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John Joseph Ciluzzi [1923-2017] Recollections • Dated August 2002
Page 406: My father, Ralph Joseph Ciluzzi [1884-1939] came over from Italy when he was fourteen years old. He was living with an uncle and was unhappy so he ran away when he was about fifteen. Dad worked in Manhattan; an immigrant with no education. He worked and, by hook or crook, managed to get into the Buffalo College of Pharmacy. He became a pharmacist and eventually opened three drug stores in western New York and New Jersey. He was the originator of the penny sale. After he married my mother [in 1914], the Paterno boys talked him into going to blueprint school so that they could get him into the construction business. So Dad abandoned his pharmacies, took the appropriate courses, and went into the building business. He built building all over New York and formed a holding company. His largest and last building was at 95th and Riverside Drive [1930]. Just before the crash, he got together all the money he could and went back to Italy. Dad built a beautiful mansion there, which became the Villa Ciluzzi. In 1939, he married a young Italian girl, Adelina, and they had a son, my half-brother, Romano Ciluzzi. We managed to send him through high school and college and he is now a professor in Italy. He and his lovely wife and two children live in Soverato, Italy (about eighteen miles from the Villa) and also have a home in Caminia. He is a very nice man and we get along very well. In Italy, a professor is highly regarded and respected.
When I was about seven years old, my father and mother separated and my father took my brother and me to Rome, Italy. We spent five years there and went to a Jesuit school. We learned Italian but not much else. My father had visions of me becoming an International lawyer but that never materialized. It was around 1930 that we went to Italy, during the depression. All the money that he had saved was put into the villa that he built at the top of a mountain at Staletti. It is known as Villa Ciluzzi. At the request of my father, the Bishop came to the Villa to bless the Villa. Dad named it the Villa Torre Elena (the tower of Helen), after my sister Helen so it is on the map under that name. It is a landmark, as you can see it from the Ionian Sea. During World War II, the Germans were evacuating Sicily and they came up through that area. The German high command took over the Villa and hoisted the German flag. The general in charge of all theses forces was there. The British intelligence got wind of the fact that the Germans had Ade a command post out of the villa and surfaced in a submarine in the Ionian Sea about a quarter or half of a mile away in Copanello. They had a forty mm gun aboard and started shelling the Villa with shells. The seas were so rough that they could not hit the Villa but seven or eight shells hit the nearby brush before the Nazi airplanes came swooping down and forced them to submerge. The British didn’t do too well on that one due to the rough seas and the unavailability of radar.
We were in Italy for about five years. My mother and Dad were divorced at that point and would send Ralph and I back and forth between Italy and America. I think we crossed about eighteen times. they would put my brother and I alone on a ship in the first class section. We traveled on ships such as the “Rex,” “Augustus,” “Conte di Savoia,” “Conte Biancamano,” “Roma,” and “Ile de France.” We made the maiden voyage of the “Rex” from Italy and got stuck in Gibraltar. When we boarded, the ship’s steward would come into the cabin and unpack all our…
Page 407: …clothes. Then the chef would come in with his big white hat and ask us what special food we wanted cooked for that night. My brother used to say “lemon meringue pie” so that was always the first thing that we would get. We really received royal treatment. We crossed with several celebrities and dignitaries and met all kinds of interesting people. One was Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York. He was always at the bar drinking. One crossing, a famous Metropolitan opera star, Galie Corche, had me come to her cabin to see her parrot. Ralph and I came back to the United States in 1937.
By this time, my mother Theresa Paterno was married to Joseph Miele. He was an entrepreneur who was involved in all types of things including a gold mine in the jungles of Columbia in South America. Joe Miele put up the money for the mine in the Nechi Valley off the Magdalena River from Barranquilla, Columbia. My parents used to go and spend six months in the jungles out there and would bring back orchids and gold. Then the Columbia government refused to let them take the gold out of the country and required them to spend it there. Mr. Paulsen from Sweden was his partner and discovered the mine. They had millions and millions of dollars worth of gold that they took out of that mine. It is now the largest gold mining area in South America. It was real jungle territory with headhunters. They could only leave an engineer there for two or three weeks at a time due to malaria, etc., but managed to build a Pepsi Cola bottling Company in Bigotá, Columbia. This was in the days before cocaine and drugs were in the Columbia. The Germans used to run the few airlines in the area but most of the items were brought in by boat. Joseph also built the Velodrome in Nutley, New Jersey for bike races, motor racing ad midget auto races. It had a wooden track built at a forty-five degree bank and was a quarter of a mile long. There were so many accidents that they had to stop the races and then the Velodrome closed. Prior to that, it was used mainly for international bike racing.
