Independent minded

By the time Carlo and his mother returned to America in 1937, Bruno had set up an apartment on Saint Marks Ave. between Grand and Classan Avenues in the Adelphi section of Brooklyn, just north of Prospect Park. Carlo had finished elementary school in Sant’Andrea, but hadn’t received any schooling in English. His entire American school experience came in the three years that followed.

His first stop was P.S. 109, located on the opposite side of Prospect Park, about 2.4 miles from Carlo’s new home.

Rather than spend the 50 cents his mother gave him each week to ride the trolley to school, the entrepreneurial youngster either walked the whole way around Prospect Park – about 30 city blocks – or hitched a ride on the trolley without paying. He kept the money for the movies at the end of the week, spending nearly the whole day with his new friends at the theater for only 10 cents. He’d also buy first-edition comic books, including Superman, and would even save some for the local club on Bergen Street, where he was a regular.

Many of Carlo’s classmates had similar Italian histories, which made it easy for him to adjust to his new world. They spoke the same language and shared many of the same customs.

To offer even more comforts of Sant’Andrea, only three months after Carlo and Elvira came to Brooklyn, Bruno decided to move the family near his paesans to a brownstone on Kosciusko Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, about a mile northeast of the Saint Marks Ave. address. The new apartment was off Nostrand Avenue, near Nostrand’s intersection with DeKalb Avenue and only a few blocks south of Bruno’s cousin, Vittorio Nero, on Sandford Street.

P.S 109 was now more than 50 blocks from his new home, but that didn’t stop Carlo from occasionally walking the distance. The added effort was worth it. He would be left with plenty of money to spend at the movies or on other treats. He was so used to walking the long stretch that he would often double back to his old neighborhood after doing his homework to the Bergen Street club near his old apartment on St. Marks.

Returning to Sant’Andrea

Never expecting that events would lead them back to America, Bruno and Elvira were committed to returning to Calabria.

In March 1940, they began to put their plan in motion. Carlo, now 15, was sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Maria Teresa Sama, in Sant’Andrea.

With the belief that American schools were slower, Carlo’s uncle, Bruno Sama, admitted him into the first grade of a school about 30 miles south in Locri, a ninety-minute train ride from Sant’Andrea. Having just finished junior high school in America, he was supposed to start at a faculty trade school.

It was then Carlo realized that without his parents by his side to guide him, he would have to rely on his own instincts. He would follow his family’s direction, but when it came to tough decisions that affected the direction of his future, he would make them on his own.

For his first tough decision, Carlo dropped out of school without informing his family. He didn’t belong in first grade. It was frustrating, embarrassing and entirely unnecessary. But he needed to complete a high school exit exam in order to move on to college.

So, again without his family’s knowledge, the young man sought out and hired four tutors to fill in the missing pieces. To avoid the pain of explaining his decision to his family, he operated as if he were still going to elementary school. He took the 5:30 a.m. train to Locri each morning, but instead of going to elementary school, he secretly spent his days with the tutors – one hour each every school day.

All this was happening as Carlo tried to cope with the tremendous anxiety that came with being a teenager separated from his parents who were an ocean away. Though he was surrounded by family members he had grown up with as a small boy, he felt alone and different from his friends who had gone to school together the whole time. He missed his father’s kind advice and reassurance. He missed his mother’s caring attention.

Then it got worse. In May 1940, only two months after Carlo’s return to Sant’Andrea, Benito Mussolini plunged Italy into World War II on the side of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. With no warning from American embassies in Italy, all lines of communication were cut off to the West. Carlo would not hear from his parents or receive any funding from them for the next three and a half years. With little money of his own, he became even more dependent on the good graces of his grandmother, uncle and aunts. This was especially frustrating given that his parents had saved 25,000 lire in a post office account – enough to buy three houses at that time. But Carlo couldn’t touch it. The account was in his parents’ name.

If there was any salvation, it was in a budding relationship with Vittoria, the girl whom he had insisted would one day be his wife. Now a beautiful signorina, Vittoria’s elegant blond hair, brown eyes and feisty temperament made her stand out from the crowd.

Constantly reminded by her mother that boys her age were up to no good, Vittoria had denied the advances of the young men in the town. She was more interested in her parochial-school education and singing lessons with Mother Superior, who believed Vittoria should pursue a singing career and feared that her voice “would get lost in a town like this.”

Carlo renewed courting Vittoria soon after returning to the town. He brought along as cousin to pay her a visit. She noticed that his emotions were running high as he once again stated his intentions, which he asserted in long letters that followed. As he made his way to the train station each morning, Carlo passed under Vittoria’s window serenading her with love songs to woo her over. Vittoria was half afraid that her mother would hear and wreak havoc, but she was just as overwhelmed by his tenacity and romantic flair.

