JOE & MARY

                I’m going to have a very difficult time writing this next part of my blog because it’s about my long-time friend – my long-time best friend – Joe Pellerito and his wife, Mary.  I could have included them in the previous blog about family; they were the major members of our Vicenza family of close friends.  We went out to dinner with them almost every Friday night for many years and joined them on hundreds of other occasions – birthday parties, holiday celebrations, trips to Venice, ski trips and on and on.  They both taught our sons at the Vicenza American Elementary School.  Their daughters, Becky and Jenny, and their son, Jamie, were part of Patrick and Marty’s circle of American friends.

Then, in August 2004, we lost Joe to a devastating stroke just two months short of his 70^th birthday.  It took him as he was napping after lunch, following a morning of golf with Marty and me and before he was to go to school to begin coaching that year’s Vicenza High School Girls Volleyball team.  Although he was a fifth grade teacher, Joe coached several high school girls teams – volleyball, tennis, and basketball – for many years and with great success.  I joined him in coaching basketball for 24 years, the last eight seasons following my retirement. 

So, suddenly, one of the most important people in our lives was gone.  Then, Mary, who’d retired several years before that, returned to the U.S., moving to New York to be close to Jenny and Jamie.  It was as if we’d lost a brother and a sister within five months’ time.

I was desolate for those five months; but it really hit me during basketball season that winter.  No more Monday through Thursday practices, where Joe and I tried a whole range of workouts, drills, and scrimmages, experimenting with ways to encourage the girls to learn what good athletes they could be.  No more Friday night and Saturday morning games finding out the girls were better than we (and they) thought they were;  learning that Joe knew more about basketball than I thought when he coaxed me into joining this project by pretending I was the “expert” and he was just the school “sponsor” of the team; and watching Joe’s amazing ability to will the girls to victories with his inspiring pre-game, half-time, and in-game-timeout speeches.  No more thrilling victories and championship seasons; no more disheartening losses and second-place finishes; no more fun and games.

Joe’s death meant the end of long road trips, riding a bus to American schools all over Italy (and sometimes flying to Sigonella, Sicily).  The end of Friday night sleeping in teachers’ lounges.  The end of not sleeping, but waking up Joe to discuss my latest, crazy basketball strategy or to tell him a joke I’d just thought of or read him a rhyme I’d just written.  The end of listening to Joe in the school hallway, admonishing some player – girl or boy – about the lights-out curfew.   The end of breakfast at Burger King; a hot dog somewhere or other for lunch;  and late night snack stops at Autostrada restaurants on the long bus ride home.

Joe was gone, and so were the wonderful post-season banquets at school, where “The Joe and Mike Show” gently roasted our players in front of their parents.  Gone were the creative rhymes and songs we wrote about the girls; gone the phony awards we concocted to tease them about funny basketball mistakes or some quirky personality traits; gone the love we felt for all the basketball girls and, we hoped, they for us.  Gone was the annual spring night Joe and Mary took Barbara and me out to dinner, usually in Venice, to celebrate another season; gone the wonderful times at Harry’s Bar, the great fish dinners at Madonna, and the Vaporetto rides down the Grand Canal or walks through the city’s calle and piazette.

Joe and Mary weren’t here anymore to laugh with us as we told the story about a road trip to the American High School at Aviano Air Base near Udine in northern Italy.  On the Autostrada just west of Venice our team bus rolled by a car stopped on the right shoulder of the road.  Joe and I noticed it at the same time.  Then he looked at me to verify that I saw what he saw, and I nodded my head and said, “Yup, it’s Mary.” 

Joe yelled at the bus driver to pull over and stop while he jumped off the bus and ran back to the car about half-a-kilometer behind us.  In a few minutes he was back at the bus.  Mary’s car had a flat tire and Joe was going to change it; but he needed a cell-phone to make a call to the Treviso Airport, where his daughter, Becky, after flying in from Germany, was waiting for Mary to pick her up.  One of the boys team coaches gave him a phone, and Joe headed back to Mary and the car.

Joe usually did all the driving for trips like that, but he was coaching basketball that day, and Mary had driven to the Venice Airport earlier to pick up her sister from Detroit and had taken her back  to their home in Vicenza.  Now, she was going to get Becky and take her to the Vicenza reunion with her aunt; but the flat tire – a not uncommon problem with Pellerito-owned cars – had stopped her.  

Mary was beside herself because she always let Joe solve those kinds of problems.  But today, Mary thought, Joe was unavailable.  And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, there he was, changing the flat tire and sending Mary on her way again to Treviso.  When he returned to the team bus and told us the whole story, I said, “You know, Joe, the next time Mary has to make a drive like that and she has some kind of car problem, she’ll expect you to show up and take care of it.”  

