LIFE FOR YOUNG VITO
With the birth of a second child in the future, Salvatore decided the family needed to live in a house. The small apartment they rented was already too small and Vito had nowhere to play other than in the apartment or the bicycle shop. Salvatore purchased a lot on a hilltop not far from the Czech quarter of South Omaha. The hill overlooked the Missouri River. From the hilltop, Salvatore could see the barges on the Missouri and the farm fields stretching east, to the bluffs rising out of the Missouri Valley of Iowa. Salvatore had a one-story; three-bedroom house built to accommodate his growing family. The front of the house was enclosed with a covered porch supported by round, wooden pillars that reminded Isabella of the grand columns of the Roman architecture in Italy. Salvatore had the house built with a basement. On the back of the house he had a small door built, with a metal slide descending into the basement where an insulated cooler received delivery of blocks of ice for the new icebox he purchased for the kitchen.
The street Salvatore chose to build on was paved with red bricks. In the early morning, Vito could hear the sounds of approaching horse drawn wagons coming down the street. The Omar Bakery wagon would deliver fresh bread and sweet rolls to the insulated metal box sitting on the front porch. Next to the Omar Bakery box was a milk box to receive glass bottles of milk and cream, and packaged butter from the Roberts Dairy. Vito would listen for the clinking of glass bottles in a wire basket the milkman carried as he walked up the cement walkway to the front porch. The iceman who delivered the block ice to the back of the house was always the noisiest. The blocks of ice would make a considerable racket when they were dropped down the chute to the cooler in the basement. Morning doves would ‘coo’ outside in the tall elms Salvatore had requested left standing, before the house was built. Isabella put up a bird feeder on the metal clothesline outside the kitchen window. She would watch blue jays, robins and cardinals land on the bird feeder to peck at the birdseed and corn set out for them.
Brown squirrels scampered across the lawn or perched in the elms, chattering to one another or to announce the presence of a neighbor’s cat.
The names of the residents on the street reflected the immigrant population that had made South Omaha their home. Vito played with the Irish Lanahough boys from across the street. Mrs. Erickson exchanged recipes with Isabella. Abraham Goldman bought one of Salvatore’s bicycles for his son Jonathon. The Malinowski’s belonged to the Polish Sokol hall and were involved in several community activities there. The Vytauta’s were from Lithuania. The Tiberui were Romanian. The Dalibor family was Slovak and the Heitzel’s were from Germany. The one thing all these ethnic families shared in common was America. They had taken the gamble of leaving their nations of birth and had immigrated to the United States. These proud Americans, who owned their own homes and had found work or created a business, were helping build South Omaha at the beginning of the new century. Vito grew up taking for granted his playmates all had parents or grandparents who spoke another language in addition to English. His neighborhood was rich in culture and patriotism for the United States.
WORLD WAR I
Despite the prosperity and security Salvatore and Isabella found in America, they were haunted by the bad news crossing the Atlantic from Italy. Italy had entered World War I after much turmoil among Italian politicians and the government of Antonio Salandra. Salvatore had paid little attention to the article in an Italian newspaper about the June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by a Serb named Gavrillo Princip. Yet these names and this one event would spark World War I and create an atmosphere of anxiety and anger among the immigrants of South Omaha.
The socialist newspaper ‘L’Avvenire del Lavatore’ found its way across the Atlantic, to the Italian quarter of Omaha. The papers young editor, Benito Mussolini, a one-time anti-militarist, was now a radical nationalist and proponent of war. Mussolini’s editorials were cut out and hung on billboards and on the walls of buildings for Italians living in Omaha to read.
On May 23, 1915, Italy entered World War I on the side of Allies. The 1915 Tratto Londra, or the Treaty of London promised Italy territories she laid claim to, now occupied by the Germans and Austrians. Claiming Sacro Egoismo (Sacred Ego), a movement started by the Italia Irredente, Italy sought to wage war against her former ally, Austria. Irredentitsts movements in South Omaha sought to recruit Italian immigrants for the Italian Army. Catholic pacifists objecting to the war sought to dissuade young Italians from returning home to enlist in the Army.
Italian nationalism became evident from the increased number of Italian flags flying on the streets of South Omaha. Heated arguments and fistfights broke out between groups of Italians divided over the war. Anti-Italian groups in South Omaha saw the Italian flags and surge in Italian nationalism as a failure of the immigrants to assimilate into American society. Salvatore and Isabella tried to remain neutral but their passions for the ‘Old Country’ drove them to support Italy in the war. Salvatore even considered briefly returning to Italy to join the war effort. Isabella protested vehemently and the subject was never discussed again.
