March Fourth With Uncle Joe

I was blessed with eight fine aunts and uncles. There were no divorces among them.  Collectively the eight couples logged 430 years of marriage.  I was particularly fond of uncles, as a boy often is.  They bore names that belong to the Greatest Generation: Jack, Frank, Charlie, Bernell, Chester, Joe, George, and Evan.  Each influenced my life for the better.  My last surviving uncle, Joe Silvestri died at age 99 three months shy of his 100^th birthday.

Like all of them, Joe had a firm handshake that greeted nephews upon arrival at any holiday event or family gathering.  Each had a different banter but Joe’s was unique – inquiring but posed by a man with something to say.  A diehard Roosevelt Democrat, Joe was usually the first to bring up politics, but just as quick to suggest a game of penny-ante poker.  “Just a little fun,” he’d say.  As the youngest nephew, what a thrill it was to play poker with older cousins and uncles on Christmas Eve.

In conversation, Uncle Joe often went one step beyond – usually to the supernatural, perhaps faith healing, copper bracelets, or fire walking.  He marveled at their possibilities and curative powers but when pressed added a disclaimer that much is still unknown. He talked politics with a passion, but politely and with a willingness to listen to differing points of view.  Joe was also that uncle with an 8-millimeter motion picture camera – complete with 500-watt lights blinding nephews and nieces who hurtled about the living room concealing our eyes from the glare.

In high school, Joe’s oldest son, Dan offered me a summer job selling popsicles from a 3-wheeled Cushman scooter.  The business was operated from the basement of Uncle Joe and Aunt Nadine’s home on Kent’s East Hill.  Each evening we counted our coins and bills.  Joe often stood watch over the assemblage.  Our tills were expected to match the confectionaries sold. Still, most drivers were short, through neglect or more often petty pilferage.  Mine always balanced perfectly.  For decades Joe bragged that ‘nephew-Bill’ as he called me, was their best Popsicle salesman and never short on his till.  Uncle Joe was a mentor who made me feel proud.

Joe worked much of his life as a highway engineer for the Washington Dept. of Transportation.  He began work on the I-90 project over Snoqualmie Pass in the 1950s.  My Dad and his brothers-in-law needled him about the construction job that never ended.  Uncle Joe graciously accepted their ribbing, offering a spirited defense with a knowing laugh.

One by one, my father and uncles passed away until only Joe remained.   He alone was left to care for the three Kombol sisters, his wife, Nadine, plus sisters-in-law, Dana and Nola, becoming their chauffeur and escort at family functions, marriages, and funerals.  When two more aunts passed on, only Joe and Nadine remained from that generation.  They celebrated their 75^th wedding anniversary on a delightful Sunday afternoon joined by family and friends.

Joe’s work ethic befit the greatest generation he exemplified.  He served his family in life and death.  When Aunt Dana Zaputil died in 2012, family members were invited to choose items of remembrance from her home. We strolled through her Fauntleroy home telling stories, recalling good times, and singling out keepsakes. It was a hot summer day with temperatures stretching into the 90s and most kept to the air-conditioned indoors.

Someone asked, “Where’s Uncle Joe?”  Up on the rooftop, my 92-year-old uncle stood pressure-washing accumulated moss and debris to prepare his late sister-in-law’s home for sale.  It took the urging of two nephews and a son to convince him to come down the ladder and off the roof.  He did so only with a promise that one of us would finish the job.

Two years before his death, Joe, age 97, and Nadine showed up at Palmer Coking Coal to purchase a mixed load of sand and gravel.  I walked out to say hello as the loader dumped sand and 7/8” washed gravel into the bed of his small Ford pickup.  After the usual greetings and small talk, I inquired what he was doing with the mix, because it’s a specialty product.  Well, Joe explained, he planned to pour a slab that afternoon so would be hand shoveling the sand, gravel, and powdered cement into his concrete mixer back home.  I about fell over.

After knowing Joe for all of my sixty-plus years, he still managed to surprise me.  At their 75^th wedding anniversary, Joe pulled out a harmonica and played a suite of songs to the large gathering of admiring relatives and well-wishers.  I had no idea he even played harmonica!

