CONNIE MARIE DiSIPIO WILLIAMS
DR. CONCETTA CONSTANCE CONNIE MARIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS
November 7, 1938 to September 26, 2007
Dr. Connie Williams, 68, born Concetta Constance Marie DiSipio in Pueblo, Colorado, November 7, 1938, passed away September 26, 2007 at Crystal Care Center in Crystal, Minnesota. She had been ill for one year with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
Connie, a 40-year Grand Forks, North Dakota resident and renowned animal lover, is remembered as one of the founders of the Grand Forks Humane Society. Connie was an "Avon Lady" for more than 25 years, and also was a worker and hostess at various restaurants, most recently Kentucky Fried Chicken. Connie Williams, a prolific writer, who called herself a "pioneer and survivor", experienced the Grand Forks Great Flood of 1997 and wrote a book, "How to Survive a Flood and Other Disasters."
A scholar, Ms. Williams, a Pueblo, Colorado Central High School 1956 Top Ten graduate and school vice president and a Pueblo Junior College Homecoming Queen and graduate in 1958, continued her under-graduate and much of her graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado (Colorado State Teachers College) in Greeley, Colorado in the 1960's. In 1970, Connie earned a PhD in Counseling at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks.
She worked in several positions at UND, including working at the Counseling Center, teaching child development in the Home Economics Department and teaching mental health nursing in the College of Nursing. Dr. Connie Williams co-authored a book on mental health nursing.
Connie, who truly loved animals, owned hundreds of cats and many other pets over her lifetime and advocated for humane treatment of all animals. She was named Grand Forks Humane Society Humanitarian of the Year of 1975.
Dr. Connie Williams is survived by a daughter, Diane (Kim) Windingland, Rogers, Minnesota; a son, Brian (Penny) Williams, Red Lake Falls, Minnesota; grandchildren, Sean Windingland, Clara Windingland, Yuri Windingland, Carly Williams and Cody Landman; a sister, Pauline DiSipio, Montrose, Colorado; ex-husband John Delane Williams, Ocean Park, Washington; special friend Marilyn Woolsey, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Connie is survived by her last pet, her beloved Cat named Tuffy.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents, Anthony and Dorothy Passanante DiSipio, her stillborn brother, and other family members, including many beloved pets.
No Services, per her request.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Grand Forks Humane Society.
INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS – 2001
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Interview By Pauline Annette DiSipio Pueblo, Colorado:
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Representing the DiSipio Family is Connie DiSipio Williams. Ph.D, who recalls a childhood filled with "Precious Memories", those special years of growing up on Elm Street in Pueblo, Colorado.
Concetta Maria DiSipio, or Constance (Connie) Marie, was born November 7, 1938 to Antonio (Anthony, Tony) DiSipio and Dorotea (Dorothy, Delia, Dea) Passanante DiSipio of 732 Elm Street, which was next door to the Passanante house at 736 Elm Street. Both houses belonged to the bride's (Dorothy) Parents who were fulfilling a tradition by helping their daughter and husband get started in life.
Baby "Concettina's" birth took place at old St. Mary's Hospital on Quincy Street in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1940, 716 Elm Street became the DiSipio Family Home. Connie's Baptismal Godparents were her Uncle Carl (Charlie, Slew) Passanante and her Aunt Rosaria (Sarah) Passanante.
Connie's first of two memories is that of "Mama rocking me in a creaky rocking chair, holding me close to her breast and singing lullabies to me." Connie cites "Rock-a-Bye Baby" and "City of David" and mentions "Mom's soothing beautiful voice, and even better, a wonderful hearty laugh!" A second memory (before age 2) is that of next-door neighbor Donald Landorf holding Little Connie while he was visiting at 716 Elm Street.
"Most of the relatives lived on the same block or a block away," Connie points out the closeness of the Family. Grandma Passanante's grocery store at the upper end of our 700 block is recalled. "My favorite candy," Connie has a sweet memory, "were those licorice soft babies which sold for 5 cents each!"
