Speakers were set up outside the Bronx church for the overflow mourners at my Uncle Doad’s funeral Mass. They were there because many of them had been kept from starving by the man in the coffin. During the Depression, he bossed a gang that put in the foundations for Rockefeller Center, itself a make-work project besides being a dream of that patrician family. Together the Rockefellers and my uncle saved many families from starving during one of the darkest times of the 20th century.
The Depression made work scarce, particularly for unskilled Italian-Americans. Because of their need, My Uncle Doad (real name Salvatore Mazzella) would never turn away a man who came to him. They repaid him with their respect and came by the thousands to his funeral.
Doad was not a saint, though he sought heaven’s grace by having a priest live with him for the last nine years of his life. After his first heart attack, he wanted to make sure he had a priest around when his time came.
Like many things he did in life, he had an unusual, personal method of achieving his ends. So, when he met the priest on the subway he somehow persuaded him to come home, where he stayed until Doad died. How he died was also appropriate to the way he lived.
A gambler all his life, he had a heart attack cashing two winning $50 tickets at the now defunct Roosevelt Raceway. I’m told the priest was with him but I don’t know if he was able to give him extreme unction as it happened so fast.
In all things, Uncle Doad was a man larger than life. He was short, but built like and as strong as a bull. In later life, when his heart condition forced him to retire, he developed a huge stomach. This protuberance prevented him from getting behind the wheel, seeing the road and at the same time touching the gas and gear peddles. Like many things in his life, he found a method of driving that worked for him but did not take into consideration other drivers.
His solution was to slide down to gun the engine and then slide up to see the road. He drove this way, sidling up and down for almost 10 years. He never had an accident, which said more about the other drivers than his own driving skills.
While oblivious of others in many of his activities, he had a way of making people forget his faults. When I first told this story to my wife, she asked, “Why didn’t he put bricks on the pedals to decrease the space?” A practical solution that apparently never occurred to Doad.
As I have often said, he had his own way of doing things. A gregarious host, his Sunday dinners were crowded with people who came and went with the days and years. One old woman, whose name I never knew, was there every time I went with my parents. She sat in the corner and said nothing but looked on in disapproval at the happenings. Never did I see her take a morsel or speak a word. Everyone ignored her.
Uncle Doad and Thanksgiving Dinner
by Don Mazzella