What Did You Admire About Your Father?

Dad died 16 years ago today, and above are 16 images of him.

The one in the middle of the second row is the last photo I have of him. It was taken Oct. 9, 2005, at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Paterson, NJ, following a Mass for couples celebrating their 50th and 25th wedding anniversaries that year.

Earlier today, Mom told me that during that Mass Dad had whispered in her ear, "You look like you should be sitting on the other side of the aisle" (where everyone was 25 years younger).

For my recent birthday, my daughters purchased a subscription to StoryWorth for me, which provides online prompts to record family stories every week. The question for me to answer a few weeks ago was, "What did you admire about your father?"

I had a lot of material to answer that, some of which I previously published here.

To begin with, I recall three scenes from my life illustrate traits I admired about him.

Scene 1

As much as Dad wanted me — all my life — to attend college at Notre Dame, he didn’t say a word in protest when my initial decision was to attend Holy Cross.

I, of course, changed my mind.

Scene 2

As much as Dad loved our ugly, black Chevrolet Impala, the only thing he said when I called him at work after practically totaling the car following my first job interview after college was, “Are you all right?” “Yes,” I said. He replied, “That’s all that matters.”

My safety was Dad’s only concern.

Scene 3

As much as Dad valued self-reliance, when I was 2nd Grade, I couldn’t convince Dad not to rush out one evening (in the then-new Impala) to St. James Convent in Totowa to confront a nun who had unfairly, and mistakenly, struck me after witnessing someone who looked like me damage school property.

The nun never backed down, even though she was in the wrong. Still, Dad always had my back.

(PS- The classmate who did the damage and never fessed up now boasts of having “a PHD in Beerology at Seton Hall University” on social media. Meanwhile, Dad graduated from Seton Hall with a real business degree, and with honors.)

As I’ve written before about Dad, he threw the first baseball ever thrown to me.

“He probably dropped it,” he’s saying right now to a passing angel.

He’s saying it with a smile, I am sure. He’s joking. He doesn’t think he was a better man than I am.

I think.

In fact, I am only sure of one thing: Dad always, even to this day, supports me.

Of course Dad (aka Bob "Chick" Varettoni) was much better than me at baseball, having pitched against professional athletes — including two head-to-head matchups with New York Yankee Whitey Ford at age 20 — and entering the Passaic Semi-Pro Baseball Hall of Fame based on a career that began at age 13.

When Dad graduated from college (he had qualified for both an academic and sports scholarship at Seton Hall), Nonna bought him a sharkskin suit with money she had saved by hiding it from Nonno. Dad wore it that day... then took off for two years of active duty with the Navy.

He returned from overseas on a Friday, and next wore his sharkskin suit the following Monday on his first day commuting to a job at New York Telephone. He worked the ensuing 34 years there and never took a sick day. He had literally sailed around the world with the Navy (and subsequently hated water), but he figuratively lived and died in New Jersey.

Dad claimed he had no influence in getting me a job at the same company (then called NYNEX) in 1985. I find that hard to believe. I worked 34 years there too, and never took a sick day.

Since we worked for the same company for a time before he retired, for several years after he retired I’d get phone calls at my desk where as soon as I’d identify myself, I’d hear a pause on the other line. Then the person would exclaim, “You’re not Bob Varettoni.”

This was a constant reminder of my existential failings.

Dad drank bourbon. He shared his birthday with his mother. He was a talented calligrapher and artist, and at age 16 drew an intricate and richly flourished rendering of the seven last words of Christ. He wanted to be an architect when he was in high school.

Dad liked to spend money. He invoked fear in house cats. He sometimes had terrible taste in music (witness Aker Bilk, Tom Jones and Trini Lopez), but made up for it by his love of Dixieland and the Mills Brothers.

Dad loved crossword puzzles (pictured above is the one that was left uncompleted the day before he died). And he kept a copy of “The Prayer of St. Francis” taped to the back of the medicine cabinet mirror in his tiny downstairs bathroom in Totowa.

At his best, like all of us, Dad had the soul of a poet. He often quoted Shakespeare when he was drunk. While cleaning out the garage last summer, I found a folder of long, badly-rhymed “odes” that Dad had written for work and Navy Reserve colleagues as anniversary or retirement gifts.

