Relatively Speaking Blog

My sister Marie impressed and delighted me when I asked if she knew the significance of November 1919. “That’s when it all began.” She couldn’t have been more certain if I had asked her about 1492, 1776 or the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, but the date in question was personal, relating to family history from a century ago. Our sister Patty easily identified the date too, providing the essential details: “It seems that both sets of our grandparents were wed in November 1919… Capone wedding the 17th – the Morelli wedding the 27!” 

My sisters know the date of those weddings a hundred years ago because we celebrated the 50th anniversaries when we were kids in 1969. Back then I did not grasp how unique the occasion was. I knew 50 years was a long time, and it seemed natural for grandparents to be married that long. Only later did I realize how extraordinary it was for my family to be able to celebrate those golden anniversaries with all four of our grandparents in a single month.

In 1919 our grandparents were four young Italians living in Pittsburgh. My grandmothers were girls still living with their families. My grandfathers were young men trying to make a living in a new country. They were all born around the turn of the 20th century and had came from four different piccoli poveri paesi (poor little towns) in Italy between 1910 and 1916 and settled in western Pennsylvania.

Frank Morelli, was born January 11, 1894 in Focà of Caulonia, province of Reggio Calabria. His mother Rosa Roccisano died two months after he was born, and his father Ilario Morelli married Frank’s wet-nurse Carmela Creco. When he was 15, he confronted his drunken father for abusing his stepmother; they got into a physical fight, and Frank was kicked out of the house. He arrived in the USA on July 29, 1912, at age 18, coming alone to Pittsburgh where he had paesani.

Florindo Achille Capone was also born in 1894, on September 1, to Carmine Felice Capone and Pasqualina Fiore in Montemiletto, province of Avellino, region of Compania. He arrived from Italy on April 10, 1910, at age 15, following his brother Angelo Michael to Pittsburgh. Florindo worked various jobs and was given the nickname ‘Pete’ by one of his first bosses here.

Rachel DeCesare was born July 19, 1901, in Castellino del Biferno, Campobasso, Abbruzzi. She came to the USA with her parents Marianicola DiFranco and Giuseppe DiCesare and brothers Vincenzo and Pietro, but they were turned away at Ellis Island because her mother had an infection. They went instead to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a few years until her uncle Pasquale DiCesare, already in Pittsburgh, sponsored their immigration. They arrived on December 11, 1916, when Rachel was 15.

Ortenza ‘Tansy’ Napolitano was actually born in Pittsburgh, on January 7, 1904. Her parents Palma Lonetti and Frank Napolitano had brought their family to the United States before 1900. When Tansy was six months old, they went back to their paese Melissa, Catanzaro, Calabria. Following financial hardships there, they returned again to Pittsburgh in 1910 when Tansy was six years old.

Pittsburgh and its east end neighborhood Homewood had growing Italian immigrant populations in the early 20th century. When one Italian settled successfully, his family and paesani often followed. The Capones say that Pete originally came to bring his brother Mike back to Italy, and later his younger brother Louie came to bring them both back, but they all stayed and raised families here. The Napolitanos first lived on Wiley Avenue near Downtown, where Tansy had been born, until her older sister Victoria married Joe Azzaro, moved to Homewood, and urged them to join them there. Rachel’s parents were among the immigrants who eventually returned to Italy permanently, leaving Rachel and her brother Pietro behind. Many more stayed and became citizens, as Frank and Pete did after serving in the U.S. Army in the First World War.

The two young Italian-American couples may not have known each other in 1919, but their lives converged at the local Italian Catholic parish, Mother of Good Counsel Church, which was located on Hale Street. There, on Monday, November 17, Pete Capone married Rachel DeCesare.

Ten days later, on November 27, Thanksgiving Day 1919, Frank Morelli and Tansy Napolitano were also married at Mother of Good Counsel Church.

Both newlywed couples began their marriages living with family: Rachel and Pete with his brother Michael, Frank and Tansy with her father and stepmother. Frank and Tansy would move a few times for work, first to West Virginia, then Dawson, PA, and finally back to Pittsburgh around 1925. Meanwhile Pete gained business experience working multiple jobs, including in shops and restaurants, leading to his operating a speakeasy during Prohibition.

The first known meeting of my grandfathers occurred when Frank Morelli took a night job cleaning at Pete Capone’s speakeasy. Beside selling bootleg alcohol, slot machines were another source of profit there. Frank soon learned how to trip slot machines for automatic payouts. When Pete started losing money, he correctly assumed Frank was the reason and decided to remove him. If Pete had been like notorious prohibition gangster Al Capone, it might have ended badly for Frank. Instead Pete used business and political connections that led to Frank getting the job of caretaker at Homewood Playground, a secure position that also provided a home for his family in the caretaker’s quarters. Meanwhile Pete bought a nearby building and opened a restaurant named The Capone Brothers El Patio. After the repeal of prohibition, he added a bar, renamed it The Homewood Canteen, and moved his family to the first floor apartment there.

The Homewood Canteen and playground were located near to each other, separated only by the ball field, Clawson Street, and the Alan Rug Company, and the four Capone children became friends with the four Morelli children. Nicky and Carmen were in first grade together, and later Nicky and Joe were in the same homeroom and shared a locker at Westinghouse High School. Vir, Rosemarie and ViVi played, visited, and sang together. Frenchy and Val, both charming and stylish, became buddies. Joe and Frenchy even entered the service on the same day for WWII.

When Nicky Morelli got married in 1947, he asked Joe to be his best man, pairing him with Rosemarie, the maid-of-honor. Soon afterward Rosemarie and Joe started dating. Following a four-year relationship, they were married on August 18, 1951, and the two families were formally united.

For the first eight years of their marriage, Joe and Rosemarie lived in the apartment above his parents’ bar. With a growing family they bought the house at 540 Clawson Street in 1959. There they raised eight children, of whom I am the sixth.

In 1969, when I was eight years old, my grandparents reached their golden wedding anniversaries. I recall three celebrations surrounding the occasion. There was a party for Grandma and Pappap Capone at the Sub Alpine, an Italian Club in Turtle Creek. They had cookies and an open bar where we get pop, dancing, and a bocce court through a door off the dance floor. The party for Grandma and Pappap Morelli was held at the North Bessemer Volunteer Fire Department Hall near their Penn Hills home. The hall was decorated with large signs painted by my brothers Jim and Thom, each with a different pair of names by which they were known: Mr. & Mrs. Morelli, Frank & Tansy, Grandma & Pappap, and Comare & Compare. The third anniversary celebration was a mass at Mother of Good Counsel Church where they were married. My whole family attended the mass, and afterward we posed for a historic family photo with our four grandparents.

It has been 50 years since that momentous celebration. Sadly, my grandparents had only one more anniversary before the deaths of Pappap Morelli in December 1970 and Grandma Capone in May 1971. I am fortunate to have vivid memories of each of my grandparents: Pappap Morelli making snowflake veils from napkins and lip-syncing to the opera singers on The Ed Sullivan Show. Having coffee and cookies with Grandma Morelli and relaxing on her porch glider on a summer evening. Eating overwhelmingly hot peppers with Pappap Capone and routinely losing to him at checkers. The taste of Grandma Capone’s spaghetti sauce and her lyrical Italian accent. My four grandparents, two Italian-Americans couples, became my first role models for long, happy relationships. This year I will remember and celebrate their marriages in November 1919, one hundred years ago, when it all began.