I volunteered for service in the New York Metro Area army. My volunteer number was 12204991. For one year, I was at the Military Intelligence Training (MIT) Center at Camp Riche, Maryland. When I graduated from the twelfth class, I was sent to Europe with three battle stars. I worked in MIT (Italian Section) for the State Department. Then I went overseas to George C. Patton’s 3rd Army for two and one-half years. Uncle Charlie Paterno wrote me letters telling me to reward of the French girls as they might “vamp” me.
Anthony and Marie Campagna had a beautiful, unpretentious home by the sea in Spring Lake, New Jersey as well as a big home in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They also had a home in Chappaqua, New York with a tennis court. When they lived in Spring Lake, he used to appear on the boardwalk with my sister Helen and Iu were on the beach with Peggy Campagna, my mother, Theresa and Joe Miele. Many times, Anthony would appear there dressed to the hilt with jacket and tie. He looked completely out of place and all the kids would all laugh like hell at him because he looked so strange. He looked like an ambassador going to a formal function in the middle of the day. That’s the way he was, very formal looking and very articulate.
Page 408: Anthony used to give the eulogies at all the family funerals. [In Memory of Carolina T. Paterno whom I loved and respected as my own mother]At the end, I went to someone’s funeral and he broke down in the eulogy and said “I don’t think I can do this again at my age as I am too emotionally disturbed by it.” Years before that, they used to rent houses in Avon, next to Asbury Park and from there they all moved to the next town which was Belmar. When Belmar became strictly Jewish, they moved to Spring Lake. Some of them went to Sea Girt, as did my sister, Helen ad her husband Jim. When I was about five or six years old, I would visit Uncle Anthony and Aunt Marie in Spring Lake during the summer. At the time, my mother was divorced and we lived in Riverdale in a very big mansion estate. They owned a LaSalle, a very expensive car, at the time. On my visits, I didn’t see too much of Uncle Anthony as he went to work at his office but I spent a lot of time with Aunt Marie. Her eyes were slanted so she really looked like she was oriental. She was slight in build and very affluent looking. Marie was very particular about cleaning, as were all five Paterno sisters. At her home in Spring Lake, Marie would have the furniture taken outdoors and have it washed with a hose, which would ruin furniture, such as dressers. She was the most aloof of the sisters and reclusive. Marie was also very independent.
His son Joe went to Princeton. His roommate was from St. Louis, so around 1949-1951 he went to St. Louis to build a New York style apartment house. They decided to build the Montclair on Forest Park, which was the best section of St. Louis with parks and medical centers around it. They built these beautiful apartments with the intention of renting them from the plans as they did non New York where they were rented way ahead of the time the building was built. At that time, I went to their office. I was a young guy in the automobile business and was sort of driving around. Uncle Anthony and his two sons, John and Joseph talked to me. They wanted me to come down to St. Louis and sell or rent apartments. So I said okay and we moved. I was married at the time to my first wife and we sent all the furniture down. We moved to Clayton, the best suburb of St. Louis. Uncle Michael Campagna was down there. He was the sheriff of Duchess County and was also in the construction business with his brothers, Armino and Anthony. Michael was more or less in charge of getting things done down there for us. We moved down there and moved into a completely unknown situation. I was a pretty good salesman at the time. It was after the war. It’d been in the army three years overseas and I had some experience. When I got down there, it turned out that the people from St. Louis were from Missouri. They wanted to see the apartments before they purchased them. It wasn’t like New York or Manhattan where they rented or bought apartments from the plans. It was a different psychology. I was in the office selling apartments Some of the rents there were $1500-1700 a month as it was the premier property of St. Louis in 1950. We had to get the first month’s rent of a rental plus six months rent in advance. We needed the first and the last month of a three-year lease and we would get Dun and Bradstreet reports on these prospective clients who had good incomes and money in the bank. The Montclair was the premier property of St. Louis.
Once or twice I was late getting into the office and Uncle Anthony called me dow and said,…
Page 409: …”where were you?” I replied, “I was at church with my wife. It is Sunday morning.” He responded, “Well, you are going to charge it to God then.” He was very tough when it came to business. Things weren’t going right down there because they had this big company and ran into all kinds of problems, especially with people who wanted to see the building. Things weren’t going to well so I departed. I was down there about a year and a half.
The Paterno brothers were known as the four horsemen. They pulled together and made a lot of money together in New York City. They worked very hard and built many, many apartments. There was a lot of friction between their wives. When one of them bought a mink coat, the other one also wanted a mink. Eventually the wives caused the dissension of the Paterno Brothers conclave or team. the era of the four horsemen ended and they each went out on their own.