I found no “Ode to Dad” in that folder. I have only a dozen fragmented images of him, from memory, that will have to do:

1.    Sharkskin suits and Navy dress whites
2.    A 13-year-old sandlot pitcher snapping off a tightly spun sinker
3.    A 16-year-old’s calligraphy drawing of Christ’s last words
4.    The smell of Old Spice and hair gel
5.    Cigarette smoke (Kents)
6.    Eggs over easy, bacon and rye toast (his favorite breakfast... I always order this at a diner, to remember him)

7.    A round stain of bourbon on the counter of a bar
8.    Crafting a too-perfect Pinewood Derby car for his son
9.    A 32-year-old storming a convent to defend his son
10.    The intricate paint job on a precision plastic model of the U.S.S. Midway
11.    Mills Brother records (he’d also sing “You Never Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry” when drunk)
12.    Sentimental tears

And, finally, here are three lessons I learned from his life…

Lesson 1: Above all, be of service to others.

I recently found a single-page, single-spaced typewritten copy of Dad’s eulogy for his best friend at work, Eileen Vodola.

Dad gave me this piece of paper 36 years ago precisely because he knew I would keep it. I am the Varettoni family’s version of a Griot, the storyteller of an African tribe whose life’s purpose is to pass on ancestral history.

Here’s what Dad wrote:

“To those who believe, as I do, that the soul is eternal and that death is merely the passing to a higher plane of existence, Eileen’s spirit is here, she is with us now, and she is saying to us: ‘Don’t grieve for me, because I am free, I am at peace, and I will be waiting to greet you when it is your time to pass through the veil.’

“As some of you know, Eileen was a very special friend to me, and we often spoke about the meaning of life and what was really important. And if Eileen’s view of the purpose of her earthly existence could be summed up in a single thought, it would be this: to use wisely and well the gifts and talents God has given you, and to fulfill yourself in helping others.”

I remember attending Eileen’s funeral 36 years ago. I remember the day Dad publicly professed his belief that the soul is eternal, and that death is merely the passing to a higher plane… and that we only fulfill our destinies by helping others.

Lesson 2: Work hard.

Here’s a photo of Dad behind his desk at 1095 Ave. of the Americas, many years before it was called Salesforce Tower. I still wander past this building on walks to or from my current job. Each side of the building’s plaza near Bryant Park is now guarded by a 13-foot metal statue of a superhero, and I think of Dad every time I walk by.

You may think, by his Don Draper good looks and jacket, that Dad was an advertising executive. He was creative enough to be one. But no, he was head of the customer service department… the executive appeals branch… in charge of handling all the especially tough complaints.

Dad was, for all his noble qualities, possibly the most impatient man in the world. So you’d think this would be a horrible job for him. The last thing any sane person, his son included, would ever want to do would be complain to my father.

But instead of channeling his impatience at customers, he channeled it at silly processes and ineffective management… and he had a long and successful career.

Lesson 3: Love is made manifest by self-discipline and loyalty.

No one was ever a more loyal friend than my father. When he died, I heard this from many of his friends dating back to high school and, especially, from his service in the Navy.

Dad was a Navy reservist. It was a side job he held for decades while working at the telephone company. He achieved the rank of captain in the Intelligence division. He loved it. He valued the discipline he found in the Navy – which probably accounts for why he was so good at his day job at the phone company.

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In his whole life, just like Superman, there was only one thing Dad was defenseless against.

His kryptonite was a pack of Kent cigarettes. Until his 60s, he could never give up his three-pack-a-day smoking habit. I saw him try to quit, and fail, several times while I was growing up. Never did he look so defeated than when he’d relapse and start smoking again.

And yet after a second heart attack... after his doctor warned him that he would never live to see my newborn daughter grow up unless he stopped smoking... Dad quit that very day and never smoked again. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.

Because Dad devoted his life to his family, I can tell you that even though today marks 16 years since he died, his wife and children have remembered him every day since. Mom dreams of him often, and his memory also still impacts the lives of his grandchildren.

In the end, this is what I admire most about Dad. He was bigger than life. He has lived on at least 16 years after his death.

To this day, the memory of him haunts me, and inspires me, and drives me to try to be a better person.

Laurel Grove Cemetery, today in Totowa.

Thank You to a Friend (In Praise of Mel Stottlemyre)

I visited my friend Paul Macchia yesterday, and he remembered that Mel Stottlemyre was one of my favorite baseball players. So he gave me a Stottlemyre 1989 Bowman card (when he was a Mets coach) and an autograph Mel had signed for him years ago.

Thank you, Paul!

I admired Mel because my Dad admired him. As a 13-year-old, Dad (who passed away 16 years ago this month) was already pitching semi-pro baseball, thanks to a wicked sinkerball he had mastered.

Years later, when I was pitching in Little League, Dad would hold up Mel as a model of how to throw a sinker. I, of course, wanted to throw something more exotic. "How do I throw a gopher ball?" I naively asked Dad. He laughed and replied, "Just keep doing what you're doing, son."

