Salutations From The Land Of Cows

Several people have asked me to provide them with the drafts of the Eulogies I gave for my parents funerals. Here are those texts as they were delivered.

Norma Maneri (1927-2005)
Eulogy delivered 5/2005

I want to tell you the story of a life well lived.

I want to tell you the story of a little girl from the Appalachian Mountains, the story of the daughter of proud immigrants, the story of a daughter of the Great Depression. I want to tell you the story of a woman, born with a generation of women, for whom WWII would form a lasting impression, and create a life plan that each would strive for, but not all would obtain.

…But she would.

This is the story of the life of my mother Norma Maneri.

One of Norma’s projects over the last 20 years was to trace her ancestry as far back as she could. She would want you to know that she was descended from the Shaffers and Kaufmans of Germany, the Taylors of England, and the Smeltzers of Austria. At the dawn of the 19th century that family tree found it’s way to the mountains on the banks of the Monongahela River, in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania where they lived and worked for almost a century. One of those offspring was Norma’s mother Anne Isabelle Schaffer born in 1906. Norma would also want you to know that she descended from the Paterlini’s the Zanerdelli’s and Ramicini’s of Brescia Italy. That branch settled in North Charleroi, Pennsylvania just across the river and Joviale Paterlini, Norma’s father, would be born in 1902. He was the first generation of his family born in the United States. Joviale married Isabelle in October 1927. Norma Paterline was born on May 9th in 1928. They had another son, Norma’s brother Carl, in 1929. Isabelle’s youngest brother Vincent was born in 1920 but by the time Norma was born both Isabelle’s parents had died, and Isabelle and Joviale raised Vincent, essentially as Norma’s oldest brother.

They lived with Norma’s grandparents the Paterlini family in Charleroi while Joviale tried to find work. But the stock market had crashed and the country had entered the Great Depression. Work was hard to find in the Pennsylvania steel towns. He heard there was work at the Goodyear Aircraft Company in Akron Ohio. He went there and found a job building the Great Airships the USS Akron and the USS Macon. So Joviale moved Norma, Carl, Vincent and Isabelle to Akron around 1930.

Norma grew up and went to school on Akron’s east side in what she described as “a middle class neighborhood with middle class friends”, no small feat for children of the Great Depression. When she was fully-grown she was just a little thing barely 5 feet tall and skinny. She was ornery, mischievous, playful and full of energy. She went to high school from 1942 to 1946, living her formative years precisely when America was deep in the struggles of World War Two. Her Uncle (who was raised as her older brother) was enlisted in the Army Air Corp in 1943. He became a pilot and flew many missions but was shot down in August of 1944. He was listed MIA and later declared dead. Norma was just a tender sixteen then, old enough to be deeply wounded by that loss. Later in life she spent considerable time and resources trying to find him or his remains. She left a briefcase full of information and inquiries to his whereabouts. Regardless, that wound never fully closed.

WWII also profoundly affected Joseph Maneri, a man Norma knew nothing of, nor had yet to meet. She would later spend more than half her life with him. He too was wounded and decorated in the Great War. That war delayed the matrimonial aspirations of those two, and many Americans coming of age then. Many men went off to war and not so many came back. So unlike her mother, and the women of her family before her, she would have to wait to marry and have children.

Norma in the fall 1946 attended the University of Akron. She was a member of Theta Phi Alpha sorority. She made friends there that were to last her lifetime. She maintained contact with her sorority friends for more than 50 years. One of her friends “Bunny” said Norma was a kind of a “toy” to the sorority. She was the little one that always got picked on. Mighty Mouth they used to call her as she was always bossing them around. She was a jokester, endlessly quick with jokes to lighten the mood. She was the life of the party always concocting some scheme that was ridiculous or dramatic. She was a serious girl too. She was the one they could count on to drive when they were all to drunk to. Norma enjoyed school, always did well even when her classmates struggled. She tutored the athletes to help them stay up with their grades. She graduated with a degree in Elementary Education in 1950.

During the 50’s Norma stayed at the family home in Akron and taught 1st graders in the Akron Public Schools. She continued her relationships with her Sorority friends. She and her friend Yvonne started a card group playing bridge in 1953 that has continued to this day. She was president of the Sorority Board and coordinated many national sorority events. She and her friends would rent cottages on the Akron Lakes and have weeklong gatherings where they’d play games and have parties and bring dates and get into mischief.

Then she met Joe.

