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.