Mel's autograph now holds an honored spot beneath Rusty Staub's on top of my grandfather's old dresser. Also in the photo here is a recent, thoughtful handwritten note from Mets GM Sandy Alderson to my wife Nancy, who had written him about this year's "thumbs down" controversy.

I posted information about Dad's baseball career here two years ago.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Summer has come and passed, and this past month has gone so fast.

It began with the rain in New York...

Which flooded parts of my hometown in New Jersey...

I was moved by the quick action of many neighbors to help those in need.

Days later, the banks of the Hackensack River, whose high tides had been unforgiving, looked idyllically lush...

The juxtaposition between New York and New Jersey seemed heightened in September...

... The stark differences between looking up past the eagle guarding Grand Central Terminal and the gathering crowd at the Mets/Yankee game on the evening of September 11, and looking down Van Houten Avenue in Clifton after Sunday brunch or a lonely visit to the new sculpture garden at the New Milford Library.

I love these contrasts in my daily life.

Later in September, on a return visit to Citi Field, my wife and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary with family and friends. I didn't ask for the OK to post photos, so here's simply the back of my daughter's jersey (I'm wearing the "Varettoni 35" jersey, a great gift from my great friend Joe). My daughter had the jersey made in honor of my late Dad, who was nicknamed "Chick" when he played semi-pro ball...

I celebrated my birthday on Sept. 27 by watching the sun rise on the beach at Asbury Park...

And, finally, on Sept. 29, our family attended a wake in Tenafly at dusk to celebrate the life of a remarkable woman, Carmen Unanue. May her memory be eternal.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at New York (Happy Birthday, Wallace Stevens)

If social media has taught me one thing about life, it's to reaffirm how ordinary I am.

Which is why one of my favorite writers is Wallace Stevens, an ordinary life insurance executive who wrote some of the world's most extraordinary poems.

It's his 142nd birthday today.

I love the fact that Stevens spent the bulk of his career as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. He used to scribble notes for poems on his walk to work every day in Connecticut. I often do the same while sitting in the back seat of a New Jersey Transit bus.

Often, I also take cell phone photos. So during the pandemic I paired some of my images of New York with haikus.

I thought this was unique. But then, as I've learned, I'm never unique.

Some quick Internet research shows that The New York Times asked readers to write haikus about the city and received thousands of submissions for National Poetry Month in April 2014. This was subsequently turned into a book.

Even more recently, in April 2021, Peter C. Goldmark Jr. (retired president of the Rockefeller Foundation and executive director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) published "Haikus for New York City," featuring illustrations by his daughter.

Still, in the spirit of the birthday poet -- who lived in New York from 1900 to 1916 and who, like me, always loved the city... I offer this tribute to him today.

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at New York During Pandemic 

(With apologies

to poet Wallace Stevens.

Photos/haikus, mine)

I

Stars on the ceiling.

Passing souls on marble floors.

Virus fills the air.

II

Cotton candy skies.

42nd Street in March.

Clouds, before the storm.

 

III

Buildings filled with light.

The Queensboro Bridge in pearls.

Cars hasting nowhere.

 

IV

Found hidden in Queens.

New York in miniature,

still larger than life.

 

V (after E.B. White)

New York compresses

all life into a small space,

adds music. A poem.

 

VI

Greetings from Ghost Town.

Shadows among the living.

Invisible. Times Square.

 

VII

Fifth Avenue saints.

The enemies of darkness

gathering at dusk.

 

VIII

Fountains, flags, and lights.

"Anarchist Jurisdiction,"

a riot of hope.

 

IX

East 43rd Street.

Relentless, billowing steam

stirs man's shuffling pace.

 

X

Fish out of water.

Whimsy turns the dim world pink.

Park Avenue art.

 

XI

Buildings watch me walk.

I look up and catch their stare.

Nosy, jealous glass.

 

XII

Unlit Christmas tree,

an emperor without clothes,

awaits the spotlight.

 

XIII

Forgotten men find

a marble sanctuary

on beds of cardboard.

Why I Love New York (in 21 seconds)

This is why I love New York.

I went for a lunchtime walk last week and was able to touch the ‘86 World Series trophy, say hello to Mr. Met, watch artist Joe Petruccio at work, buy a 35th anniversary t-shirt for Nancy, see the KAWS sculpture on temporary display at Rockefeller Center, and stroll down Broadway as David Byrne’s “American Utopia” prepared for its reopening this weekend and where Carmine’s restaurant proudly rolled out a red carpet to welcome back customers for the first time since the pandemic.