Now, Joe’s unavailable forever in crises like that, which may be another reason Mary lives in New York City, where she doesn’t need a car.  She still needs Joe, however, although Jamie and Jenny give their mother as much help as they can.  We all still need Joe – in times of crisis, in normal times, or just to put the capper on a story like “The Team Bus and Joe Ride to the Rescue”:   He forgot about the borrowed cell-phone, which he put on top of Mary’s car as he changed the tire; so Mary drove off to Treviso with the phone still there and it probably fell off and was crushed by Autostrada  traffic…maybe, even, by our team bus. 

There are dozens of stories like that about Joe, but none of them captures the full definition of him.  I tried to do that in my eulogy for Joe at the memorial service in the Vicenza Army Post Chapel:

I think most people, examining the last forty years or so of Joe   Pellerito’s relatively short life, would conclude that this man worked himself to death.  Look at all he did over those years.

He taught more than a thousand Vicenza Elementary School

students – counting his fifth and sixth graders, those from other classes

who sang in his school chorus, and a few who just ran afoul of him in

of Vicenza High School athletes and had a significant influence on quite

a few from the other American Schools in Italy.  And, of course, he was

mentor to scores of fellow teachers and coaches.  (Joe would be happy

I said “MEN-ter” and not “MEN-toar”.)

            Away from school, he sang in the chorus of a few community

theater productions.  He knew all the words to every song written in

the ‘30s and ‘40s, it seemed.  Joe was an avid skier, until he broke

his leg and spent several months in a cast.  Then, he turned to tennis

and, in these last few years, resumed his penchant for golf.  He was

also a very knowledgeable tour guide for friends (and friends of

friends), helping them see Italy and learn about its culture.

            Joe was “Mr. Generosity”, grabbing every check at restaurants

and over-tipping waiters; buying expensive gifts for special occasions;

and rushing to the aid of any friend in need.  He and Mary were

always the first ones there in times of trouble.

            At home, Joe was handyman and gardener, a cook, too, at

times.  He was active and engaged with his family – the tales of their

weekend car trips to France and Spain are legendary.  He was an

extraordinarily loving husband, father, and grandfather.

            (How’m I doin’ so far, Joe?)

            I know there’s much he did that I haven’t mentioned.  And

there were accomplishments none of us knows about because he did

the work without taking credit for it.

            Joe was just Go-Go-Go, Give-Give-Give.  But I wouldn’t

characterize him as having worked himself to death.  I prefer to

think Joe worked himself to life:  keeping himself alive by making

life better for those of us he touched.  He did enough good work –

no, excellent work – and enough good works to fill two lifetimes.

Now, if Joe were here in my place (and, oh, how I wish he

were), he’d see how sad we are and he’d try to lighten-up the

occasion with one of his jokes.  His volleyball and basketball

players know it from times when they were hanging their heads

because things looked bleak for the Cougars.  Joe would call a

timeout, gather the team around him, and say, “Horse walks

into a bar.  The bartender looks up and says to the horse, ‘Why

the long face?’”

God bless you, Joe.  We love you.

            Our good friend Fred Benanti also delivered a eulogy for Joe at that memorial service, and there’s a Joe-kind-of-story about that, too.  I was originally scheduled to be the final speaker.  I told Fred, however, I thought he should speak last because I once heard Joe introduce Fred to someone as “my best friend”.  I also saw Joe throw a quick glance my way, then, to see if I’d heard what he said and to see my reaction to it.  He knew I understood, as he did, the meaning of the word “best”; in honest English it meant there could be no other “best friend”.

But I wasn’t hurt or made jealous by Joe’s introductory remark.  I knew Fred and Joe had been fellow teachers and fast friends for longer than I’d known either one of them; so I knew that Fred was, indeed, Joe’s best friend.  I was happy to be his second-best friend, and that’s why I told Fred I thought he should get the best-friend honor of being the service’s final speaker.  And I still considered Joe to be my best friend.

            There was a very good article about the memorial service in The Stars and Stripes newspaper.  Unfortunately, though, the reporter missed one of my points about Joe’s life when he misquoted me as saying, “There are accomplishments none of us know about because he just did the work and didn’t take credit for it.”  Go back and read what I actually said and you’ll see I correctly used the singular verb form in saying “…none of us knows…” or Joe would have come down from heaven and corrected me:  “’None’ – no one –“ he would have said, “is the subject of that verb, not ‘us’ and, besides, ‘us’ is the objective case of that pronoun, not the subjective case.”