The papers from home did not portray a hopeful picture for Italy during the war years.
Italian General Luigi Cardorna pitted his offensive strategies against the commander of the Austrian-Hungarian armies, Archduke Eugene, time and time again at the River Isonza. The body count of dead Italians was devastating to the Italians of South Omaha.
In 1915 the Italian Army suffered 250,000 killed, wounded or captured along the sixty-mile front on the Isonza. Familiar names of towns on the Italian-Austrian border like Gorizia and Tolmino were associated with death and defeat. In August of 1915 Italy declared war on Germany. German and Italian immigrants in South Omaha immediately took sides aligned with their nations of origin. The two nationalities boycotted ‘enemy’ businesses. Vandalism of both German and Italian owned shops occurred. In the neighborhoods that had once been a showplace of hospitality and American patriotism, war driven foreign nationalism created a wall of mistrust among residents. In one battle along the Isonza, from August 4-17th, 1915, Italy lost 50,000 men. The Austrian-Hungarian forces lost 42,000 soldiers. There were stories of the Austrian-Hungarian troops using poison gases to kill Italians in the trenches.
Posters of Cesare Battista, the Italian hero and martyr, now were on display on the streets of South Omaha. Battista, an Italian Irredentists and officer in the Italian Army, was captured by the Austrians in the bloody fighting on the Italian-Austrian border at the River Isonzo. In July 1916, Battista was strangled by the Austrian military as a form of execution. The Austrian government circulated posters of the execution and the body of Battista as an attempt to demoralize the Italians. Just the opposite occurred. Italian emotions and hatred against the Austrians were only flamed by the pictures.
From September to November of 1916, Italy won a minor victory along the Isonza and Italian moral temporarily rose. When the numbers of war dead hit the streets of South Omaha: 75,000 Italian casualties and 63,000 Austrian-Hungarians lost, the moral factor was crushed. The worst was yet to come in 1917.
While the Italian community in South Omaha was grieving the massive loss of life at Isonzo, word of another horrific battle at a place called Verdun was in the newspaper.
1916 ended with the reports of unheard of losses on the battlefields at Verdun and the Somme in France. Germany had attempted to break the ‘shield’ at Verdun, France, in an attempt to break through to force the British into an all-out war on the fields of France.
Germany had not anticipated an eleven-month blood bath that would lead to its inevitable defeat in the Great War. France’s losses at Verdun were estimated at 400,000.
German losses were also estimated at 400,000. American losses were thought to be around 14,000. Newspaper accounts of the horrors of the battle told off entire companies stepping up to the ‘line’, only to disappear, to a man, in a blaze of bullets or massive artillery bombardments. Verdun was the bloodiest battle to date in the history of mankind. Anti-war proponents and survivors of the Great War both swore the carnage suffered at Verdun would never be allowed to occur in modern warfare again.
In June of 1917, at the Battle of Caporetto saw 275,000 Italian soldiers captured by the combined forces of the German and Austrian-Hungarian forces. Morale in the Italian army was at its lowest point. News stories of the Italian command executing its own soldiers for refusing to fight infuriated Italians in South Omaha. Pacifist groups in Italy and the Italian neighborhood called for an immediate withdrawal of Italian troops from the Isonza region. The Pope issued a statement calling for an end to war. One Italian newspaper ran a headline reading, “We have lost a generation”. In addition to the tremendously high body counts incurred from the battles in the Isonza, there was news of over 60,000 Italians lost to avalanches in the Austrian-Italian Alps.
Italy had aligned herself with the Triple Entente Powers of Russia, France and Britain and the Allied powers to include the United States. The Central Powers of Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria were the ‘other side’. Eventually the war came to an end with the German defeat on November 11, 1918. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Yet for the immigrants of South Omaha, resentments and mistrust lingered years after the war. The immigrant community of South Omaha had become more secular among groups divided over the war.
Despite the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Europe was still in political turmoil.
In July 1921, a young Austrian political rabble-rouser named Adolph Hitler was elected leader of Germany’s National Socialist Party, or the Nazis. Hitler blamed Germany’s defeat in World War I on the Jews and Marxists. His political aspirations and his fear-mongering tactics would touch the lives of all Americans in the future. In 1921, Adolph Hitler and the Nazis were just names uttered in conversations among men reading the newspaper.
During the years war ravaged Europe and divided immigrants in South Omaha, another ‘war’ was being fought at home. Since the turn of the century and before, a seemingly endless procession of deadly train disasters plagued America’s railroads.
American’s had come to rely on the railroads for transportation of both people and goods.
Yet despite the economical benefits and the new and modern mode of transportation the railroads brought to many American communities, there was still the problem of safety on the rails and the potential for loss of human life. There was seldom a train accident that didn’t include the deaths of nearly a hundred people or more.
