Dad
Anthony Marchionna, circa 1953
May 22, 1927–October 9, 2011
My father was born to Italian immigrant parents on the eve of the great depression. He was the fifth born, a blue-eyed baby, an uncommon eye color for a child of Abruzzo. His parents named him Idollo, an uncommon name in the United States.
They lived in Vandergrift, PA, a small town that was living and growing off of the production of steel in the early part of the 20th century. Like so many other immigrant families, they worked incredibly hard to feed their families, worked hard the next day, and the next year, and the year after.
Dad talked a lot about his life. He used to tell us stories about his childhood. The theme was often his father, how strong he was, how tough he was, and what a severe disciplinarian he was. They were war stories in a way. He wore them like badges of the way he grew up and what he had survived, of how tough he was. But he laughed at them too. We always knew that he admired his own father for his skill as a stonemason, his hard work, his integrity, and his strength.
Implicit in the stories about his childhood was how easy we, his children, had it, by comparison. We were the reason his parents emigrated.
His stories were a mythology to me, tales a little larger than life about a frightening man whose response to passing the wrong dish at the table, doing poorly in school, or coming in late for dinner would earn you the swift back of the hand, or worse. It wasn’t until I went to Abruzzo and saw for myself the towns perched on tops of mountains and realized that to be foolish or careless in a place like that could have dire consequences for your whole family or community. Suddenly, it all made sense. There before me was the vision of the absolute value of hard work, smart decisions, and a cunning outwitting of the forces of nature and men. Though I didn’t completely realize it, these values were already fully instilled in me through both of my parents. But being in that landscape showed me clearly the deep roots of our common ancestry.
Dad could be pretty formidable in his own way. It was always a little intimidating to ask him for permission to stay out late when I was in high school. I know now that his gruffness was just his discomfort with the idea of his children growing up and growing away from him. The era when I would stand on his feet and have him dance me around the kitchen was long gone. Never to return were the days of him carrying me in his arms, freshly bathed and dressed like a doll, down the block to Julian’s drugstore to while away the summer evening with the guys.
Dad never graduated from high school. He was 17 in early 1945. WWII was raging, and he lied about his age to enlist in the navy. His name, Idollo, proved to be a handicap (Navy administrators thought it was a female name). He changed it to Anthony by 1950.
He had other names too. Mom always called him Marsh. Other people called him Tony. His brother Eugene used to call him Leonardo and said he had hands of gold. In Vandergrift, every male person had a nickname given for some physical characteristic or some personality trait. The nominee had no say in the matter. Dad’s nickname was “Stooge,” I suppose because he would do anything for anyone. It sounds derogatory now, but I didn’t know the word had any other meaning than as a name for my Dad.
“Aren’t you Stooge’s daughter?” I heard this more than once while walking along the streets of Vandergrift during my infrequent visits there. I was so proud to say yes, to be my father’s daughter, and for that to be obvious to people in a town I left at the age of 6.
Vandergrift was a small town, but there was a beauty named Sara Jane, and he set his mind on her. According to mom, the first time he asked her to marry him, she turned him down. But a setback to Dad was nothing more than a good way to get a running start at the next try. So, he kept at it, and they were married on November 3, 1951. They started the family you see here today, to which they both have always been devoted, heart and soul.
Dad built stuff, mostly out of wood. My brothers and I all grew up with the smell of sawdust. I played in the stuff in our garage. The smell of it still evokes strong memories of projects underway, of things taking shape and becoming beautiful.
At his core, Dad was an inventor. He had a unique brand of creativity that was driven by a restless desire to meet a challenge. We marveled at his ability to see a construction problem and devise a solution, both elegant and practical. He could conceive the plan from start to finish and then go about executing it. And if he needed a tool that didn’t exist, he’d build that too. He was tenacious in pursuit of the answer, the key to unlocking the physical mystery of things.
We can all recall times when he worked out one of his ideas on the napkin next to his dinner plate, beginning that delicate alchemy of turning the veil of an idea into set of lines. He would light up with the sheer joy of creation, like a musician who channels the essence of inspiration through his hands, making it real for the rest of us.
He was proud—proud of his family, of his work, of his clever solution to a tricky problem. But it wasn’t a self-aggrandizing kind of pride, it was a pride full of joy and delight. He took as much enjoyment from his creative notions as we did. It was almost as if he were a spectator to the whole process as well as an instrument of it, almost as if a force were moving through him that he was able to channel.
Dad was a natural storyteller. He brought the characters of his past into distinct relief for us as he reeled off tales of colorful adventures, pranks, and antics that could only have happened in a small American town of a certain age. On many occasions, but especially at Christmastime, he would start a story as we all sat around the table cracking nuts and eating cookies, the neighbors having wandered over from their own family gatherings to collect around our table. One story would trigger the memory of another, and soon they were stringing together like gems of humor. He laughed as much as the rest of us. I loved those times.