Norma’s brother Carl was enrolled in the Polsky’s department store executive training program in Akron where his best friend was another trainee Joe Maneri from Brooklyn New York. Joe talked Carl into a dinner invite to his family home in Akron so he could meet his sister Norma. Apparently he liked what he saw. And why wouldn’t he. In her late twenties Norma was strikingly beautiful. Petite, playful and impeccably fashionable, she may have been a schoolteacher but she was no school marm. Perfect for Joe. Norma went out with Joe on their first date to a Piano Bar in Akron in 1958. She introduced him to her running buddies from her sorority at a square dance and they knew she was serious about him then. Joe too was hooked and asked her to marry him just before Christmas that year. As per her style she made him wait a week before she said yes. They were married June 27, 1959 in Akron. It was a big wedding with both sides of the family present. In the pictures Norma had the biggest happiest smiles I’ve ever seen from her. They had a wonderful honeymoon at Schroon Lake in Adirondacks. A popular 50’s honeymoon place for obvious reasons.

Norma was ready to start her family. After a short time in Akron Joe took a transfer to The Fashion department store in Columbus Ohio. Norma was pregnant with her first child in the fall of 1960 when Joe came to Columbus and found an apartment in Upper Arlington on Ashland Avenue. Norma moved down on November 1 1960. Their first son James Vincent was born May 26, 1961. Joe and Norma got busy right away and she was pregnant again by the end of 1961. In June 1962 while Norma was just about to deliver their second child she sat on the steps at 291 Crestview Rd in Clintonville directing the movers where to put all the furniture in her and Joe’s new house. Philip Edward (yours truly) was born several days later July 3 1962. Fast-forward 8 Months and Norma was pregnant again.
On November 22, 1963 the country was shocked by the assassination of President Kennedy. 6 days later Norma delivered her youngest son Thomas Andrew and their family was complete.

The family became active members of Immaculate Conception Church in Clintonville. Norma got right back into teaching CCD at Immaculate Conception. She became PTA president and ran the fundraising for the PTA at Crestview School. She became active in the League of Women Voters. Norma and Joe started a monthly card game, a bridge group in 1965 with their friends Jack and Lil. That group played continuously for 40 years.

As the 70’s came and their kids began to go to school, Norma and Joe knew they needed a bigger house for their three energetic boys, so they looked north to the developing suburbs here in Woodward Park. In June of 1974 they moved into 1124 Upland Drive, the house Norma never moved out of for the next 31 years. They became active members here in St. Anthony Church. A devout Catholic, Norma taught CCD for years in this building. The seeds of music sowed with piano lessons in the 60’s became trumpet and saxophone and other instrument lessons in the 70’s. Her sons were becoming musicians and so she became a driving member of the Northland Music Parents association. There were days when there was a piano playing on the first floor a trumpet on the second and a saxophone in the basement. Norma never complained about one sour note. It was all the music of her family to her. She never missed one concert, one recital, one baseball game or one Boy Scout meeting. Each one of her son’s became Eagle Scouts and she was very proud of them all. Not to have her perfect attendance record broken she even traveled to Phoenix to watch her two oldest sons march with the OSU Marching Band in the Fiesta Bowl. Perhaps her favorite concert of all was when all three of her boys played music together for her on Christmas. She presided over a house of three unruly teenage boys with all their fights and injuries and girlfriends and car wrecks and meetings and concerts and campouts and fashion disasters and personal struggles. She did it with the dedication and adoration that only a mother knows.

As the 70’s came to a close and her children began to finish High School Norma wanted to go back to teaching. She held one of Ohio’s last Lifetime Teaching certificates. When her neighbor’s the Pecks wanted to start a private school, Northland Academy, she was the first teacher on board. She taught there more than a decade.

The 80’s also started a new time for Norma and Joe. Their kids had all gone off to college so they began to travel and take cruises. For the next 20 years they traveled all over the Caribbean. They went to Alaska, South America, the Panama Canal and even took the QEII up into New England. She took a trip to Europe and saw Italy, France and England. Norma’s baby Thomas moved to California and she loved visiting San Francisco, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe.

In the late 90’s as she entered her seventh decade on the planet, Norma started slowing down, and spent most of her time taking care of her mother until Isabele’s death in 2002. Norma’s health began to fail shortly thereafter. She had a series of hip surgeries and then was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. She fought that off long enough to see her youngest boy Tom have his own Son, Her grandson, Matteo in 2003. She bored all the doctors and nurses in the hospital rooms with pictures of her new grandson that she was so proud of. She was able to see her 18-month-old grandson make the long journey from California late April of this year. She watched lovingly while Matteo played around her hospital bed, and then she had dinner with her husband, three boys and their wives one last time just weeks before she passed away last Sunday May 15, 2005 at 9am. She died in the home she lived in for 31 years just as she wanted.

