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February 16, 2009
Gary Ross Mormino holds the rank of full professor at the University of South Florida, where he has taught since 1977. A graduate of Millikin University (B.A.) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D.), Mormino has written extensively on immigration and urban America. In 1986, the University of Illinois published Immigrants on the Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis, 1882-1982. The following year the University of Illinois Press included in its inaugural Statue of Liberty Series, The immigrant world of Ybor City: Italians and their Latin neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (with George Pozzetta). In 1980, he taught at the University of Rome as a Fulbright scholar. Professor Mormino has also been engaged in the history of Florida. He has involved himself with local historical projects, such as teacher workshops and the publication of curricular materials. In 1991 he co-edited, with Ann Henderson, Spanish Pathways in Florida, 1492-1992 (Pineapple Press). Presently he is completing a history of World War II in Florida.
In America, the Bread is Soft 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... The third of seven children, Ross Anthony Mormino was born in Wood River, Illinois, in 1920. The Morminos found the American Dream on the backside of the tracks in Little Italy. The town reeked of sulfur and petroleum, but when anyone complained, the old Italians would say, "It’s the smell of prosperity." The family legend holds that daily, as he was leaving the Standard Oil Refinery, Rosolino Mormino 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 five Mormino sons 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 likeness for the 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 Pearl Harbor altered the destiny of a generation of Barneys. One of 16 million servicemen, he 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, and Okinawa. World War II was the greatest experience of his life. He was not a man of letters and hated to talk on the phone, but he kept in touch with his beloved band of brothers. An eye witness to the best and worst of humanity, he wanted what most GI’s wanted: to get married, find a job, and catch up for lost time. On leave in 1943, he met Mabel Dingle. Born in the washed-out coal mining town of Tamaroa, Illinois, she, too, understood hard times and unrequited dreams. Mabel patiently wrapped and preserved letters my father wrote from the South Pacific. I never saw my parents embrace, never witnessed a kiss, but the letters revealed a touching affection and optimism. To my astonishment, I also discovered love letters from other suitors!
What did Barney Mormino do? He worked, doing more with less than anyone I knew. A cure for life’s afflictions, work was his calling. If he was not toiling in the refinery, he was working in his garden, fixing neighbors’ cars or repairing a small home that somehow housed a family of eight.
Barney did what he
had to do. He was a union man in a union town. In first grade at Saint
Bernard’s, Sister Eulalia asked students to tell what their fathers did.
I replied, with pride, that my father was a black jack dealer! The nuns
were not amused. But 1953 was the year of the strike, and dad was
shuffling cards in the backroom of a notorious tavern. Fittingly, one of
his daughters became a cloistered nun, a Poor Clare. 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 gyp 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 to 18-year-old males in Wood River: the factories or the military. But 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 in March 2009. 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 several 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 as "new." 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 described millions of men and women who survived the Great Depression, never shirked their duty, who understood the importance of sacrifice, pain, and denial. For a long time, I thought my father was harsh, coarse, and unsentimental. Judged from the vantage point 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._ |