Dad had grit. When he lost his finger and thumb in the table saw accident, he picked up the pieces and put them on ice. We were all afraid that he would never recover from that. His hands were sacred, weren’t they? It was unthinkable that they should be damaged. The worst part of that terrible incident, for him, was that he had made a mistake, that his attention had lapsed, just for a fateful split second, and the damage was done. It took a long time, but he eventually adapted. In fact, he did some of his most astounding handiwork with his 8 and a half fingers. As mom would say, “He can do more with 8 fingers than most people can do with 10.” So true.
Eleven years ago, when his aorta separated from his heart, he got in his truck and tried to drive himself to the hospital. Miraculously, he survived 13 hours of open-heart surgery and a harrowing recovery in and out of ICU. Nurse Jane helped bring him through that, and mom took scrupulous care of him until he left us on Sunday. We consider ourselves immensely blessed to have had those 11 more years to spend together.
Dad built more than furniture, and models, and houses. He built a family, a home, a life, with the unflagging support of my mother, using the tools of perseverance, dead reckoning, and his special brand of love.
I look around his house; his hand is everywhere: the flagstone on the patio, the gazebo, the bricks, the grass. And inside, the molding, the cabinets, the floor, and the garage. Each of us has spent some time out in the garage this week, where his presence and energy is so strong, the vision of him working so familiar. We can see the curve of his back and hear the sound of his breathing. We recognize the shape of his fingertips and the concentration in his posture.
Dad loved his life, even with the challenges, the crises, the losses, and the heartbreaks. He became gentler and more emotional over the years, his hearing failed him and he’d choke up saying grace, remembering those he missed—his brother Eugene and my husband Lee among them.
Mom refers to these last 20 years as the happiest of their life together. He was such a lucky man to have that upward arc to his life. He had regrets, to be sure, but he loved his wife, his family, and his friends. He was comfortable and had a measure of satisfaction. He may have been as baffled as the next person about the meaning of it all, but he clung to the love he had for all of us here in this room.
These are just some of my memories. We each have our own unique memories of different events, but also different versions of the same events. My mother and brothers could tell you different stories. And you would tell us different stories. Together, they form a vivid tapestry of recollection. We must share those stories with one another. We should tell the stories as Dad did, over and over. The measure of a life is not what you amass, but the trail of love you leave behind, how people feel about you, what kinds of stories your friends tell your children.
Finally, his tough, tender heart just stopped. His passing—peaceful and quiet, while mom fixed his dinner—was a perfectly mitered joint between this world and the next: clean, smooth, and elegant.
Dad
Anthony Marchionna, circa 1953
May 22, 1927–October 9, 2011
My father was born to Italian immigrant parents on the eve of the great depression. He was the fifth born, a blue-eyed baby, an uncommon eye color for a child of Abruzzo. His parents named him Idollo, an uncommon name in the United States.
They lived in Vandergrift, PA, a small town that was living and growing off of the production of steel in the early part of the 20th century. Like so many other immigrant families, they worked incredibly hard to feed their families, worked hard the next day, and the next year, and the year after.
Dad talked a lot about his life. He used to tell us stories about his childhood. The theme was often his father, how strong he was, how tough he was, and what a severe disciplinarian he was. They were war stories in a way. He wore them like badges of the way he grew up and what he had survived, of how tough he was. But he laughed at them too. We always knew that he admired his own father for his skill as a stonemason, his hard work, his integrity, and his strength.
Implicit in the stories about his childhood was how easy we, his children, had it, by comparison. We were the reason his parents emigrated.
His stories were a mythology to me, tales a little larger than life about a frightening man whose response to passing the wrong dish at the table, doing poorly in school, or coming in late for dinner would earn you the swift back of the hand, or worse. It wasn’t until I went to Abruzzo and saw for myself the towns perched on tops of mountains and realized that to be foolish or careless in a place like that could have dire consequences for your whole family or community. Suddenly, it all made sense. There before me was the vision of the absolute value of hard work, smart decisions, and a cunning outwitting of the forces of nature and men. Though I didn’t completely realize it, these values were already fully instilled in me through both of my parents. But being in that landscape showed me clearly the deep roots of our common ancestry.
Dad could be pretty formidable in his own way. It was always a little intimidating to ask him for permission to stay out late when I was in high school. I know now that his gruffness was just his discomfort with the idea of his children growing up and growing away from him. The era when I would stand on his feet and have him dance me around the kitchen was long gone. Never to return were the days of him carrying me in his arms, freshly bathed and dressed like a doll, down the block to Julian’s drugstore to while away the summer evening with the guys.
Dad never graduated from high school. He was 17 in early 1945. WWII was raging, and he lied about his age to enlist in the navy. His name, Idollo, proved to be a handicap (Navy administrators thought it was a female name). He changed it to Anthony by 1950.