Uncle Michael Paterno built buildings all over the place. He was quite a sport in New York too. He had the Paterno colorama and he married a Follies Bergier girl named Anna Maria. She was a real character and a beautiful girl. Whenever there was a funeral in the family, Aunt Anna Maria was the one to take charge and make all the arrangements. She used to do everything methodically and they all knew that everything would be done right if Aunt Anna Maria was there. Uncle Anthony “Tony” Paterno had made a lot of money in the last two buildings he built in New York. Ralph worked for him for a while selling apartment in White Plain, New York. He built a number of garden apartments there were a big success.
Uncle Tony and Aunt Dot would take off six months and go to California. In 1949, I went to see them. The girl I was going with at the time (who became my first wife) and I used to visit Tony and Dot all the time. they used to stay at the Belaire Hotel in Belaire, California, which is right near Beverly Hills in the canyons there. We used to live in Sherman Oaks because Dot’s father had a beautiful home, with a pool, overlooking the mountains and Hollywood. Uncle Tony and Aunt Dot would have us over for diner at the Belaire Hotel. We used to go to Pacific Palisades with them. It was a tremendously high-class private golf club near the ocean. They used to order all kinds of food at night for us. Poor Uncle Tony couldn’t eat anything but rice because he was on the Duke Rice Diet. He went to a famous diet clinic in North Carolina where they put him on the rice diet for his blood pressure. So he at rice prepared in about ten different ways. When we ere at the Belaire Hotel, Dot would order Baked Alaska and all types of gourmet food. She used to make dinner reservation s on the phone from their beautiful suite. She would say, “This is Mrs. Paterno from New York City calling. My husband Anthony Paterno has to have a special diet. He can’t have any salt at all and can only eat rice. We are a party of four and are coming over tonight. We want to make sure that we can have exactly what we want and special food prepared for him.” She would go through this whole routine every night when we would to to eat in a beautiful restaurant or eat at the hotel. They had trees growing through the roof of the dining room of the hotel and into the outer spaces. It was and still is a very beautiful hotel, I understand. Uncle Tony used to enjoy watching us eat. He took big delight in ordering all kinds…
Page 410: … [there seems to be a sentence missing here]…and weeks and weeks and I have never forgotten it. Uncle Tony used to play a lot of golf and he finally gave up golf due to his blood pressure and health. Since he couldn’t play anymore, he gave all his golf clubs to Ralph when Ralph went to Italy in 1947 or 1948. Uncle Tony told Ralph that he hoped he enjoyed them as much as he had.
Armino Campagna was a very shrewd and tough businessman. He was an honest, hardworking guy from Castelmezzano who was very sharp in the business world and built a lot of very good buildings in Riverdale and all through that section of New York. He had management companies to oversee the administration of the buildings.
Armino married my mother’s sister, Christina who was called Tina. She was the youngest of Giovanni and Carolina’s children and the best looking. She was trim, pleasant, and soft-spoken. The Paternos and the Campagna’s used to go to the Catskills to spend a week or two each summer when the children were small. They were all very well off. Armino built a beautiful home up in up-state New York past Poughkeepsie. It is past Saugerties near Cairo right near a popular Jewish hotel. Armino and Tina had a home in Spring Lake too.
Tina and Armino were both extremely friendly and helpful to my mother who was living alone in the same lovely apartment house where they lived. It was at 3240 Henry Hudson Parkway in Riverdale, New York and was built by Armino. He and Tina had two children, Peggy and Joseph. Joseph was on the football team and when he was a teenager got an infection from dental work and was diagnosed with leukemia. He was in the Doctor’s Hospital and received blood transfusions, which kept him alive for about six months. His death at such a young age was a severe blow to his parents. He was a nice, wonderful boy.
Peggy married Charlie Cavaliere. He came from a very nice family in the Bronx. they were in the building business too. Charlie built homes in and near Scarsdale. he would build one and then sell it. Charlie had a transfusion during an operation, contracted HIV and died in the 1980’s. Peggy was financially independent due to her inheritance from her father and never remarried. She was a recluse and lived in one of the apartments that her father had built. I went to see her once or twice when I went to White Plans. Peggy, who was my first cousin, passed away about fifteen years ago. She and I used to spend a lot of time together at they beautiful home near the boardwalk in Spring, Lake, New Jersey when I first came back from Italy. We were sort of “kissing cousins” and were very close.