South Omaha was home to many Union Pacific Rail Road employees. The U.P. had its headquarters in Omaha. Criticizing the Union Pacific in South Omaha was like criticizing the Pope to many of the city’s immigrant Catholics. The Union Pacific had helped build Omaha and provided jobs to many of the immigrant citizens of South Omaha. The U.P., the Burlington Northern and other railroads offered Americans stability and a lifetime of employment. Yet cries of public outrage demanding accountability for lack of safety concerns, labor abuses and political corruption were all leveled at American railroads.
In California in 1907, a group of Republican businessmen and lawyers started the Lincoln Roosevelt League. The LRL broke the hold the Southern Pacific Railroad had on Californian state government. Soon, other such groups were formed across the country, earning these groups the label of ‘anti-railroad leagues’. These groups sought to federalize railroad safety standards, shipping rates and regulations and laborers wages. The anti-railroad groups were met with stiff opposition from the railroads and the railroad employees whom the leagues sought to help. Railroading in America at the start of the 20th century faced a turbulent and difficult future, and for good reason. Just a few of the more sensational train wrecks were used as proof of the railroads careless disregard for safety and human life.
In 1903, the ‘Wreck of the Old 97’, claimed the lives of eleven railroad employees, at Danville, Virginia. On September 27, 1903, the Southern Railway mail train, Old 97 or the Fast Mail, as some called it, entered a curve at a high rate of speed and left the tracks. The curve led into a trestle over a deep ravine. The Old 97 plummeted into the ravine, killing the locomotive crew and several of the mail handlers in the mail cars.
Eden, Colorado was the seen of the ‘Hogan’s Draw’ train wreck, in the early evening hours of August 7, 1904. The Missouri Pacific railroad’s “Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis Express”, wrecked when the 110-B bridge collapsed under the train’s weight. Heavy rains had caused the arroyo the 110-B spanned to fill with nearly 30 feet of fast moving water. The torrent of the wash in the arroyo and the heavy rains had loosened the timbers supporting the wooden beam bridge. When the leading steam locomotive of the passenger train crossed the 110-B, it collapsed. The leading locomotive had crossed over the bridge to the other side; but was pulled back down, into the arroyo when the bridge collapsed under the rest of the train. Ninety-six people lost their lives and dozens were injured. Fourteen passenger’s bodies were never recovered due to the fast-moving waters, which fed, into a nearby river.
1918 saw several train disasters, which heightened the demands for increased railway safety, and a call for federal investigations into the cause of these rail disasters.
On Feb 23, 1910, a passenger train and a mail train were stopped at Wellington, Washington in the depot. Heavy snowfalls up to a foot an hour had closed the tracks out of Wellington. The passengers remained in the train. The railroad fed the passengers and kept them warm during the blizzard. For several days, the snows fell and prevented any trains from leaving or entering Wellington. Some of the passengers were irate at the unforeseen delay while others created a festive mood at the expense of the railroad.
In the early morning hours of March 1, rain and slightly warmer temperatures replaced the snow. The rain and warmer temps loosened the snow pack above Wellington. At about 1 A.M., a wall of snow, a quarter mile wide, came crashing down on Wellington.
The deadly avalanche hit the Wellington depot and the two trains parked there. The trains were pushed into the Tyre River, below the depot. 96 people were killed and several injured as the merciless wall of snow swept over the town and depot. Some of the bodies of the dead were not recovered until July of that year, when the snows finally melted. Again, the nation was asking how could such a thing happen?
1918 saw several sensational and deadly train wrecks in that year alone.
June 22, 1918 went down in history as the day the Hammond circus train wreck occurred.
The Higenbeck-Wallace circus train was stopped at the Hammond, Indiana depot when a fast-moving Michigan Central train struck it from behind. 86 circus employees were killed in the crash or by fire and 127 were injured.
In Nashville, Tennessee, on July 9th, 1918, the ‘Great Train Wreck of 1918’, happened when the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway train #4 collided head on with the same railroad’s train #1. 101 people lost their lives and 171 were injured.
On November 1, 1918, a rapid transit train in New York City killed 93 people when it failed to negotiate a curve under the intersection of Flatbush Avenue, Ocean Avenue and Malbone Street. The elevated train crashed into the wall a tunnel, shearing off train walls and roofs. The railroad’s motormen were out on strike and an inexperienced crew dispatcher replaced this ill-fated train’s motorman. The owners of the rapid transit railway insisted the trains must be kept running despite the fact the proper and experienced personnel who usually operated the trains were out on strike.
