sail to come to America to begin work on the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
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| Washington's National Cathedral |
If you have ever visited this beautiful edifice you can get only an inkling of how many workers it might have taken to build this cathedral. Started in 1912 it was never completed until 1990 and was only recently in the news in 2011 as it's upper spires were damaged by the earthquake that stuck the Eastern Coast and the DC area. So tradesmen were recruited from countries near and far. Joe's uncle, Dominick, was the first to set sail for the journey to America in 1912. Dominick was the older brother of Samuel (Joe's dad), and he was followed in 1921 by Samuel himself. One can only imagine what it might have been like to leave your Sicilian family, board a ship and head to a foreign country at the young age of 17. But this was the life of immigrants in those days...one would come, and word would filter back to the old country about the jobs available in America, or in other countries.
| Once in DC Samuel lived with other siblings and went about the hard work of cutting large chunks of granite needed for the cathedral. But unaccustomed working outside in cold, harsh winters he left that job and became an apprentice barber. He ultimately purchased a building at the outer limits of DC near what was then a summer resort, Chevy Chase. So here was this young man setting down roots in a new, pre-depression world... An entrepreneur with a third grade education...who could neither read nor write but who possessed a great work ethic and a frugal spirit who, after only seven years after coming into the US, had set up his business and purchased property on a street called Connecticut Avenue, then on the outskirts of Washington. At the ripe age of 24 he seemingly had everything...everything but a wife. |
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| The Church Where Joe's Parents Married |
Samuel returns to Nicolosi in 1934 for several weeks on a vacation and its not hard to hear the discussions that must have taken place between the relatives & townspeople when he strutted back into town decked out in the finest clothing and shoes. He had left a humble laborer. He returned a hero...one that, against all odds, had carved out a new, prosperous life in America. We can only imagine how many of the Nicolosi mothers and fathers wanted offer their daughters as marriage partners.
With a business back in America I thought this vacation must have been a short one. I asked how long Joe's dad had actually courted his mother. Courted? He laughed. "They didn't date. This was an 'arranged' marriage".
"Arranged?" I asked. I have never met anyone (I don't think) who had relatives with marriage partners chosen by someone else. "You're kidding". He wasn't. In the small town of Nicolosi, where nearly all residents had the last name of Tropea or Bruno, there were already marriages between the families. "My father's mother and my mother's father were brother and sister..." (Short pregnant silence...then hysterics.) Sounds comical and confusing until you understand that this was a Tropea daughter married to a Bruno son... [Or maybe it was the other way around... Honest to God, it gets hard to follow... :-) ] At any rate, with special dispensation from the church, a marriage was arranged, planned and performed on October 24, 1934, during that Sicilian vacation between Samuel & his first cousin, Giuseppina 'Josephine' Bruno.
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| The ceiling of that church... |
Soon after they are back on a boat bound for America and a new life together. Josephine had a sixth grade education and was the one who could read and write. Together they raised two sons; adored eight grandchildren, and made wise investments in properties in such areas as Georgetown which, at the time, was an up and coming industrial area on the Potomac. When I first met Joe's parents back in 1970 this little couple had achieved monumental feats and accomplishments through years of hard work. After his dad passed away Joe's mother wore her hair in a neat, hair-netted bun; a black dress, black stockings and black Nike sneakers as she worked in her backyard garden. She would grab her BB gun to shoo away the squirrels or other critters that dared to threaten the fruit on her grapevines or vegetables. She made the most awesome Italian bread and in her later years tried to show Dick how to make her bread but failed. She didn't but he did. There wasn't a recipe....everything was done by feel. A little of this. A pinch of that. Kneading, Kneading. Kneading. And thus the art and recipe of her bread-making has died with her. We spent countless evenings on this trip trying to find a restaurant that served bread as good as Nonna's but only a couple came close.
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| Joe & MJ in front of the altar where his parents were married |
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| Joe & MJ in front of his mother's childhood home & the cousin reunion below |
Our kids...particularly Jeff & Jeremy, and maybe even Danielle...can tell you fond stories about visiting their D.C. cousins & getting up in the darkness to help Uncle Joe deliver the Washington Post on his early morning second job. I think they got up at that God-awful time only so they could stop at Nonna's to have a slice of the cake that she would always bake while waiting for her early morning visitors.
So that's the story of Joe.... I loved being in Sicily with MJ and him as he rediscovered his parental roots. He hadn't been back since the early 1950s as an eight-year-old boy who ran through the streets and narrow passageways of Nicolosi with his cousins. The locations may have changed from Nicolosi to Chevy Chase to Bethany Beach, but somehow everything is the same. Tropea cousins; Sarine cousins....Generations of kids and their cousins; generations of love. What a great legacy.
There are hundreds of thousands of stories of people leaving their homelands to find a new life...people like Sam & Josephine...who came in through Ellis Island and who have forever changed the course of their lives, and the lives of their children, and grandchildren. Every one of those stories is precious but the story of Joe's parents makes history real for those of us who got to experience and share with him a reconnection to his parents' past. What a privilege! It was one of the highlights of our trip!
More pictures of our Nicolosi visit
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| Walking thru Nicolosi's Narrow Streets |
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| Mt. Etna looming above Nicolosi |
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| Joe's mother's church at the end of her street |
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| Chiesa Madre church in Nicolosi |
For more information on Nicolosi see the following sites: http://www.catania-sicilia.it/english/nicolosi.htm;
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolosi&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dchiesa%2Bmadre,%2Bnicolosi%26client%3Dsafari%26hl%3Den
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