A funny experience (funny now, not then!) happened to Connie when she was about five or six years old. Connie recalls … "I climbed up into the medicine cabinet where I found a box of Ex-Lax, a popular chocolate laxative. Thinking that it was a Hershey bar, I consumed the entire box! I was a sick little girl for two weeks!"
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Those "little rubber babies" at Woolworth's looked mighty good to little Connie, so good that, at age 5 or 6, she slipped two of those little tiny pink naked rubber babies into her coat pocket! Pangs of guilt, even at that early age, got the best of Connie. When she confessed to Mama, they promptly took the streetcar back downtown to that store! Connie, giving the babies back to the saleslady, told her that she was sorry for taking them. Her reward for telling the truth was that the saleslady let her keep the little rubber babies.
Connie remembers riding the streetcar with Mama downtown to shop. "The streetcar was an old-fashioned cable car that ran on rails in the middle of the streets," Connie describes a major mode of transportation at that time.
Connie's first "dolly" now sits in her bedroom at her home in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Though her dolly's clothes are no longer new (a torn pink dress, torn bonnet and bare feet), Dolly still has her "pretty face and big brown eyes".
Several "service men" are remembered by Connie. "I remember the mailman, the milk man, the sheeny man who was a junk collector with his donkey and cart, the coal man who brought us coal for our stoves, the ice man who brought blocks of ice for our 'ice box', and the ice cream man with his musical cart and whistle." Connie continues with a laugh, "I remember everyone laughing when I asked the ice cream man if I could see his 'birdie' (whistle)!"
In those early years, Connie states that Mama did not work outside the home. Later, Mom got a job in the Old Neighborhood at LaTronica's Restaurant, located on Abriendo Avenue five or six blocks from the DiSipio house. Dad worked at the steel mill (Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation) first in the Open Hearth, then in the Blast Furnace Department. The mill was about a mile from our house. "I remember Dad calling himself a 'grease monkey'!" Connie recalls.
Dad was hired in 1936 before he and Mom were married. At that time he was living on Routt Avenue in the Bessemer area of Pueblo and was boarding with the Mauro Family. He and John Mauro were good friends. Dad walked to the mill and back again for several years. His father Angelo
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DiSipio also "boarded" and worked at the mill. Dad and Mom met in the Old Neighborhood. When DiSipio, who was Abruzzese (Abruzza, Abruzzi, Italy) would go to Passanante's Grocery Store to buy cigarettes, he would wink at the pretty Sicilian (Sicily, Italy) lady named "Delia Passanante" who waited on him from behind the counter! It was on November 21, 1937 that they were married at Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Pueblo.
Mama told Pauline that Daddy's DiSipio Family lived on Elm Street when Daddy was a little boy, and it was later in the back yard of 736 Elm Street (the Passanante home later) where Daddy fell from an apple tree while playing with a friend! He had shown Mama his scar many times as he told the story. A Pueblo City Directory from 1916 confirms that Angelo and Concetta DiSipio lived at 1017 Elm Street, The directory also states that Angelo DiSipio was a steelworker.
It was in 1939 that Grandpa Angelo DiSipio left Pueblo for the last time to join his wife Concetta in the mountain village of Civitella Messer Raimondo, the Province of Chieti in the Region of Abruzzi in Central Italy. Although he spent many hours with Connie and watched her take her first steps. Grandfather DiSipio is not in Connie's memory. There is a snapshot of Grandpa DiSipio at the Pueblo Union Depot train station in 1939 before he got on the train. Baby Connie and her Mama are in the photo with Grandpa Angelo. Also pictured are Grandma Paolina Passanante (Mama Dea's Mama), Uncle Jack (Chase) Passanante and Uncle Slew Passanante, Cousin Lucille Capozzola and Compare and Comare Raffaele (Ralph) and Carmela (Carm Dorazio) Sarlo. That was 1939. And Grandfather Angelo never returned to the United States. But, many letters were written to his son Tony DiSipio and Family.
Connie remembers the early morning hours when Mama used to drive Daddy to work at the mill. A '38 Chrysler was the family's first car, replaced in the '50's by a DeSoto. Mom and Dad both taught Connie to drive. Connie recalls, " Mom learned to drive first, then she taught Dad how to drive, and later they taught me how to drive."