The nation demanded federal oversight of public safety and regulation of the railroads; and for good reason. The federal government slowly began a gradual over taking of public utilities and services formally under the control of the private sector and the sovereign States.
In the summer of 1921, growing up in South Omaha, Vito lived a life free of depressing world news or any threat of political oppression. He could hear the rumbling of trains on the railroad bridge crossing the Missouri River. The long freight trains were the engines of commerce. To the young boy, growing up in on a hill overlooking the Missouri River, the trains were a source of contemplation and daydreaming. He would like to take a trip on a luxurious passenger train. He dreamed of taking a train to Denver or even as far west as San Francisco. Vito was eleven years old and life for the San Liquido family was good.
In the summer of 1924 Vito worked assisting bricklayers on the construction of the Omaha Livestock Exchange Building. Vito was at first hesitant to take the job. He feared he was not strong enough to lift and push the flat wooden wheel barrels carrying the bricks to the masons. He also had a problem with physical labor. Anything that had to be done manually, from helping around the house to his first job as a construction laborer, bored him. Vito’s mind was too active to stay focused on the mundane task of watching seasoned masons laying one brick after another, for days on end. On his first day on the job, Vito was polite and attentive, but he wished he were somewhere else.
He was assigned to haul bricks for a group of Italian bricklayers. Vito’s initial impression of the Italian’s was that they were noisy and uneducated. Vito thought the men characterized the stereotypical immigrant: dirty, loud and uneducated. The Italians had just the opposite opinion of young Vito. They liked the fact he had an Italian name and he spoke ‘functional’ Italian. He was big for his age and could do the work with little coaching. Early on the morning of his first day at work, the Italians immediately started telling Vito stories of their adventures laying brick in Italy and the rest of Europe.
Each man had a story to tell. The stories held Vito’s interest as he began to interpret the stories being told in Italian and broken English.
The men told of their leaving their families to work as mason’s laying stone and brick in some of the grandest cities in Europe. They had traveled by train or steam freighter to foreign countries, some as far away as Moscow in Russia. Vito had never heard so many different variations of life in the ‘old country’ before. His mother had told him of life in Napoli and how she had lost her family to cholera. His father told him of working in the automobile plant and of saving money for him and Isabella to come to America. But the Italian bricklayers had a wealth of tales that put the story teller in the middle of some grand portrayal of life in Europe’s greatest cities and some of its seediest dens of corruption.
There were stories about working on spiraling cathedral towers, and bridges spanning wide rivers. The men told of their conquests in the brothels of Europe. They recalled fights with Germans and Austrians. They spoke with great reverence for comrades killed on the job or as fallen heroes who died in knife fights in bars or in back allies of some distant city whose name was hard to pronounce. The men lamented with deep regret for the years they were separated from their wives and children left behind in Italy. Despite the mundane tasks of hauling bricks for the Italians, Vito looked forward to coming to work to hear the stories and have the tale pick up where it left off the day before. Vito would come home and share the stories with his parents. They would nod and affirm the tales of Italian men traveling abroad to send money home. Sometimes Vito would repeat an Italian expression he had brought home from work and Isabella would scold him and tell him not to use that word again. Salvatore smiled but kept his approval of the use of the ‘word’ to himself. Vito was getting an education in the value of hard work and the essence of the history of his people. Salvatore didn’t have a problem with Vito’s use of the ‘word’, if Isabella didn’t hear him use it.
One day the Italian foreman of the bricklayers told Vito to climb the scaffolding with the other men and learn how to lay brick. Vito was beside himself with excitement and gratification. He was going to stand, side by side, with the heroes from the ‘old country’ and learn how to lay brick. The Italians were patient with Vito as they taught him how to stretch the ‘mason line’, or the long string that went from corner to corner of the huge building under construction. He learned how to ‘butter’ a brick. He became skilled at cutting the bricks for the end of the rows at doorways, arches, windows and corners.
He was delighted when he helped lay the intricate star patterns in the brick laid under each window. As the summer progressed so did the completion of the building. The Omaha Livestock Exchange building was a huge ‘H’ shaped building, twelve stories high. The Italians constructed their scaffolding a level at a time, higher and higher, to lay the brick facade of the massive building. Vito marveled at the pace of work and how the project started to resemble a new, modern building. Vito knew at some point his job would end, either from completion of the brick laying phase or school starting in the fall.
For the next three summers, Vito would work laying brick on construction projects in South Omaha. The summer of 1928 would be his last, as he prepared to enter college.