I used to have a lot of fun with Michael Campagna who was a wonderful guy. He and wife, Aunt Caroline [Cerabone] would have me over to their apartment frequently for wonderful lobster dinners. She was a fantastic cook and used to make Lobster Marinara and special foods. Uncle Michael never said a bad thing to me. the only thing he told me was “For a younger man like you, you let your heels run down quite a bit. You should put new heels on them all the time.” He was a great guy and no trouble. I never saw John or Joe [Anthony Campagna’s sons] down there at all. They wanted to make sure that they were close friends with all the politicians as they had been in New York, so they did it the New York way. they went out and bought thousands of dollars of Christmas gifts and sent all the gifts…
age 411: …down to City Hall with Michael and myself. They must have spent twenty to thirty thousand dollars on the gifts for the politicians in City Hall. Before they were hand delivered, Uncle Anthony said to Michael, “Make sure that you have a slip of paper on there telling them who they are from.” (We had been a little late and it was after Christmas.” They wrote a note on each gift to so and so from the Campagna Construction Corp. or Campagna Brothers (whatever it was). They said, “From The Montclair We wish you a very Merry Christmas and this we know is better late than ever.” So they made a mistake by saying ever instead of never. Anthony caught it after a while and said, “You didn’t put ever on there instead of never, did you? It should be better late than never.” When Michael responded that they had put ever, Uncle Anthony was very upset as he took these things very seriously. It was a big faux pas but it was very funny. the purpose of the gifts was to get the permits for the construction jobs. So the building went up and it was very successful. It is still one of the top buildings in St. Louis even though it is getting old now. It is right near the Chase Hotel. That is the story of St. Louis and the Campagna. Joe remained down there and went into the shopping mall business with a friend. It went very, very badly as they lost their shirts in the shopping mall. He lost everything and was very distraught. Joe was married twice. At first he was married to a socialite and that didn’t work. Before his next marriage, Uncle Anthony said, “He was married to a high class socialite and that didn’t work and so he’s going to marry a regular peasant person.”
Joe Faiella, Sr. was married to Rose Paterno. The Paterno’s pulled Joe into the building business. He had an accident sometime during his career. He fell out of a car and hit his head and developed a brain tumor. About sixty years ago, they took him to a famous clinic in Baltimore where he died during brain surgery. He was the father of Joseph and John Faiella.
John Faiella moved to Bermuda. For years, he owned and operated the Water Lot Inn, one of the most famous restaurants in Bermuda. He was a graduate of Cornell University School of Hotel Management. After receiving a very lucrative offer for the Water Lot Inn, he sold it to Arthur Ludwig. Then he moved to Boca Raton, Florida where John Campagna lived.
Frank (Saverio) Paterno was the brother who stayed in Italy. Two of his twelve children, daughter, Giulia, and son, Romeo, came to visit us at the Villa Ciluzzi. Romeo was lost during the war in Russia. He was a great guy and a master magician. Giulia is in Naples and her husband is a lawyer or maybe a pharmacist. They have a summer home on the island of Ischia.
Joe Faiella, Jr. taught me magic. For many years, I gave magic shows in nightclubs in New Jersey. The two of us went to shows together and New York. Saverio had a beautiful home in Castelmezzano.
Michael Paterno was married to a Russian Countess who showed Saluki dogs at Madison Square Garden. Michael made a fortune of millions of dollars by buying small bits of corner property (Keys to the corner) in Manhattan and selling them afterward to developers.
His wife Anna Maria was a talented artist whose passion was collecting art and showing Saluki dogs. They had eight dogs and an extensive art collection in their home. Michael was quite…
Page 412: …the “ladies” man and he spent money lavishly. His amorous pursuit of the household maids frequently resulted in a shortage of domestic help.
Michael was known to throw one thousand dollar bills on the stage when dancer “Texas Guyan” performed. In fact, he was so liberal with his money that he was broke toward the end of his life. Before his death, he was so destitute that he only owned one pair of pants and one jacket. When his clothes needed leaning, he would go to a dry cleaner that cleaned and pressed while you waited. Customers in the establishments were seated in small booths where only the upper chest and head were exposed while the individual was waiting. During this time, he made monthly rounds to his sisters who presented him with money to live on. At one point, he requested money from his brother, Dr. Charles V. Paterno. Charles declined at the time and told him that he would give him a monthly check for support if he liquidated his art collection. Since Anna Maria would not part with her art, they remained impoverished. After Michael’s death in 1946, Anna Maria auctioned off the art collection and household furnishing.