"I remember," says Connie, "the coal and wood stove used for cooking in our kitchen. It was used to heat water and provide warmth." Connie tells about the many wonderful meals cooked on that old coal stove. She remembers the warmth it gave while she was being bathed in an iron tub set on two chairs right next to the stove. Connie remembers 4 of 16 kerosene heaters placed in a very cold bathroom that housed a deep, four-footed porcelain bathtub.
As a baby and again as a young child, Connie had the "mal occhio", which Connie terms as a "state of affairs creating violent headaches and incessant pain, abruptly initiated by someone with evil intentions who was staring at you!!" There was an old Italian (Sicilian) woman on "Goat Hill" who put a bowl of water on Connie's head and a water glass turned upside down. There was a burning candle in the glass. After circling her hands in prayer above Connie's head, she would pray and chant" in Italian (Sicilian). The "evil" spell of the "Bad Eye" (Mal Occhio) would be broken when the water from the bowl would rise into the overturned glass, extinguishing the candle, thereby ending the mal occhio.
A milestone in young Connie's early years was going to kindergarten at Strack School, where her teacher was Mrs. Slayden (Slayton). In the band, Connie played both tambourine and triangle. Connie's two kindergarten boyfriends were Charles Delpapa and Joe Pannunzio. A second milestone was First Holy Communion. Connie's Confirmation sponsor a few years later was Elm Street neighbor Mary "Sister" Runco.
"Christmas in early childhood was so very special with the lights, the wreaths in our windows, snowflakes drifting down, the beautiful tree with all the gifts, and the warm resounding music of our player piano rolls, Mom's singing, or radio music that heralded in the holiday spirit!" Connie creates a holiday picture of a most special time in her life. That player piano was a Packard, made in Fort Wayne, Indiana in either 1907 or 1909. We had about 300 piano rolls! Along with Christmas carols, Pauline remembers peddling to and singing some favorites … "Paper Doll", "Sidewalks of New York", "Chicago", "Witching Waves", "Colorado", "Beautiful Ohio", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and a BIG piano roll titled "Bugle Calls and War Songs"! Most of those piano rolls were made in the first or second decade of the 1900's. That player piano came with the house when Mom and Dad bought it from Mr. and Mrs. Sharpsteen in 1940. The player piano was willed to Pauline, who gave it to her niece Diane Williams Windingland,
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daughter of Connie and John Delane Williams. Dad's old tool collection, including several antique saws, went to Brian Troy Williams, son of Connie and John Delane Williams.
Examining a photograph from 1948, Connie and Pauline reminisce about Connie's Birthday Party when she was 10 years old. That photo was taken in front of 716 Elm Street in Pueblo, and Connie is pictured with some special kids from the Old Neighborhood. Helping Connie celebrate her 10th Birthday Party were "Dee Dee" Jaramillo, Pauline Louise Rusovick, Joe Patti, Joe Hurd, Chuck Delpapa, Tom Clementi, Andy "Sonny Boy" "Butch" Rusovick, Irene Aragon, Cecelia Kaye Townsend Passanante, Joan Nina Iacabone, Shirley Simmons, Beatrice "Bootie" Jaramillo, Ernest Vergilio, Sammy Spoone, (Carl) Anthony Capozzola, Marcia Brothers, Mary Pisciotte, Josephine "Baby Doll" Amore, Lillian "Babe" Sciortino, Sammy Sciortino, Jackie Dwain Passanante, Carl Jess Passanante, Pauline Annette DiSipio … and the Birthday Girl Constance Marie (Connie) DiSipio, kneeling and holding her Birthday Cake!
Fourth of July was special where on the hill by Sawyer's house overlooking the Arkansas River, the "Grove" and the Runyon Baseball Field, Connie and her cousin (and next-door neighbor) Kaye Passanante, and neighbor from across the alley Pauline Rusovick and best friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik all voted on favorite fireworks displays! Getting back for a moment to "Sawyer's house", Connie describes Mrs. Sawyer. "She was the matriarch of her family with the southern plantation style dress and speech. 'Miss Dea', 'Mr. Tony', 'Miss Connie' and 'Miss Pauline' … that is how Mrs. Sawyer addressed us." Connie remembers, allowing a memory to be resurrected for Pauline, who remembers the black family with fondness.