Norma lived 77 years.

She lived the dream that all postwar bride’s dreamed of. She had a long marriage to a dedicated husband. She had close ties to a family that loved her. She had healthy children and grand children. She had a house in the suburbs with neighbors that she loved that was long since paid for. She had lifelong friends. She traveled around the world. She had a church community that respected her and needed her. She had a perpetual commitment to Christ who loved her and has now taken her back.

It was a life well lived.

She will be remembered and she will be missed.

Joseph Maneri (1925-2007)

Eulogy delivered October 2007

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since”.

Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald published that opening line from “The Great Gatsby” Adolf Hitler was busy publishing Mein Kampf. The world of New York City in 1925 was indeed roaring. George and Ira Gershwin’s musical “Tip Toes” premiered on Broadway. It was the middle of prohibition, and the speakeasy was king. The Jazz Age had just begun. The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building were still on architect drawing boards. In Harlem the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom had just begun their heyday. Soon Duke Ellington would take up residence there and the era of the big bands would begin.

Just downtown from there on July 31, 1925 above the Maneri Family Cigar store in lower Manhattan, Carmelo Joseph Maneri was born. His 18 year old mother Rose D’Allesandro and his father Joseph Maneri lived together with his sister Anne and Joseph’s mother in a tiny walkup flat that required them to trot across the yard to an outhouse—in the middle of Manhattan! Rose had just come from a much nicer place in Brooklyn where she lived with her extended family of 6 siblings all under the same roof on 48th street. Very soon she would end up there again.

Rose’s husband Joseph senior was an abusive fellow and the D’Allesandro family would have none of that. Her Father and oldest brother rescued her and her two children from the flat in Manhattan when Joe was still an infant. They brought Rose and her kids back to the house on 48th street that Rose grew up in. Not long after that in 1927 Joes Father was dead. Joe had no memories of him save for a few pictures. There has been no other connection to his fathers’ family from that day. His mother Rose would never remarry. Instead they moved into the house on 48th street with his 7 uncles and aunts and a couple of their spouses. He was the baby of the house there. Little Joey was smart, stubborn, and always getting into something. He loved that house and the big extended family that would live and eat and sleep there. He said of all the times in his life growing up there was his favorite. He lived there through the 20’s and the Great Depression of the 30’s. He slept on a cot that was stowed away behind the door to the kitchen in the daytime. It’s a bed that made his days in the Army in WWII seem normal.

In 1943 Joe entered the US army, drafted with most of the other boys he knew. He was proud of his service even though he rarely spoke of it. He saw active duty in Europe. I’ll read from the citation on the Bronze Star medal he was awarded. “On the 15th and 16th of March 1945 in the vicinity of Bitche and Camp de Bitch France, Private Joe Maneri was first scout. On both occasions the enemy permitted him to bypass strong machine gun positions before opening fire on the assault group. However he acted with great courage even thought he was behind enemy lines and in one action his fire from the rear created such confusion to the enemy that they diverted attention to him thereby enabling his comrades to close in on the enemy positions. He was instrumental in locating five enemy machine gun positions and revealing the center of the hostile defenses. Private Maneri’s coolness and daring was of material aid in capturing the objectives.”

He was shot in those battles, sent back to the front, and shot again. The wounds awarded him the purple heart in both occasions. In his second stay in the Military Hospital he improved quickly and was put to work helping other wounded soldiers there. His time spent in those military hospitals gave him a fear of blood and injury that would never leave him. He rarely spoke about the war until the last 10 years. He told stories of being in France and running around with some of his buddies. He carefully avoided the disturbing tales. He was honorably discharged in 1946.

Joe returned to New York City and the house on 48th street. He briefly got a job in Rockefeller Center before the GI bill gave him the resources to get a college education. He chose to leave 48th street and go to Hartwick college in upstate NY and got a degree in Accounting. He then went on to get a Master’s degree.

After graduation he moved through several short term college positions until 1954 when he took a job with Allied Department stores in Akron Ohio. He enrolled in the Polsky’s department store executive training program. He was quite a bit of fun there and had lots of escapades nobody will talk about to this day. His best friend was another trainee Carl Paterline. Carl was a native of Akron and still lived with his family. Joe talked Carl into a dinner invite to his family home in Akron so he could meet his sister Norma. Norma was a school teacher that didn’t have a chance for marriage with all the available men being sent off to War just as she became old enough to do anything about it. Norma and Joe took their first date at a Piano Bar in Akron in 1958. Pretty soon Joe was invited to a square dance with all Norma’s sorority sisters so they could look him over for her. Dashing and entertaining Joe won them over quickly. He asked her to marry him just before Christmas that year. As per her style she made him wait a week before she said yes. They were married June 27, 1959 in Akron. It was a big wedding with both sides of the family present. In the pictures Joe was dapper and happy. He had found another big family just like the one he left on 48th street.

