Sam Mirto
By Brian Tervenski
“If it’s broken, call Uncle Sam”. As occasion demanded, he was architect, engineer, foreman, carpenter, plumber, electrician, mechanic. He worked for free. He put many hours in helping with family fix-it needs. If he did not know how to fix it he asked someone who did and then he gave it a try. If he could not show up when called, he explained how to do it on the phone and loaned out the tools. He also made sure you returned them.
Think lumber, bricks, mortar, and sausage and peppers. On two weeks of summer vacation with help from the rest of the men in the family he built a two story addition on his house on Grub Street: foundation, frame, electric, plumbing, roof, walls and finish. An Italian Amish Barn Raising is the best way to describe what happened there . |
|
I think he really was the most talented of the family. He could teach himself anything. In retirement he taught himself to play the double key board organ. As a child, he studied violin and came the closest of all his siblings to graduating from high school. When he quit, with just months to go, my Grandfather was deeply saddened.
Sammy was probably the most sociable and caring of the brothers and every Saturday morning he made the rounds of each of brother and sister’s houses for coffee and family news sometimes carrying warm crullers from Kelsey’s Bakery. He had a solid tenor voice and enjoyed singing at family weddings and parties. He and Pete, who also sang tenor, had a long standing competition at these family gatherings. To my mind, Uncle Sam was better but Pop’s opera singing was the best of the three, and the loudest. He was good at impressions - Lou Costello, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and as a child, I delighted in his renditions of Mother Goose stories in broken English. He enjoyed a sense of the absurd before Monty Python.
In July, one summer, Uncle John and Aunt Jo went on vacation and sent relatives back home post cards from all the Major tourist sites in Florida - Daytona Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach. In August Uncle Sam took a week off from work but stayed home to work around the house. He wrote out post cards with pictures of Poughkeepsie, the Mid Hudson Bridge, the County Court House, Soldiers Fountain, proclaiming the weather was fine and wishing everyone well and closing with “Wish you were here”. A friend at the plant where Sam worked went back to the old country in Europe and Uncle Same gave him money for postage and a sealed letter to post in Germany and mail back to Uncle Pete in Newburgh. The letter carried warm regards from the past to Pete and was signed Major Shultz. For a month Pete searched his memory and asked everyone in the family if he had ever mentioned a Major Shultz and then another friend of Sammy’s went to Italy. Another letter from Europe arrived at Pete’s house with the same warm regards and fond memories signed Major Shultz. A week later, after a Sunday dinner at my Grandmother's, while watching a baseball game on TV with Pete, Sammy asked Pete how Major Shultz was doing and Pete knew he had been taken.
When he was younger he was quite the spiffy dresser and man about town and joined the O H Booth Company of volunteer firefighters. That was the one with the firehouse that had a clubroom over bays for the trucks. He spent many hours there regaling the boys with his stories and songs when they were not on a call. Sammy served in the Navy, left Poughkeepsie for a time, and my Uncle Tato claimed he had a girl in every port. After the war in 1946 he picked one, and he and Aunt Flo married and raised two children.
Like Pete’s wife, Jane, Florence had a young daughter, Vicki, from a previous marriage. Vicki was my protector when at age five, I started kindergarten at Columbus School and had to walk to school by myself. Vicki was the first in the family to graduate from High School and she had 100 percent in all her Regents Exams. Through my childhood, and to this day, her brother, my cousin, Sam, is a close friend. We graduated from the same college, taught in the same school, even though as a child of five he would not share his red fireman’s hat with me.
Sammy was probably the most sociable and caring of the brothers and every Saturday morning he made the rounds of each of brother and sister’s houses for coffee and family news sometimes carrying warm crullers from Kelsey’s Bakery. He had a solid tenor voice and enjoyed singing at family weddings and parties. He and Pete, who also sang tenor, had a long standing competition at these family gatherings. To my mind, Uncle Sam was better but Pop’s opera singing was the best of the three, and the loudest. He was good at impressions - Lou Costello, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and as a child, I delighted in his renditions of Mother Goose stories in broken English. He enjoyed a sense of the absurd before Monty Python.
In July, one summer, Uncle John and Aunt Jo went on vacation and sent relatives back home post cards from all the Major tourist sites in Florida - Daytona Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach. In August Uncle Sam took a week off from work but stayed home to work around the house. He wrote out post cards with pictures of Poughkeepsie, the Mid Hudson Bridge, the County Court House, Soldiers Fountain, proclaiming the weather was fine and wishing everyone well and closing with “Wish you were here”. A friend at the plant where Sam worked went back to the old country in Europe and Uncle Same gave him money for postage and a sealed letter to post in Germany and mail back to Uncle Pete in Newburgh. The letter carried warm regards from the past to Pete and was signed Major Shultz. For a month Pete searched his memory and asked everyone in the family if he had ever mentioned a Major Shultz and then another friend of Sammy’s went to Italy. Another letter from Europe arrived at Pete’s house with the same warm regards and fond memories signed Major Shultz. A week later, after a Sunday dinner at my Grandmother's, while watching a baseball game on TV with Pete, Sammy asked Pete how Major Shultz was doing and Pete knew he had been taken.
When he was younger he was quite the spiffy dresser and man about town and joined the O H Booth Company of volunteer firefighters. That was the one with the firehouse that had a clubroom over bays for the trucks. He spent many hours there regaling the boys with his stories and songs when they were not on a call. Sammy served in the Navy, left Poughkeepsie for a time, and my Uncle Tato claimed he had a girl in every port. After the war in 1946 he picked one, and he and Aunt Flo married and raised two children.
Like Pete’s wife, Jane, Florence had a young daughter, Vicki, from a previous marriage. Vicki was my protector when at age five, I started kindergarten at Columbus School and had to walk to school by myself. Vicki was the first in the family to graduate from High School and she had 100 percent in all her Regents Exams. Through my childhood, and to this day, her brother, my cousin, Sam, is a close friend. We graduated from the same college, taught in the same school, even though as a child of five he would not share his red fireman’s hat with me.