 

20 Years Later, 9/11 Remembered

Empty Sky Memorial, Liberty State Park, NJ, 2020

I'm reposting this from last year, having again updated a Pinterest site of photos and stories recalling my former Verizon colleagues and their heroic response to 9/11. You can reach it at https://www.pinterest.com/bvar/verizons-response-to-911/.

Included is a booklet from 2005 about the history and recovery of 140 West Street, the old headquarters building that was severely damaged at Ground Zero... and from which workers snaked temporary cables from open windows to get the New York Stock Exchange up and running just days later, beginning our national recovery.

Here are links to a half dozen related personal posts on this site (from most recent to oldest):

• 9/11: A Lesson in Accountability
• Revisiting My 9/11 Diary Pages
• New Insights on Verizon's 9/11 Recovery Efforts
• A New Generation Runs to a Crisis
• 9/11 Memoirs of an Invisible Man
• How Long Until the Elmos Show Up at Ground Zero?

My friend, Fay Shapiro, also kindly published this and other posts from PR people on the CommPro.biz site earlier today.

I hope you can make sense of it all.

Even 20 years later, I can't.

Three Lives That Touched Thousands

July 2021 was a month of remembrance... and discovery.

Remembrance of two people who died recently, and another who died last year.

Discovery, in thinking about them and in reading obituary details, of how great an impact their individual lives had on so many others.

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First, summoning the memory Msgr. Eugene Boland, I recall a priest who was my mother's pastor for many years and also the best friend of my beloved uncle.

At Msgr. Boland's funeral Mass at St. James in Totowa, I learned that his middle name was Mary -- which he was very proud of. It engendered his a lifelong devotion to the mother of Jesus.

His other two lifelong devotions were, first, to his extended parish family at St. James, where, according to Msgr. Boland's obituary, he baptized 1,364 infants, witnessed 470 marriages, administered First Holy Eucharist to 2,864 children, attended 37 confirmations, and grieved with 1,249 families. And, second, to his family and homeland in Ireland.

His funeral Mass was streamed so that so many back home could also take part. If you turn up the volume, you can hear and view the touching eulogy by his niece Noreen at the 22:30 mark.

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Second, summoning the memory of Gerald M. Costello, I recall an editor who recommended me for my first job in journalism, and who subsequently hired me twice.

I learned much about Jerry this month, especially that I was hardly the only one whose career he had sponsored... including my friend Monica, who sat next to me at the funeral, and the Catholic Standard reporter in the pew behind us, and the many others who posted similar expressions of thanks on social media.

Jerry Costello's obituary, written by his daughter Eileen, was wonderfully detailed. His eulogy, delivered by his son Bob, focused on the impact of Jerry's life on his six children, 21 grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Bob also spoke of Jerry's love of music (which I had not known about), concluding with lyrics from Dan Fogelberg's "Leader of the Band" and applause from the congregation.

The photo here, from the funeral Mass program, includes Jerry's written reflection as he neared the end of his life and battled with Parkinson's disease.

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Finally, summoning the memory of Arthur Leon Samuels, I recall my violin teacher who died last year.

Last November, a reading of Art Samuels' obituary inspired me to post a tribute to him here, reflecting on lessons he taught me that went well beyond music.

Early this July, I received an email from Project Write Now, a New Jersey nonprofit working to transform individuals, organizations, and communities through writing. It excited me to learn that on the third Friday of every month during the pandemic this organization has been hosting a Zoom Open Mic for writers to share their original works.

I edited my tribute to Art down to 750 words and gave the reading below on July 16, with the slow movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, playing in the background.

Bob Varettoni · Violin Reading

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With that, I'm taking a break from posting on social media in this wistful month of August 2021.

See you in September!

See the Sculpture Garden Blooming in Mid-Manhattan

In this summer of a zombie virus that doesn't die, the streets of mid-Manhattan can offer a bit of inspiration and beauty and hope.

I commute into New York City a few days a week, and here are some images of the unique sculpture garden I've found in walking to the office and at lunch.

Beginning at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where "The Commuters" by George Segal depicts three people waiting for the same bus since 1980, and it's perpetually 3 o'clock...

Outside the terminal, an 8-foot-tall bronze statue of Jackie Gleason, clad in his Honeymooners bus driver's uniform, looks out over Eighth Avenue, in a statue by Larry Nowlan, "Presented by the People of TV Land."

Heading east, past The New York Times building, I'm reminded of Dad. He spent many years working in the building behind the statue here. The aptly-for-Dad named "Guardian Superhero" is one of a pair of 13-foot statues by Antonio Pio Saracino at the entrances on either side of the plaza behind 3 Bryant Park.