Connie and her sister Pauline, born in 1944, loved the Abbott and Costello movies, "The Little Match Girl", and Charlie Chan movies in the early Fifties! Connie went to see the "Superman" series with her friend Joan Iacabone. The series was every Saturday for fourteen weeks at the Uptown Theater in the Mesa Junction area of Pueblo. Tickets were 14
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cents and the final show was free if all thirteen series were attended! Connie missed one of the Saturdays because she was sick. Feeling heartbroken about not getting to see the last one, Connie says, "I got my little scissors out and cut a star-shaped punch for the one I missed!"
Going to baseball games at Runyon Field in Pueblo was one of Connie's favorite activities! A fan of the Pueblo Dodgers, Connie kept a scrapbook and had an autograph book with the players' signatures! "I went to all the games and listened to the out-of-town games on the radio! "Team manager," remembers Connie "was Ray Hathaway, and the shortstop's name was Kenny Lehman."
Keeping scrapbooks on movie stars was a popular pastime for Connie, Kaye and Carol. Connie's favorite movie star was Tab Hunter. (Today Connie likes Clint Eastwood!) Kaye's favorite movie star was Robert Wagner. And Carol's favorite movie star was Rock Hudson. Jeffrey Hunter was cited as another Favorite along with Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, Natalie Wood and Esther Williams. "You look like Elizabeth Taylor!" Pauline tells Connie.
When television became popular in the 1950's, two of Connie's favorite "never-miss" shows were "Liberace", and "Your Hit Parade".
Pauline was a "tag-along" in those early years (and probably later, too!) She accompanied Connie, Cousin Kaye Passanante, Carol Kacnik, Pauline Rusovick, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on many of their ventures. Connie even had a seat on the back of her Hawthorne bicycle where Pauline remembers riding with her legs sticking out so they wouldn't get caught in the spokes! Connie was glad when Pauline got her own Schwinn bicycle!
Aunts and Uncles are mentioned by Connie. Occasional family reunions included the Passanante, Luppino, Capozzola and Coffee Families. "Uncle Joe, Uncle Charlie (Carl, Slew), Uncle Jack, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Rena, Aunt Irene, Aunt Rose, Aunt Jackie, Uncle Mike and Uncle Dominick," Connie names her Pueblo, Colorado aunts and uncles (all on her Mama's side of the family). Connie says that she never met any of Dad's sisters, their spouses or cousins on the DiSipio side of the family.
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Connie's "peer cousins" were Kaye, Lucille and Anthony Capozzola. Andy ("Sonny" "Butch") Rusovick was a peer third cousin as his Mother Nina Luppino Rusovick and our Mama Dea Passanante DiSipio were first cousins. "I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes from my cousin Lucille," says Connie. Lucille was the first-born grandchild of Carlo (Cologero, Calogero) Passanante and Paolina (Paola, Pauline) Luppino Passanante.
Besides the black family from the South, which included Mrs. Sawyer, Henry, "Little Joe", Eva and Mattie Lou, there were other "memorables of an ethnically mixed neighborhood" mentioned by Connie. "Mike Uhal and his family, the Hinds, Sagonas, Jaramillos, Runcos, Luceros, Sciortinos, Morenos, Uriostes, Landorfs, Rusovicks, Passanantes and the Capozzolas." The Lucero children that Connie remembers the most are Gloria, Madeline, Barney and Orlando.
"We made fun out of the stuff in life that's free, like finding four-leaf clovers, making cloud pictures, hand shadow figures on the bedroom wall, telling stories especially GHOST stories like 'Bloody Bones'!" says Connie who says that fun doesn't have to cost money. Connie acknowledges the resourcefulness of yesterday's children. "Friends and families were on 'hunts'," Connie continues, "like rock hunts, colored glass hunts and grasshopper hunts!" Connie names other fun activities, "There were melted crayons, coloring books, water colors, easel painting, piano rolls, softball, Kick the Can, Hide and Go Seek, jump rope and embroidering! Card games like Rummy, Canasta and Briscola were fun, too!" Pauline comments remembering the early childhood simple card games like Book and War.