And just a week before his 99^th birthday, Joe drove to my office with a worn suitcase of old photos and keepsake belonging to his stepdad.  Since I write a history column for the local newspaper, Joe gave me the opportunity to scan the contents in the event there was a story to tell. Indeed there was and I wrote it.

The Silvestri family’s proud Italian heritage.

Knowing the end was approaching, Joe hand-wrote his family’s history in a spiral-bound notebook.  His father, Carlo Silvestri grew up in the Emilia-Romagna province of Italy just 12 miles across the Secchia River from the home of his future bride, Clotilde Cavecchi.  They didn’t know each other.  Carlo found work in France eventually joining that country’s attempt to build the Panama Canal.  After the French effort failed, Carlo ventured to Washington where he became acquainted with Annibale Cavecchi whose sister, Clotilde worked as a housemaid in Marseille.

Carlo joined Annibale who was laboring on a farm in the Wabash-Krain area of Enumclaw. But he exchanged letters and photos with his sister, Clotilde, in the days before online dating sites. An arrangement was settled by which Clotilde moved to America and married the farmhand her brother had recommended.  Three decades later, Clotilde acquired that 40-acre farm where her brother and late husband had first found employment. Some of the land is still owned by Silvestri family members.

After the early years, Carlo and Clotilde moved to Black Diamond where Carlo worked as a self-employed lumberman hand splitting 2” x 8” wooden planks called lagging that were used in the coal mines.  He also raised cows, both dairy and beef, selling his meat in the Italian areas of Renton. Clotilde bore a succession of children, Nello, Ricco, Philomena, Fredericco, and Tomosco whose American names became Nick, Rick, Pink, Fred, and Tom.  They named their sixth child Giuseppe, Italian for Joseph.  Following baptism and confirmation, Uncle Joe added Anthony as his middle name.

During Prohibition Carlo joined a bootlegging ring, attending their still located east of Ravensdale. Clotilde’s first cousin, Tullio Cavecchi, and partner Sisto Luccolini sold the Italian brandy called grappa in Seattle.  But Carlo alone was nabbed in a raid and sentenced to a six-month term on a work farm.   Joe’s folks always referred to that farm as the ‘stockade.’  Still, Carlo earned enough money to buy a cow that he named Stocada, an Italian play on words.  Joe milked that cow for years.  Sadly, his father, Carlo died a few years later when Joe was only nine.

In time his widowed wife, Clotilde moved with her remaining children to Kangley where she married Frank Valerio, himself a widower. Joe was equally proud of his stepfather whose dusty suitcase came into Joe’s possession upon his death.  He spoke proudly of Valerio’s life as an Italian immigrant to Ravensdale, then Kangley where he worked as a coal miner.  Kangley is where Joe first met the children of Tony and Lulu Kombol, whose youngest daughter, Nadine he would one day marry.

Joe delighted in his Italian heritage visiting the old country several times.  For decades he was a fixture in the Black Diamond chapter of the Sons of Italy.  Late in life, Joe paid tribute to the Italian dairy farmers who were active in the Enumclaw area and highlighted their work ethic.  Those family names were Ballestrasse, Capponi, Condotta, Fantello, Giglioni, Malatesta, Marietta, Primton, and Rocca.

A few years back wanting to learn more about his ancestry, Joe took one of the popular DNA tests.  It turns out my proud Italian Uncle Joe was actually 50% French.  Though he groused about the results, Joe chuckled ironically at his genetic heritage.

Joseph Antony Silvestri was born March 4, 1920, in Black Diamond.  Like many of his generation, he joined the Army during World War II. While Joe was stationed in South Carolina,his fiancé Nadine Kombol drove with her mother, Lulu across the country, where Joe and Nadine were joined in marriage on August 21, 1943.

Together they raised three children: Danny, Lanny, and Cheryl.  His oldest son, Dan preceded his parents in death on the last day of June 2018.  Nadine passed away peacefully at their family home on Sept. 25, 2019.  Joe joined her just over two months later on Dec. 12^th.  They are buried together in the Enumclaw cemetery right next to my parents, Jack and Pauline Kombol.

All my aunts and uncles are gone and so is most of the generation who guided me growing up.  Joe and Nadine were my last.  I miss them each dearly . . . especially Uncle Joe.