Vito graduated from South Omaha High School and was eager to attend the University of Omaha. He was excited about leaving the neighborhood and spending his days on the campus next to the sprawling Elmwood Park. Vito walked home several evenings through South Omaha, encountering the many faces of his community. Vito took for granted the diverse ideas and dynamics of the new home his father had chosen years ago.
The neighborhood Salvatore had chosen to build the house and raise his kids in had developed its own unique ‘personality’. The infusion of so many different nationalities all coming together under one flag had inspired not only competition in business but also gave rise to a blending of culture, patriotism for their new country and inevitably, politics. Italian immigrants, eager to show their newly adopted country their worth and loyalty, were sensitive to the ramifications the infamous anti-American anarchists and convicted murderers, Sacco and Venzetti, had on their community. After the pair of Italian immigrants had been found guilty of murder and robbery in the name of an anarchist revolution, young Italian men still argued for the anarchist cause and against the evils of capitalism. Other young Italians dismissed the anarchist idea and expressed gratitude and pride in their ability to accumulate wealth and own property.
A frequent visitor to the streets of South Omaha was Nana. Nana was a grandmother and an advocate for immigrant and women’s rights. Nana would distribute literature and address meetings of immigrants to encourage them to become politically involved in the community. Nana’s daughter, Dodie, had just given birth to a baby boy. The infant was named Marlon, after his father; Marlon Brando, Jr. The Brando’s lived on 3rd Street. Isabella knew Dodie and had gone to see her in one of her many appearances at the community playhouse. Dodie was friends with Mrs. Fonda, whose son Henry frequented the neighborhood and spoke of ambitions to be a radio personality. Young Henry wanted to major in journalism and spoke out against the racism he saw against immigrants and blacks in Omaha.
Another son of Omaha was born over on Woolworth Street, in a three-story Victorian mansion. He was born Leslie King, Jr., but after his mother divorced his father and moved to Michigan, he was renamed Gerald Ford, Jr.
The neighborhood was not without it’s critics. Anti-immigrant organizations rallied against the rapid growth of the foreign population in South Omaha. Threats against immigrant owned businesses were common and the occasional gang of thugs seeking to ambush an unwary foreigner on his way home was not unheard of. Blacks in Omaha suffered racism and threats of lynching from angry white mobs. On May 19, 1925, Malcolm Little was born in north Omaha, to Earl and Lois Little. Earl Little was a black Baptist minister who spoke out against racism and was an advocate for black activist Marcus Garvey. While Lois Little was pregnant with Malcolm, Klu Klux Klansmen came to the outspoken black minister’s home and threatened the family with shotguns.
Earl Little moved his family to escape the racist organization Black Legion, but was murdered in Lansing, MI. His murderers were never found and his death was ruled and accident. Young Malcolm would later change his name to Malcolm X and become one of America’s greatest black leaders.
Mexican immigrants found their way to South Omaha and added to the community. Political upheaval and the Mexican Revolution that started in 1910 and lasted until 1920 forced the northward migration of entire families from Mexico. Many Mexican families came to Nebraska to cultivate the fertile black soil. Mexicans brought knowledge of farming and irrigation to an already thriving agricultural community. The Mexicans also knew the value of the railroad to a farming community. Nebraska and particularly Omaha, were well supplied with the iron tracks and depots where Mexican farmers could take their crops to be shipped to the buyers in the bigger cities. The Diocese of Omaha embraced the strong traditional Catholics into their churches. The Catholic Church tutored several different classes in English to immigrants who spoke Spanish, Italian, Czech, and a variety of languages.
Many immigrants accepted the racism against blacks as part of the American culture. Others rejected racism based on their own experiences with hatred from the indigenous population of Nebraskans who saw immigrants as a threat to their way of life. Everybody came from somewhere and laid claim to the land and city. The populations at the bottom of this racial hierarchy, and who was already here, and for who the city was named were the Omaha Indians who lived eighty miles north of the city. The Omaha had a small presence in the big city and rarely lived for long periods among the diverse population south of their reservation.
While young Vito labored at after school jobs, other young Americans sought to pursue fame and fortune in the orchestra pits of Broadway in New York City. 1926 America enjoyed Broadway shows like ‘Strike up the Band’ and ‘Girl Crazy’. In the pit bands, aspiring musicians Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Gene Krupa played in the show’s orchestra. The three young men had visions of greatness and fame as they made the musicians circuit in New York. Miller and Krupa crossed the ‘race line’ and recorded with black musicians in 1929. Miller and Krupa recorded with Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, and Coleman Hawkins on jazz recordings with the Mound City Blue Blowers. Miller and Krupa would recall in later years that they thought these sessions were among their best free-lance work in their careers. 1926 was the year a young couple in Chicago, the Hefner’s, gave birth to a son. They named him Hugh.
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