Connie goes on, "There were tricycles, bicycles, rollerskating with old-fashioned skate keys, wagons, pony rides … all part of this era." Connie goes on naming a wealth of activities … hopscotch, hangman, tic-tac-toe, the parks, the zoo and Monkey Mountain, the circus, Colorado State Fair, church festivals, comic books, marbles, jacks, ping pong (table tennis), paddle balls, yo-yo's, collecting trinkets, jigsaw puzzles, paper dolls, Chinese checkers, checkers, bingo, fiddlesticks, Monopoly, blow bubbles, bubble gum like Fleer's with comic wraps and Double Bubble Gum!
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There was no lack of things to do or places to go! In the radio, Connie listened to Hopalong Cassidy, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, My True Story, The Thin Man, The Shadow and Inner Sanctum. At this point Connie names the four movie theaters in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. "There were the 'Clyne' and 'Avalon' in the Bessemer District, the 'Uptown' in the Mesa Junction segment of town, and the 'Main' Theater downtown." Pauline thinks that the Main Theater was later called the Chief, and she remembers in later years in the Bessemer area the Victory Theater which showed Spanish-speaking movies.
Connie and Pauline both joined the "Y" for awhile and "tried " to learn how to swim. Connie was better at it than Pauline. We both decided that eating was more fun than trying to learn how to swim! One of Connie's favorite "hangouts" was Mesa Snack for great hamburgers with grilled onions! A favorite of mine, too!
There was Marshall's Drugstore in Bessemer for a LARGE bottle of Pepsi for 5 cents. There were three straws, shared by Connie, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on the way home from Bessemer Grade School! Pauline remembers going to Marshall's often in the '50's for ice cream cones with her friend and classmate Irene Julia Chavez, and sometimes with her friends Jessie Mae Ballagut and Marlene Todero.
Connie now names Sambo's Popcorn Shop (owned by Sam Corsentino who has since passed away) in the Mesa Junction where we went for "sherbert" (sherbet), cotton candy, candied apples and snow cones (sno-cones). Pauline remembers a "Patsy's" doll which was a chef with a white cap and a mustache! He was turning a crank of some kind … for taffy … ? … Pauline's memory is vague on this one. Melvin's Chicken was another favorite "hang-out" and eating place for Connie where she enjoyed eating "Chicken in a Basket" with Mom and Pauline.
When Connie was about fourteen years old, she experienced her first "true love". His name was Wayne Latka, her "heart throb" who was fifteen years old. They went steady for eight months. Connie recalls, "It was an innocent romance, with a total of four kisses … his birthday, my birthday, Christmas and Easter. Wayne gave me a beautiful gold cross necklace
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which I still have." Connie has nice memories of that special time in her life.
"These were the days of poodle skirts, gaucho belts, saddle shoes, scarves worn around the neck, squaw dresses, patio dresses and turtleneck sweaters! These were the times of the 50's music, Elvis, Rock'n Roll, the 'Bop', Bill Haley and the Comets, the Beatles … and 'Rock Around the Clock'!" Connie paints a picture of the 1950's.
Connie took both piano and violin lessons, but says that her "teachers always died". The last violin teacher Connie remembers was Mr. Hardwick. Music was important to the DiSipio Family. Connie gives another example, "Dad had a part-time job at KDZA Radio Station where he hosted an Italian music show on which he spoke and announced both in English and Italian and which featured dozens of Italian records! Mr. Dee Crouch was his manager. We also became friends with the 'Italian Nationals' – the DiMeglio Family, which included Ciro, Mary and son Mario. They were a very colorful and musical family!"
Connie's memory is serving her well! Connie, Joan Iacabone and Michael Dalio were on a local radio program where Connie sang the then popular song, "Because of You" and also sang the "Alphabet Song". (Connie sang both of them complete and with perfect pitch, vibrato and rich tone on the telephone for me while we were talking long distance one night!)
Not only is Connie a musician, she is also an artist! I remember all the animals she would draw, especially mountain lions and horses! And she had a painting kit with an easel and palette! A unique skill of hers was drawing cartoon comics on rolls of adding machine paper! (Those rolls probably came from Grandma and Grandpa Passanante's grocery store.) She still has those rolls of artwork!
Wine-making allows memories to surface for Connie … "I loved to watch Grandpa in his hip boots crushing the grapes in the trough and pouring the juice into barrels to ferment! One glass of Grandpa Passanante's wine would literally knock me out!" Connie tells of the potency and richness of Grandpa's homemade wine.
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Grandma had chickens in her back yard, and Pauline remembers getting too close once while watching Grandma clean a chicken! Pauline ran home crying!
Connie shares a warm memory, "I remember going to Grandma's house some nights and falling asleep to the chatter of busy voices in Italian … and some very loud card games! Grandma Passanante always served her homemade biscuits (biscotti) and coffee."
Grapevines, a very special fig tree (from Sicily), the smell of boiling tomatoes for canning, and "babalucci" snails scooting along the kitchen walls are some of Pauline's memories of 736 Elm Street, Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Pauline especially remembers, "Grandma had a 'weather station' sitting on her kitchen window sill. It was a small house about six inches high with a witch on one side and Hansel and Gretel on the other side. When the witch came out, it was going to be cold, stormy or rainy. Hansel and Gretel coming forward meant it would be a nice day!" Pauline was captivated with that "magical" barometer!
Grandpa "Nonnu" Passanante worked at the steel mill. In addition to wine-making, he tended a big vegetable garden in the middle of the 700 block of Elm Street. Both Grandma and Grandpa belonged to Italian and Catholic lodges. Mostly Grandma.
Connie now names some areas past the Old Bessemer Neighborhood and heading toward downtown. There were Mesa Junction, Union Avenue and Main Street. Connie and Pauline both remember "dragging Main" during their high school years. "The Grove District down by the Arkansas River and the railroad tracks, " Connie claims, "made 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' Series as Pueblo, Colorado being the only city where 3 churches were found on three of four corners, all adjacent." Connie goes on naming … "Mount Carmel Catholic Church for the Italians and Spanish, St. Anthony's Catholic Church for the Czechoslovakians ('Slovaks'), and the third church was either a Russian Orthodox Church or St. Mary's Catholic Church for the Slavic people,
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Yugoslavians, Slovenians."
Connie attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Churches in Pueblo, and she would sometimes go to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the Grove with her friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik. Pauline remembers going with Connie and Carol to St. Anthony's Church and watching the Arkansas River flow beneath as she looked through the cracks between the rotting floor boards of that old bridge! That was a pretty scary walk for Pauline, six years younger than Connie! Both Connie and Pauline sang in Assumption Catholic Church choir. Assumption Church was nearby on the 900 block of Evans Avenue. Connie was Pauline's Confirmation sponsor, and Pauline took Connie's middle name "Marie" for her Confirmation name.
Pueblo schools attended by Connie were Strack (formerly Danforth), Bessemer, Keating Junior High School, Central High School and Pueblo College. Connie was an "A" student and a good speller. However, Connie has a sad memory of misspelling a word in a spelling bee. "I remember going down in a spelling bee when I missed the word 'ecclesiastical'," recalls Connie in a voice that still tells of disappointment.
Connie DiSipio was a member of many clubs and organizations, the recipient of many awards and was vice president of the student body of Pueblo Central High School, 1955 – 1956. Joe Hurd was president of the student body. Pauline recalls that DeSoto Jordan was the student body president at Central, 1961 – 1962, during Pauline's senior year there.
Pauline remembers the joy and tears of happiness expressed by Mom and especially Dad when Connie was crowned Homecoming Queen at Pueblo Junior College for 1957 – 1958!
Connie now shares a humorous incident that happened when she was a junior in high school, a memory that brings a smile to her face. "I had to cross a vacant lot on my way home from school. Loaded down with books, I trudged along and suddenly heard what sounded like thundering hooves of horses!" When Connie looked behind her, she saw the Central Baseball Team working out, running track right down her path! "They seemed to come out of nowhere! All of a sudden, I was leading the pack, running with all my might until I finally got out of their way!"