Wandering north to Seventh and 53rd, there's a sign of hope, literally, courtesy of Robert Indiana. We're not in Philadelphia anymore... 

And then back down to Rockefeller Center, where Tom Friedman encourages everyone to "Look Up."

Head south to Grand Central Terminal (one of my favorite places in the city) to see the new kid in town: the towering One Vanderbilt skyscraper. Its soaring lobby, still locked and opposite the terminal, houses this twisting, reflective, untitled 2020 sculpture by Tony Cragg.

Nearby, along Park Avenue, I'm happy to see dog and rabbit still having coffee together at “The Table of Love,” a private commission at 237 Park by Gillie and Marc Schattner, perhaps the city's most prolific creators of public art. Two empty seats invite others to join them.

Further up along the avenue are two whimsical giants by Kaws, the artist Brian Donnelly. The pink one (my favorite) is called "BFF" (at 280 Park), and just a few blocks north "WHAT PARTY" stalks the entrance to the Seagram Building.

I do eventually arrive at work. Here's "Contrappunto," an older sculpture (1963) by Beverly Pepper, outside my office building at 777 Third Ave.

But then, at lunchtime, I'm back on the streets heading further east, toward the United Nations sculpture garden. It's still locked, but you can stick your cell phone between the bars of the gates to get a clear view of "Good Defeats Evil" by Zurab Tsereteli, with a dragon depicting a nuclear warhead.

Then I wander back, past Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where three works by Jim Rennert are on temporary display until late August: "Timing," "Inner Dialog" and "Commute."

No sculpture garden is complete without a water feature... like the waterfall tucked between buildings on East 51st Street, between Second and Third, a beautiful place called Green Acre Park.

Here are related posts about sculpture gardens in New Jersey: Grounds for Sculpture and a vest-pocket park in Teaneck.

Van Gogh, the Brand: Pictures at an Exhibition

I love technology; I love New York; I love art museums; I love taking photos; I love date night.

So I eagerly purchased tickets to attend one of the various “immersive Van Gogh” experiences now popping up everywhere following the wildly successful Atelier des Lumières installation in Paris in 2018.

People I admire whose opinion I respect have also wholeheartedly recommended a visit.

Since I find it hard to be wholehearted about anything, I wanted to post these thoughts about my visit last night. Most of the images speak for themselves.

Yes, I’d go again: It’s great for date night. I imagine, earlier in the day, lots of loud, happy children running around, but that’s OK too. I would have loved the opportunity to have taken my daughters to something like this when they were young.

Bottom line: It’s an Instagram and people-watching paradise.

Entrance, left; gift shop, right.

I’d temper expectations, though, with these half-dozen observations:

• It’s essentially a high-tech slideshow (reminding me of the highly choreographed July 4 fireworks displays).
• It’s not totally “immersive” (with all the pedestrian activity and curtains and pipes and scaffolding and neon Exit signs).
• Mind all the wandering people holding up cell phones (including me!).
• Mind all the restless people on never-ending searches for the best seat in the house (it’s all pretty much the same, but I admire their motivation).
• There’s an app for all this (and it’s quite good, too).
• There’s a gift shop about the size of half a football field (peppered with AR app-enabled activations), and prix-fixe $36 parking at the Pier 36 site.

That last is the point that disheartened me: all the commercialism, all the Van Gogh-branded merchandise.

Van Gogh’s work is now in the public domain — unlike all the Instagram photos taken at the exhibit that Mark Zuckerberg probably now owns.

A half dozen promoters of expensive, immersive Van Gogh exhibits are now profiting off the work of an artist who only sold one painting during his lifetime.

I went to the “original” exhibit at Pier 36 near South Street Seaport. I won’t risk copyright infringement by mentioning the exact name. Rest assured, there’s another similar immersive Van Gogh exhibit on the other side of Manhattan on Vesey Street, or coming soon to a town near you.

Juxtapose this commercialization of the artist with this sentimental, often-viewed video clip from a 2010 BBC episode of “Doctor Who”:

I get — and applaud — that immersive art exhibits are tantalizing glimpses of the quality of the entertainment and educational experiences made possible by technology.

I just don’t get the same connection to the source.

Not everything is a show, and Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t a brand. His painting of crows over a cornfield in Arles has long had deep personal meaning.

To me, it had always been a suicide note somehow translated to canvas.

Until last night, when it was just another Instagram post:

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A post shared by Bob Varettoni (@bvarphotos)

PS- Sometimes the view outside the exhibit is just as lovely.