Carlo asked her to commit to a relationship, but she resisted. Then he wrote a letter suggesting that if she wasn’t willing to commit openly, he would be willing to have a relationship “that is silent to the world.” He promised not to take advantage of her and would even ask her mother for Vittoria’s hand in marriage. When the war was over, he would bring her to America where they would not have to live in a land torn up by bombs.

Vittoria warmed to his proposal for a silent courtship, and the two started a correspondence that gradually built into a platonic love affair. Carlo wrote to her every chance he had, leaving notes for her on her windowsill as he left for school. When he didn’t have blank sheets of paper, on the train ride home he would use the bare spots of magazines that were not covered by text or photos featuring the latest stars from the silver screen.

The first kiss

One day Carlo went to Vittoria’s house with the excuse of returning a book he borrowed from her brother, Romolo, one of his closest friends. It was wintertime and Vittoria was in the home alone, huddled around a brass pan filled with soft coals from the mountains used to keep homes warm. Carlo sat with her around the coal pan, the light from the fire flickering off the walls in the otherwise dark room. If ever there was a time to kiss her, this was it.

He was afraid, but found the courage to take her hand. They sat for awhile, enjoying what they knew was a short opportunity to spend time alone. Finally, both of their hearts racing, he leaned over to kiss her. It was the first for either of them.

Life interrupted

The family is split for six years as

Bruno fights for his WW I pension

After the birth of Carlo, the new Corry family spent the next four years in Canton, surviving on Bruno’s World War I disability pension and part-time work embroidering leather pocketbooks and wallets. But with Bruno battling attacks on his health from war-induced tuberculosis, they concluded that Sant’Andrea’s casual coastal lifestyle and warm climate would do him wonders. So in 1929, with Carlo now four years old, they uprooted from Canton and returned to Sant’Andrea, entirely expecting that they would remain there for the rest of their lives.

Bruno had a house built on the outskirts of the town off Via Trieste, a road that led back to the heart of the village. The house had three entrances – one from the front, one from the side alleyway and another from the rear. It had two rooms and a small kitchen on the bottom, a big bedroom on the second floor and another two rooms and a terrace further up. An oven at the back of the house was used to bake bread, and the family used its piece of land to plant a vegetable garden.

Carlo was soon immersed into the slow-paced lifestyle of Sant’Andrea. He started kindergarten and made fast friends with the boys in town. He also took to teasing a cute girl in his class named Vittoria Codispoti, who found Carlo to be a pest and wanted nothing to do with him.

In 1931, their lives were interrupted once again by news from America. In the midst of the Great Depression, his disability pension was cut off. At the same time, cash-strapped non-disabled veterans desperate to feed their families wanted immediate access to the small bonuses Congress had approved in 1924 for their service to the country. The bonus, approved over the veto of President Herbert Hoover, wasn’t to be paid until 1944, but veterans grew tired of waiting.

Bruno left for America in 1931 to join other World War I veterans in the famous Bonus March on Washington in an effort to bring attention to their cause and, with hope, wrest payment from the government. It wasn’t like it was a lot of money. Unlike the benefits afforded to World War II veterans, non-disabled Great War soldiers had no G.I. Bill of Rights – no pensions, special home loans or financial assistance for college. They were simply to be paid based on their days of service: $1 a day for every stateside day served and $1.25 for every day served overseas – $250 on average.

During the summer of 1932, veterans were shot at, tear-gassed and horse-trampled by a military force led by George Patton. It wasn’t until 1936 that Congress, again over the president's veto, voted to give veterans their bonuses and restore disability pensions.

With a decent load of back pay in hand, Bruno, now living in an apartment on Sandford Street in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn with his father’s cousin, Vittorio Nero, sent for his wife and son.

A young romantic

Before leaving Sant’Andrea, Elvira Corry and her son made the rounds to say good-bye to friends and family. One particular visit had Carlo nervous with anticipation.

On most days, Concetta Codispoti’s children could be found assisting her at her shoe store. She was alone, however, when Elvira and 11-year-old Carlo came to pay their respects.

Concetta and Elvira grew up together in Sant’Andrea, so it was easy for Elvira to share her excitement about the prospect of reuniting with her husband for the first time in six years. Concetta’s own husband had been in America for years, regularly sending back money to the family.

As the two women went on to talk about other issues in the store, which was lined with shoes imported from the northern town of Torino and other leather goods, Carlo’s anxiety bubbled to the surface. He tugged at the back of his mother’s shirt.

