TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Ingenuity And Italian Ways

ADVERTISEMENT

By GARY R. MORMINO Tribune correspondent

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 22, 2009

In 1979, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti saluted a generation that was passing before his eyes.

"For years the old Italians have been dying

all over America.

For years the old Italians in faded felt hats

have been sunning themselves and dying ...

They are almost gone now"

In America, The Bread Is Soft

In 1900, my grandfather, Rosolino Mormino, and his brothers left Sicily for Napoleonville, La. Rosolino wrote his mother in Sicily, "In America, the bread is soft, but life is hard." Rosolino cut sugarcane until he learned that John D. Rockefeller was building a refinery upriver.

The Morminos found the American dream in Little Italy, on the backside of the tracks in Wood River, Ill. The town reeked of sulfur and petroleum, but when anyone complained, the old Italians would say, "It's the smell of prosperity."

Family legend holds that as Rosolino was leaving the Standard Oil Refinery each day, he smuggled a single brick in his lunch pail. Once a guard inspected the pail and asked why a brick was resting upon crushed olives and garlic. Rosolino explained that he wished to show his sons what he - a mason - did for a living.

Twenty-five years later, he had enough bricks to build a home and provide a life lesson: The race is not to the swift or the strongest. That the Mormino home was built of wood is immaterial to the parable.

The third of seven children, Ross Anthony Mormino - my father - was born in 1920 and, like his four brothers, never much appreciated formal education. The Great Depression supplied ample instruction. In the fourth grade, Sister Eulalia asked "Barney" - no one called him Ross because of his affinity for comic strip character Barney Google - to lead the class in the Lord's Prayer. Barney began, "Our Father, who works for the Standard Oil Refinery ..." The nuns were not amused.

Like Huck Finn, Barney lit out for the territory. He worked as a cabin boy on Mississippi River barges, hopped trains, and learned to fix anything that moved.

War And Remembrance

The attack on Pearl Harbor altered the destiny of a generation. One of 16 million servicemen, Barney Mormino enlisted in the 36th Seabees, a naval construction battalion. World War II swept him from a small town in the Midwest to the South Pacific, to places most Americans could not identify on a map: New Caledonia, Bougainville, Okinawa.

The war was the greatest experience of Barney's life. Although he was not a man of letters and hated to talk on the phone, he kept in touch with his beloved band of brothers. An eyewitness to the best and worst of humanity, Barney wanted what most GIs wanted: to get married, find a job and make up for lost time.

On leave in 1943, Barney met Mabel Dingle. Born in the washed-out Illinois coal mining town of Tamaroa, she, too, hoped for a better future.

Mabel patiently preserved letters my father wrote from the South Pacific. I never saw my parents embrace, never witnessed a kiss, but the letters reveal a touching affection and optimism. To my astonishment, I also discovered love letters from other suitors!

The World According To Barney

Barney Mormino was a hard worker with a talent for doing more with less. If he was not toiling in the refinery, he was in his garden, fixing neighbors' cars or repairing a small home that somehow housed a family of eight.

He was a union man in a union town, so when the inevitable strikes occurred, he did what he had to do. When I was in first grade at Saint Bernard's, Sister Eulalia asked us to tell the class what our fathers did. I replied, with pride, that my father was a blackjack dealer! The nuns were not amused.

But 1953 was the year of a strike and Dad was working at a shadowy riverfront casino. Fittingly, one of his daughters became a cloistered nun, a Poor Clare.

Saint Benedict preached, "To work is to pray." Dad was a true believer. Feeling depressed? Work harder. Lacking self-esteem? Work harder. He never understood why one needed a college degree. To him, writing was not work. When I saw him in January, he asked, "Did you ever get a real job?"

His view of the world was simple: Life is hard; get used to it. Never expect anyone to rescue you, especially your father. The world is a cruel place. Highways are lined with shady joints. Politicians and bankers are crooks. Find a good woman, avoid debt, and learn a trade.

I was a senior in high school in 1965. My father thought only two paths made sense for 18-year-old men in Wood River. Those were the factories and the military. If an 18-year-old wished to diddle his life away at college, he should not expect to waste Ross Mormino's dime.

Giants On The Earth

Ross Mormino died this month. He managed to avoid spending a single night in a nursing home. He did not expect his children to pay for his funeral. My brother found envelopes of crisp $20 bills in his closet. He had earned the money by retrieving thousands of lost golf balls, cleaning them and reselling them. In tribute, the family placed a freshly scrubbed golf ball in his coffin.

"Behold, for a race of giants stalked the earth in those days." The Book of Genesis aptly describes millions of men and women who survived the Great Depression, never shirked their duty, and understood the importance of sacrifice, pain and denial.

For a long time, I thought my father was harsh, coarse and unsentimental. From the perspective of 2009, from the ruins of a society that demanded, even expected, instant gratification and unearned riches, Barney Mormino looks more and more like a giant that stalked the earth.

BOOK SIGNING

WHAT: Vincenza Scarpaci will speak and sign copies of her new book, "The Journey of Italians in America." The book spans the Italian-American experience, bringing together hundreds of photos and illustrations documenting a neglected chapter of American history.

WHEN: 2 p.m. today

WHERE: Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia Ave., Tampa

Gary R. Mormino teaches history at the University of South Florida, cries at Frank Capra movies and drives a 1992 Volvo.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT