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Page 257 Rose Irene (Paterno) Faiella [1893-1971] and Family By Mary (Faiella) Turkus Rose Paterno, the seventh [edit: eighth?] of ten children of Giovanni and Caroline Paterno, was born in Manhattan. Twenty-five percent of the Italian population left their country between 1880 and 1920. The majority of those who left were young and healthy. Rose’s father immigrated in the 1880’s and began this family history.
At the age of seven, she lived with her family at 507 [West] 112th Street. She married Joseph Francis Faiella in 1912. They lived at 340 Northern Avenue, now called Cabrini Boulevard, in one of two twin buildings built and occupied by the Paterno Family. this is the home they came to after the birth of their first son, Joseph Paterno Faiella. They lived on the third floor; downstairs on the first and second floors were her sister Celestine, her husband Victor Cerabone, and their three children, Carolina, Rose and Louisa. Louisa was just a year older than Joseph and thus a ready playmate. Next door, at 344 North Avenue, Rose’s mother, Carolina Paterno, occupied the first two floors, while her sister Maria lived on the third floor with her husband, Anthony Campagna and their children, Joseph and John. Sister Theresa and her husband Ralph Ciluzzi also lived nearby. Rose wrote Theresa a note about how lovely her apartment would be when the decorating was finished, saying, “hurry up and come home to Northern Avenue.”
Her first child, Joseph was born in 1914 and her second son, John, was born when Joseph was only seventeen months old. The boys grew up surrounded by family in a rural neighborhood that consisted of the Cabrini nunnery, the Billings estate and woods. In fact, the nuns would bring the cows down Northern Avenue in the morning to graze and take them back up the hill in the evening.
After a few year, Joseph and Rose moved their family around the corner to a home at 15 Chittenden Avenue. Ralph and Theresa Ciluzzi also moved to a home on Chittenden Avenue. They purchase their first automobile, a Veil, in 1920. *
Joseph, John, and some of their cousins attended The Barnard School for Boys or the Barnard School for Girls. For Joseph, the school was housed on 168th Street, then 177th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Grades four through twelve were on campus on Fieldstone, near Manhattan College.
The boys had a police dog named Beauty and at Easter they were given baby chicks. Joseph’s [the son] true passion was then and would always be magic.
Both his mother [Rose] and Aunt Theresa were instrumental in introducing Joseph to vaudeville and magic. Rose wrote to Theresa, “I don’t want to come see you tomorrow because it is Friday, Tres, I am awfully mysterious.” Joseph later wrote, “I was bitten by the magic bug at a tender age. At seven, I turned water into wine and back again with the aid of a Gilbert chemistry set. By nine I was a complete legerdemainiac. Mother [Rose], who was somewhat of an entertainer herself, would recite at parties in disguises, no less, would sneak off to a matinee of vaudeville…
Page 258…and the movies. I liked doing shows for the neighborhood kids, but was often embarrassed at family gatherings when urged to do some magic tricks. My Italian elders always called them jokes. I had a favorite aunt who was crazy about fortune tellers, crystal gazers, and spiritualists. She often took me with her. I never came across a for-real medium. Aunt Theresa never reported a fake one.” Magic would be only one of Joseph’s unique qualities, but certainly one of the most tangible. There was the obvious fun his children had of seeing tricks performed, and them more subtle reference like hearing that he was “kicked out of college for doing too much magic” and “the only sensible way to spend your allowance is on magic book.” He did indeed leave Trinity College because playing cards got in the way of his studies. “College was a disaster for father’s checkbook, but a boon to every magic buff in that New England area. My Dorn became a clubhouse for prestidigitators. One thing I didn’t bargain for was the claustrophobia I sustained when locked in a trunk with the key sill in my pocket.” In 1937 he graduated from Manhattan College and for a brief time moved back to his family home on Chittenden Avenue. When his father died in 1939, his mother Rose was unable to keep that home and the family moved to a Paterno building at 425 Riverside Drive.
Meanwhile, his uncle, Dr. Charles V. Paterno, was completing Castle Village, also in the same area as the Northern Avenue and Chittenden Avenue homes. Joseph became the first rental agent, which seemed quite natural having grown up surrounded by a family of builders. At that time a studio apartment rented for $75 a month. When Joseph married Nancy Cassidy, they moved to their first apartment in Greenwich Village. His lifetime career would not be real estate or building but newspaper advertising. He started at “The Herald Tribune,” later he was with “The New York Sun” and eventually he became manager of an advertising agency in New Jersey called “Quality Weeklies.”
While a very young boy, Joseph’s extended family vacationed in Avon, New Jersey. His mother Rose wrote in the summer of 1916 or 1917, “It is the same of Avon. Only I just love to be near the ocean. Joseph loves to play in the same. Such a change from last year. John sleeps like a top. Really, Theresa, it’s great. I am sure it would do you and Helen lots of good.”
As an adult, Joseph was not an advocate for formal education. He was able to recite poetry, recall facts, and match dates with historical events with ease. Armed with vast general knowledge in academics, he was equally skilled at carpentry. When the boys and Helen Ciluzzi were of school age, they went to summer camps run by the headmasters from the Barnard Schools, so they spent the better part of summer in Mallets Bay, Vermont. As teenagers, Joseph and John traveled out west by train and the stories from the summer would be told throughout Joseph’s life.
Advertisements would appear in the New York papers for wester “camps” where city kids could spend time on a ranch. The camp chose by the Faiella boys was run by a couple called…
Page 259…Ma and Pa Phelps, she a Caucasian woman and he a Crow Indian. Ut was the Lone Wolf Ranch on the Crow Indian Reservation, forty miles from Billings in Pryor, Montana. Just the trip from New York in about 1930 must have been some adventure! There was so much talk over the years about riding horses, roping calves, and singing around the campfire that one would have thought they spent every summer in Montana.
Joseph and Nancy had their first daughter, Toni Ann, while still living in New York City. Four more children would be born after they moved to the suburbs of New Jersey: Jodi, Frank, Mary, and Joseph Paterno, Jr., known as J.P..
the years went by measured by countless adventures, but highlighted by summers in homes they owned in Far Rockaway, New York, and Normandy Beach, New Jersey. Even though he was not an animal love, there were always dogs. They raised Boxers for a short time in a business called “The Cedar Box.” Sunday dinners were a must, even as times changed and families were less home based. A boat was built in one basement and every home was in a constant state of improvement, that to exceptional carpentry skills.
In 1973, Joseph was remarried to Eleanor R. Fernandez with whom he would share the rest of his life. In their retirement years there would be cooking, travel, theater going, family visits, and, as always, magic. Sharing eighteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren between them, they enjoyed family in many parts of the United States from coast to coast. In 1977 Joseph and Eleanor relocated to Florida where he lived for almost twenty-five years.
Music was always a part of Joseph’s life. When his children were young and still at home, he could be seen at the piano “banging out a tune” as he called it and composing for fun with [daughter] Jodi. Some of the children took piano lessons: Jodi had a folk guitar ground, and Frank played the drums. Joseph’s brother John’s piano teacher, Morris Citron, played the organ at the local theater during silent movies so Joseph and John would use his name to get into the movies. Joseph remembers that James Melton, a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera, lived in the penthouse at 425 Riverside Drive and that Rosa and Carmela Poselle of the Metropolitan Opera sang at cousin Carol Paterno’s wedding.
A magic buff, a skilled carpenter, lover of theatre and music, and a career newspaper man, his large family also enjoyed the benefits of his pleasure in preparing and presenting countless meals. In September of 2001, the day Joseph celebrated his 87th birthday, he said, “This is a day to shed a few tears, to think of all the great things I’ve done and also to remember the mistakes I’ve made.”
For an Italian, it is important to mind your manners and to make a good showing in public. Manners are a reflection of yourself, your family, and your background. While the phrase to describe the may never have been spoken in his presence, Joseph had what the Italians call a “bella figura” – style, grace, elegance and charm.
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