“Tell her, mom, tell her,” he pleaded, his head poking up just around her hip. Elvira patted him on the head reassuringly, smiled, and then turned to Concetta.

“Signora,” Elvira said skittishly, pausing for a moment. “I don’t know how to start. My son says that when he grows up, he wants your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Concetta chuckled at the notion and looked down at the boy sympathetically, as if to say, “That’s sweet.”

“He’s a kid, she’s a kid. Who knows?” Concetta said, shrugging her shoulders. But this was serious business to Carlo, who promised his heart to Concetta’s daughter Vittoria.

This was all a big surprise to Vittoria, who was at school during Carlo’s admission to her mother. If nothing else, she thought Carlo was a nuisance.

Though he was born in Canton and spent his first four years there, Carlo remembered nothing of the experience. As far as he knew, he spent his whole life in Sant’Andrea. And six years apart from his father, he held only few memories of the man whose name would later bring tears to his eyes as the kindest, most generous person he ever knew.

Corry family: the beginning

How one young man's devotion to an

adopted home changed the fate of a family

Overlooking the Ionian Sea on the instep of Italy’s boot, Sant’Andrea Apostolo dello Ionio was founded sometime between the 11th and 12th centuries as a peaceful outpost for Byzantine monks. Its strategic location along the coast invited invaders from countries across Europe for the next 900 years. The town, protected by stone walls around its perimeter, was largely successful in fending them off, but gradually incorporated the cultures of many people, including the Greeks, Turks and French.

It’s ironic, then, that the town’s biggest threat at the outset of the 20th century was the steady loss of its sons and daughters to other parts of the world. Most settled in North and South America, seeking to capture modern opportunities not available in the old town, a staple of simple, Medieval life, where water was still pumped from a community well and bread was made daily from grain.

In 1913, among those to leave Sant’Andrea in search of a better life was thirteen-year-old Bruno Coccari. With $40 in his pocket, Bruno sailed to America with some family members from the port of Naples to Ellis Island on the ship Caronia. (View Ellis Island passenger record.)

His father, Carmine, and older brothers, Vincenzo and Saverio, worked for several years in the dangerous, sweaty coal mines imbedded in the hills of North Fork, West Virginia. They were paid $1 a day and slept in cramped barracks.

Carmine came to the U.S. in 1909 at 54 years old; Saverio was 24; Vincenzo, 13. They listed 126 Mulberry St. in Manhattan, the address of his brother-in-law Vincenzo Bresi, as their destination in Ellis Island passenger records. It was a common stopover for many Andreolesi – natives of Sant’Andrea.

It’s unclear how long Bruno, Saverio and Vincenzo stayed in West Virginia, but by 1917, after their father returned to Sant’Andrea, they all settled in Canton, Ohio. A large group of people from Sant’Andrea called the city home, including some who had come to America on the same ship as Bruno.

On Nov. 28, 1917, Bruno, set on becoming an American citizen as the country entered the Great War of Civilization, enlisted in the U.S. Army in Columbus, Ohio. Vincenzo and Saverio registered for the draft on June 5, 1917, but neither served in the war. Vincenzo, just 21, single and with no children, died of pneumonia later that year. Saverio, who was married with four children, died in 1948 as somewhat of a family outcast for leaving his two daughters in a home after the death of his wife. They children were later adopted by a couple in New Jersey.

Bruno, who spent years searching for his nieces, refused to go to the funeral.

Carmine met his fate with an accident during the traditional process of foot-crushing wine grapes. He slipped while stepping out of the barrel to check how much juice had flowed into an adjoining container and hit his head on cement, losing several teeth. He died soon after.

Anything but KP

In 1917 bootcamp, Bruno quickly became frustrated by frequent KP-duty assignments from officers who muddled his last name at roll call, making it difficult for Bruno to know when he should respond. Then a sympathetic Irish lieutenant made a fateful suggestion: “You want to make life easy for yourself? Then change your last name.”

Bruno, longing for acceptance as an American, soon took him up on the advice, becoming the only person in his family to switch from a surname dating back centuries, to Corry.

He never had a problem at roll call again.

On the French front lines, Bruno served as a cook and a machinist, where his battalion was doused with mustard gas by the enemy. The gassing, combined with the daily assault on his lungs from his time in the coal mines, led to chronic bouts with tuberculosis, long, periodic hospital stays after the war and, eventually, to his early death.

When the war ended, Bruno returned to
Sant’Andrea, where he met and married Elvira Sama, one of Bruno Sama and Maria Teresa Dominjianni’s seven children. She was a towering woman, standing nearly six feet tall – huge for a woman in southern Italy in that era. Most women in the town reached only as high as her chest.