He had other names too. Mom always called him Marsh. Other people called him Tony. His brother Eugene used to call him Leonardo and said he had hands of gold. In Vandergrift, every male person had a nickname given for some physical characteristic or some personality trait. The nominee had no say in the matter. Dad’s nickname was “Stooge,” I suppose because he would do anything for anyone. It sounds derogatory now, but I didn’t know the word had any other meaning than as a name for my Dad.
“Aren’t you Stooge’s daughter?” I heard this more than once while walking along the streets of Vandergrift during my infrequent visits there. I was so proud to say yes, to be my father’s daughter, and for that to be obvious to people in a town I left at the age of 6.
Vandergrift was a small town, but there was a beauty named Sara Jane, and he set his mind on her. According to mom, the first time he asked her to marry him, she turned him down. But a setback to Dad was nothing more than a good way to get a running start at the next try. So, he kept at it, and they were married on November 3, 1951. They started the family you see here today, to which they both have always been devoted, heart and soul.
Dad built stuff, mostly out of wood. My brothers and I all grew up with the smell of sawdust. I played in the stuff in our garage. The smell of it still evokes strong memories of projects underway, of things taking shape and becoming beautiful.
At his core, Dad was an inventor. He had a unique brand of creativity that was driven by a restless desire to meet a challenge. We marveled at his ability to see a construction problem and devise a solution, both elegant and practical. He could conceive the plan from start to finish and then go about executing it. And if he needed a tool that didn’t exist, he’d build that too. He was tenacious in pursuit of the answer, the key to unlocking the physical mystery of things.
We can all recall times when he worked out one of his ideas on the napkin next to his dinner plate, beginning that delicate alchemy of turning the veil of an idea into set of lines. He would light up with the sheer joy of creation, like a musician who channels the essence of inspiration through his hands, making it real for the rest of us.
He was proud—proud of his family, of his work, of his clever solution to a tricky problem. But it wasn’t a self-aggrandizing kind of pride, it was a pride full of joy and delight. He took as much enjoyment from his creative notions as we did. It was almost as if he were a spectator to the whole process as well as an instrument of it, almost as if a force were moving through him that he was able to channel.
Dad was a natural storyteller. He brought the characters of his past into distinct relief for us as he reeled off tales of colorful adventures, pranks, and antics that could only have happened in a small American town of a certain age. On many occasions, but especially at Christmastime, he would start a story as we all sat around the table cracking nuts and eating cookies, the neighbors having wandered over from their own family gatherings to collect around our table. One story would trigger the memory of another, and soon they were stringing together like gems of humor. He laughed as much as the rest of us. I loved those times.
Dad had grit. When he lost his finger and thumb in the table saw accident, he picked up the pieces and put them on ice. We were all afraid that he would never recover from that. His hands were sacred, weren’t they? It was unthinkable that they should be damaged. The worst part of that terrible incident, for him, was that he had made a mistake, that his attention had lapsed, just for a fateful split second, and the damage was done. It took a long time, but he eventually adapted. In fact, he did some of his most astounding handiwork with his 8 and a half fingers. As mom would say, “He can do more with 8 fingers than most people can do with 10.” So true.
Eleven years ago, when his aorta separated from his heart, he got in his truck and tried to drive himself to the hospital. Miraculously, he survived 13 hours of open-heart surgery and a harrowing recovery in and out of ICU. Nurse Jane helped bring him through that, and mom took scrupulous care of him until he left us on Sunday. We consider ourselves immensely blessed to have had those 11 more years to spend together.
Dad built more than furniture, and models, and houses. He built a family, a home, a life, with the unflagging support of my mother, using the tools of perseverance, dead reckoning, and his special brand of love.
I look around his house; his hand is everywhere: the flagstone on the patio, the gazebo, the bricks, the grass. And inside, the molding, the cabinets, the floor, and the garage. Each of us has spent some time out in the garage this week, where his presence and energy is so strong, the vision of him working so familiar. We can see the curve of his back and hear the sound of his breathing. We recognize the shape of his fingertips and the concentration in his posture.
Dad loved his life, even with the challenges, the crises, the losses, and the heartbreaks. He became gentler and more emotional over the years, his hearing failed him and he’d choke up saying grace, remembering those he missed—his brother Eugene and my husband Lee among them.
Mom refers to these last 20 years as the happiest of their life together. He was such a lucky man to have that upward arc to his life. He had regrets, to be sure, but he loved his wife, his family, and his friends. He was comfortable and had a measure of satisfaction. He may have been as baffled as the next person about the meaning of it all, but he clung to the love he had for all of us here in this room.
These are just some of my memories. We each have our own unique memories of different events, but also different versions of the same events. My mother and brothers could tell you different stories. And you would tell us different stories. Together, they form a vivid tapestry of recollection. We must share those stories with one another. We should tell the stories as Dad did, over and over. The measure of a life is not what you amass, but the trail of love you leave behind, how people feel about you, what kinds of stories your friends tell your children.
Finally, his tough, tender heart just stopped. His passing—peaceful and quiet, while mom fixed his dinner—was a perfectly mitered joint between this world and the next: clean, smooth, and elegant.