After a short time in Akron Joe took a transfer to The Fashion department store in Columbus Ohio. Norma was pregnant with her first child in the fall of 1960 when they came to Columbus and found an apartment in Upper Arlington. Their first son James Vincent was born May 26, 1961. Philip Edward (yours truly) was born July 3 1962. On November 28, 1963 Norma delivered her youngest son Thomas Andrew and their family was complete.

The family became active members of Immaculate Conception Church in Clintonville. Norma and Joe started a monthly card game, a bridge group in 1965 with their friends Jack and Lil. That group played continuously for 40 years. Joe left retail for good in the late 60’s and started to work at Columbus Technical Institute as a teacher. He realized his college days and the teaching he’d done just before his retail experience were his true calling.

His work at CTI allowed him to influence hundreds of young people and he mentored many into adulthood. That included his own children. He made sure we all had jobs as soon as we could get them. He taught us the value of work and how to manage the money made from it. His accounting background showed through in his meticulous documentation of who did what and got what money for it and always held us responsible for our actions.

As the 70’s came and their kids began to head to Middle School, Norma and Joe knew they needed a bigger house for their three energetic boys, so they looked north to the developing suburbs here in Woodward Park. In June of 1974 they moved into 1124 Upland Drive, the house they lived in for the next 32 years. They became active members here in St. Anthony Church. While Norma ruled the house over the three unruly boys Joe tirelessly went to work and brought home the bacon. His work fed all five, put clothes on everyone’s back and bought pianos and trumpets and saxophones and all the other things a growing family needed. He never missed a day of work, never missed a paycheck and never spent one day unemployed until the day he retired. His work put all three kids through college and financed a retirement that found neither he nor Norma wanting for anything they didn’t have.

The 80’s started a new time for Joe and Norma. Their kids had all gone off to college so they began to travel and take cruises. For the next 20 years they traveled all over the Caribbean. They went to Alaska, South America, the Panama Canal and even took the QEII up into New England. The youngest son Tom moved to California and they loved visiting San Francisco, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe.

In the 90’s Joe and Norma started slowing down. Joe’s mother Rose moved to Columbus and spent the last decade of her life with Joe and the family. She died in 1993. Joe was deeply saddened as he adored his mother. Norma spent most of her time taking care of her mother until Isabele’s death in 2002. Norma’s health began to fail shortly thereafter. She had a series of hip surgeries and then was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. She fought that off long enough to see her youngest boy Tom have his own Son, Her grandson, Matteo in 2003. Cancer saw the house on Upland Drive become a hospice and Norma Died in May 2005.

Joe was faltering during those years too but his strong work ethic wouldn’t let him show it. He took care of all the details of Norma’s sickness and her passing. Then methodically went about putting his own affairs in order knowing he may not have much more time himself. He sold the house on Upland, moved into Friendship Village. He liked his time in the village a lot more than he originally thought. He developed fast friends and became quite a character there as he always did no matter where he went in life. Cheri and I gave him his second grandson in March this year. He adored little Vincent and came by to see him whenever he could.

In the spring this year he came to me with some symptoms that looked a whole lot like my mother and we knew even before he was diagnosed that Cancer had him too. It progressed quickly and he decided not to treat it. He knew his time was done and he had lived a full life. He deteriorated quickly. His last days were tough, but brightened up by visits from his sons, daughter in law and his favorite visitor his Grandson Vincent. In his final fatherly act he threw us all out of the room at 11pm before he died early Sunday morning October 7, 2007 at 82 years old.

Joe lived through the Jazz Age and the Depression in the Greatest American City. He fought with his countrymen with bravery and honor in WWII. He got a Master’s degree in a time when most men barely got through high school. He partied at Polsky’s in the 50’s, married and raised a family in the 60’s and 70’s. He supported a family of 5 and paid for college educations for three children. He became a mentor to many, and a lively friend to all he encountered. He lived his life with a strong work ethic, discipline and accountability. He taught his sons to be smart, compassionate, hard working, and generous. He’s one of the last of the “Greatest Generation”. He will be missed.