Joseph Paterno was a sportsman. He played golf and was also well known in nightclub circles. Joe was the first of the family to build a home in Palm Beach, Florida. He moved there with his wife and two sons.
Charles Paterno graduated from Cornell and became a doctor. When he went home, my grandmother said, “Put your overalls on because you have to start helping your brothers build walk up apartments.” He said, “How can you ask me to do it?” She said, “Just do it.” He put on the overalls and never took them off. He did not practice medicine again for the rest of his life, but he did renew his medical license annually. He became fabulously wealthy building apartment houses all over New York, hundreds of them, probably half the skyline of New York. He was well known. During the Depression, Dr. Paterno bought all the New Jersey property that he could see from New York very inexpensively. After the Depression, the government turned around and bought that property from him and it because the national park right across from New York. I forget the name but it is the main park across from the George Washington Bridge [Palisades Interstate Park]. The government paid a lot of money for the property that he bought for nothing. That’s how he made money, from his buildings and investments. He was very, very sharp! He had a son Carlo. Carlo had a half-brother, Lyndon Brown. Carlo went to Yale University and managed all the properties that Uncle Charlie owned. Uncle Charlie was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery at Hartsdale, New York. He was one of the first ones to buy a room in the three-story mausoleum. It is called the Paterno Room and has leaded glass windows and crypts for six people Music plays continually and the heat is on all the time. My mother Theresa Paterno is interred in that room.
During his lifetime, Uncle Charlie gave money to everyone in the family including myself. I received money from him as well as shared in the Paterno Estate, which was the Castle Village property, hear the George Washing Bridge where the Castle was located. A piece of the castle is still there, the white stone on the wall. He built that tremendous wall there during the Depression. After the Depression, he tore down the Castle to build apartments on the property. The family…
Page 413: …moved to Armonk, New York and named their new home Windmill Farms.
Uncle Charlie was very innovative. In order to generate electricity, he installed windmills on his property. In addition to his farm, Uncle Charlie had his own golf course. When Uncle Charlie died, he was on the golf course with Uncle Anthony. In understand that he was propped up against a tree and his last words to Anthony were, “Don’t forget the ball.” That is the way the Paternos were as they had worked so hard for everything. they were honest, conservative, fugal and hard working people.
Carlo Paterno, Dr. Paterno’s son was very friendly. He sold his entire holding in New York City and moved to Naples, Florida. He built a beautiful office complex called “The Corner.” He married Helen Cotillo, the daughter of a New York City judge and they had three daughters. He remarried after Helen died. Carlo visited Ralph at the Villa. Carlo had a lot of fun with Ralph when he went to the Villa and he and Ralph went to Castelmezzano together. After his return, Carlo called Ralph and told him that he was dying of a blood disease! Shortly after that , Ralph received a sizable check from Carlo as a moment to their good times together.
Carlo also came to stay with me at the Masthead with his wife and Patti, one of his daughter. Patti lives in Lexington, Kentucky and has an equestrian antique shop there. Patti Paterno was married to Rodney Mutch who was in the advertising gushiness on Madison Avenue. they had a son, Hugh Mutch, who is also in the hose business in Florida. Hugh is now a judge of horse shows and has a place in the Tallahassee, Florida area that is very well known for their horses. Rodney was on the Equestrian Olympic team at one point. Patti comes to visit me often. She is a very nice girl like her sister Toni. The other sister, Mina, married a doctor. She and her second husband built a beautiful mansion in the ski resort area in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She turned its into a bed and breakfast place.
Joseph and Jule Paterno had two sons, Joe and Jack. Their son Joe was known in the New York society circles as “Handsome Joe Paterno.” Joe was a great guy; very handsome and charismatic. He was well known and popular in social circles. He inherited fifty apartment houses from his father but he didn’t keep them because every time he ended one marriage, he would lose abut ten building in the settlement. After over twenty years, he didn’t have any buildings left so Joe went to Palm Beach, Florida and hobnobbed with all the socialites. He was a great golfer and would make money by playing golf. He would play with very wealthy people who would play for one thousand dollars a hole. Joe seldom lost so that’s how he made his living. Then he married a very wealthy woman from Osterville, in the Cape Cod, Massachusetts area. Joe used to run the golf tournaments to raise money for the Cape Cod hospital. He had an aneurysm of the aorta with complication that the local hospital couldn’t treat and died in the ambulance between Cape cod and Boston. “Handsome Joe” used to come to our home in West Orange with his wife. My stepfather, Joe Miele, had a beautiful seven-acre estate with a mansion, swimming pool and tennis court that was built high on top of a hill surrounded by beautiful property in West Orange, New Jersey.
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