Bruno and his new wife spent the next several years in Sant’Andrea, until deciding that America held better promise for a young family. In 1924, he returned to Canton and bought a house. He sent for his wife, who came to the United States not knowing a word of English. Bruno learned how to speak, read and write in English.

On Jan. 22, 1925, their only child was born. They intended to name him Carlo, after Bruno’s father Carmini. But for the second time, the Irish played a hand in a name change. The first name on the new baby’s birth certificate read Carroll, not Carlo – likely a result of a misunderstanding with a midwife who was much more familiar with a brogue than an Italian accent.

And so began the Corry family.

Photo credit: Panoramic, Village views of Sant'Andrea Ionio from www.andreolesi.com

Citizen of the World: An introduction

I wrote this intro a while back to serve as the foundation for "Citizen of the World," the book I hope these family stories will grow to become. I didn't intend to post it, but I feel it'll help explain why I got into this. Hope you enjoy it.

My grandfather is a natural storyteller, but he didn’t start telling me the Big Story until about 25 years into our relationship. Before then, I knew him as a quiet, balding Italian man who liked Carlo Rossi red wine mixed with seltzer water and hated zucchini.

We also happened to have the same name.

What I knew of Poppy I learned from holiday dinners at my grandparents’ house on 15^th Avenue in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.

Poppy held court at the head of the adult table in his Fruit of the Loom white cotton V-neck T-shirt, a half carafe of Carlo Rossi on his right and slices of round Italian bread he cut for the family on his left. The oval faux-wood table in the finished basement, where we all gathered, sat seven adults if you squished them together. One end would be left open for the kid’s table to comfortably nudge beneath.

The youngest and shortest in the family back then, I sat at the far end of the children’s table. Between Poppy and me were my uncles, aunts and cousins – 11 of us at most – and the normal feast Nanny spent two days preparing. Just the first course could consist of pasta and her amazing red sauce, sausages, meatballs, mozzarella and tomatoes sprinkled with olive oil, provolone and sopressata, a huge bow of salad, breaded chicken cutlets, roasted peppers, pickled mushrooms, more wine, soda and juices. Nanny also made zucchini pie, which everyone else seemed to love, but Poppy would avoid as if it was his own version of kryptonite.

I’m not sure if we were just too far away from each other in those days, blocked from connecting by the mass of glass, china, food and constant chatter from the adults – who were each competing for his attention – or if he possibly thought children should be seen and not heard, but I didn’t get to know my grandfather much when I was a child. For years he was a mysterious, intimating figure, and my brother Christopher and I gravitated to Nanny. She was openly loving and always in good spirits.

Then one day at my cousin Marissa’s house for another holiday party, a clearer image of Poppy began to emerge. We all gathered outside by the pool, playfully teasing one another as usual, when the topic changed to our family and how we would up in America.

My father, Mario, was born in Sant’Andrea Apostolo Dello Ionio, Calabria, on the instep of Italy, as were his older siblings, Vera and Bruno. It was a fact that always confused me because I knew that Poppy was born in Canton, Ohio, and yet his parents were born in Sant’Andrea. Nanny, too, was born and raised in Sant’Andrea.

It’s complicated, but the pieces of our family puzzle would soon come together.

At Marissa’s, as the small details began to emerge, I put on my reporter’s hat and began to ask questions. I first wanted to know about the person I think we all knew the least about – Poppy’s father, Bruno – the person responsible for changing our last name from Coccari to Corry, whose own father was probably the first in our family to come to America.

The subject seemed to touch something deep inside of Poppy, and he sat back in thought for a moment, hand under his chin, readying himself for a discussion that would last several years. We gathered around him as he began, tears welled up in his eyes.

“He was a good man,” Poppy started, filling in some of the blanks that night and piquing our interests to learn more.

Nanny, Poppy and I agreed that the full story needed to be told, however, and we agreed to set up lunch dates where Nanny and Poppy would spill their guts about things that happened more than five decades before, during what Poppy calls the best days of his life.

And so, with my wife Angela serving as a visual distraction for Nanny and Poppy as I furiously scribbled down notes, we talked about Bruno’s desire to become an American, how he worked in the coal mines of West Virginia and become a soldier in the U.S Army to fight in the Great War. We also talked about Poppy’s own amazing tale of survival – how an American boy stuck in Italy at the outset of World War II was cut off from his parents and wound up fighting on both sides of the war. And we talked about how these turn of events left him without legal connections to any nation for seven years, leaving him a Citizen of the World, with only the dream of returning home and love of one woman holding him together.

My grandfather’s story is one of courage, of humor, of amazing grace under fire and of sheer determination. I hope you enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed listening to it. And I hope this account does the real story justice.