            I would add here that the reporter broke a rule of journalism, too, with his “…and didn’t take credit…” when I actually said “…without taking credit…”.  Not a big deal, but the kind of flaw Joe and I loved talking about in our many discussions about the current state of English language usage in journalism and other writing. 

That includes word pronunciation, which was the point of my comment about Joe’s insistence on the correct pronunciation of “mentor”.  Why are people now saying “MEN-toar” and “ee-lek-TOAR-uhl” (electoral) when they aren’t saying “dih-REK-toar” (director) or “MAY-oar” (mayor, but they are saying “may-OAR-uhl”)?  Why did people stop saying “ee-LEK-tuh-ruhl” and “MAY-uh-ruhl”?  There’ll be more stuff like that as we continue to talk about Joe.

Now, however, it’s time for some rhymes I wrote about Joe and Mary.  Naturally, the first is a limerick written for Joe’s birthday (I forget which one).  The references to picking up mail and shopping at the store for friends are just another aspect of Joe as “Mr. Generosity.”  It seems like he was always doing favors for friends (and friends of friends). Whenever he was asked, he never said no, and that’s why I wrote this:

Let’s give our best wishes to Joe,

The guy whom we keep on the go.

When he’s hardy and hale

He picks up our mail

Through the rain and the sleet and the snow.

But he’s not just our mailman, you know.

 We’ve got lots of odd jobs for our Joe.

Whenever we utter,

“We need peanut butter,”

To the supermarket shopping he’ll go.

And, of course, as all of us know,

The very best thing about Joe

Is that he is very

Married to Mary

And, we bet, always will remain so.

Now, let’s sing happy birthday to Joe

As we’ve done countless birthdays befo’.

And then, don’t forget,

Let’s “axe” him to get

Some cake and ice cream at the sto’.

I wrote the next, short limerick (again) to let Joe know his birthday present that year was a subscription to The International Herald Tribune.  My phonetic spelling of “Tribune” harked back to the time when Joe corrected my pronunciation of that word  (I used to pronounce it “trib-YOON”)  by saying, “Oh, so you’re talking about a Roman soldier, not a newspaper.”  The newspaper, of course, is pronounced TRIB-yoon; but, in this limerick, I pretended not to have learned that lesson.  The newspaper, as you may know, will soon solve this problem by changing its name to The International New York Times; but I’ll never forget what Joe taught me.

                                   

Another birthday for good ol’ Joe –

Just one of many, as you know.

But you’ll find out soon

Through THE HERALD TRIB-YOON

That you have at least one more to go.

            So, let’s look at one more rhyme for Joe and Mary.  I’m not sure what the occasion was.  The “golden” reference seems to indicate a 50-year mark of some sort; but I don’t think it was their fiftieth anniversary.  It doesn’t matter.  Here’s the rhyme:

            We’ve tried writing some verse to salute Joe and Mary

            Without looking up words in our Rhyme Dictionary.

            It’s easy with Mary:  thoughtful and caring.

            With Joe it’s a stretch, but, well: dashing and daring.

            Some video words could fit Mary and Joe:

            Joe is fast-forward and Mary’s slo-mo.

            Mary’s a still-frame that you’d like to store;

            Joe’s that zoom-lens you just can’t ignore.

            Joe knows for sure what’s right and what’s wrong

            And he knows all the words of every old song.

            He’s also been known to tell the odd joke ‘n’

            That’s one of his habits we’d like to see broken.

            Mary’s so sweet – soft-spoken and quiet;

            A loud word from her would cause a near-riot.

            Oh, she’ll criticize Joe if he gives her occasion;

            But we know that’s just part of her special equation.

            Mary’s retired, but she hasn’t stopped working

            Joe’s still in school despite principal-quirking.

            And he’s almost beyond Mary’s quiet reproach

            When he takes on another job as a coach.

            They’d spend more of their time, if only they could,

            Enjoying the wonders of grand-parenthood.

            Isabella and Dustin; soon it’ll be greater

            With a new Jenny player to be named later.

They buy us provisions, they pick up our mail,

            She totes that barge, and he lifts that bail.

            They give and they give, but they never take;

            You can’t even buy them a meal, for God’s sake.

 All of their friends to them are beholden

‘Cause Mary and Joe make all our lives golden.

It all makes you wonder why they don’t look older;

In their golden years they’re just getting golder.

And that's "JOE & MARY".  My apologies for some of the off-set lines in the eulogy for Joe; but I haven't figured out all the intricacies of copying what I've written from Word Perfect to the Blog.  What I'd really like to figure out, however, is how to return to the old days when Joe & Mary were still here, so we could add some more stories and rhymes about them.  We miss them dearly.