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Going to the Senior Prom on a double date with the twins Bob and Joe Hughes, was a highlight for Connie. "I was Bob's date, and Rayetta Arnold was Joe's date."
A Knights of Columbus picnic when she was "sweet sixteen" was where Connie met her future husband, John Delane Williams. "We dated for a year, went steady for a year, were engaged for a year and married September 6, 1958." John graduated in 1956 from Pueblo Catholic High School where he played football. To Connie and John (who were divorced in 1979) were born Diane and Brian. Diane and her husband Kim Windingland have two children, Sean and Clara, and they live in Rogers, Minnesota. Brian lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and is engaged to Penny Landman, who has a son named Cody. Brian and Penny plan to marry in August of 2002.
John, Ph.D., works full-time at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) and part-time with his wife Jole, Ph.D. in her psychology business. John and Jole have a son Delane Williams who plays on a junior hockey team in Minnesota. There is another family member not to be left out … a cat named Tommy!
"I was in theater in both high school and junior college and played lead roles," Connie tells of another skill and talent of hers! "The only play title I remember was 'Seven Keys to Baldpate'. Dean Wenstrom was theater instructor in junior college at that time."
"Uncles in the United States Army … letters sent home … rationing of food and gas and other commodities (like sugar) ...recession … hard times..." these are some of Connie's memories of World War II, which ended in 1945 when Connie was about seven years old. Connie can still picture the RCA Victrola and can sing many of the words and tunes to special war songs, like "Dear Mom" and "I Remember Pearl Harbor"! Connie remembers the photographs of Uncle Charlie, Uncle Jack and Uncle Joe, all in their military uniforms.
"We could only have one cat at a time," says Connie who today has many cats, dogs and other pets. She says that there was a limit on the number of pets she could have at 716 Elm Street where she grew up. She
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did, however, mention the 50 pigeons which roosted in the garage in the back yard of the 716 Elm Street home! "One day Dad brought a pigeon home from the steel mill. I named her 'Tootsie'. Then, a second pigeon came, and I named 'him' 'Snowball'. And that was how the 50 pigeons got their start!" explains Connie who says that sacks of wheat were kept in the garage for feed. Some of Connie's pet pigeons became "squab in spaghetti sauce"! That was a sad time for Connie who had grown close to her pet pigeons.
Tommy and Panther were her two cats, and there were turtles and parakeets. Nicky, Ricky, Gum Drop and Jelly Bean were the parakeets. Pauline remembers playing the "teaching parakeets to talk" phonograph record over and over … "Hello … Hello, Baby … Hello … Hello, Baby ...". Pauline doesn't think those birds ever learned to talk!
Connie remembers having one dog for a short time, but he "ran away". Grandma Passanante's white sheepdog "Butchie" and a big black-gray cat named "Inky" were visited often by Connie, who loved them both very much! Connie's love for animals carried into her adult years. In 1975, Connie was one of the original founders of the Grand Forks Humane
Society in North Dakota.
Now, a memory surfaces for Pauline who remembers asking Daddy why we couldn't have a dog. After all, he had dogs in Italy and a horse, too! And he replied, "Dogs need a lot of room to run around." And when Pauline asked Daddy where Italy was, we'd go to the back yard and he'd point to the east. Thinking that Italy couldn't be that far away, Pauline couldn't understand why we just couldn't go there right then!
Much of the DiSipio family history is not known to Connie or Pauline. Most of the information seemed to be in those letters that Grandfather Angelo DiSipio and Aunt Luisa wrote to our Daddy, Mama and family! Daddy very seldom talked about his DiSipio family. Mama passed on to us what Daddy told her. And .. she had her own memories of her husband's father before he left here in 1939. Mama always talked about Grandpa in a positive light, "Your Grandpa Angelo DiSipio was a kind and generous man!"
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And now the interview shifts to … FOOD!
"There were all those wonderful foods that only Mom could make!" Connie begins naming the foods that have left a lasting impression. "Home made bread (I can smell it now)! Sunday dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, lettuce and tomato salad and strawberry shortcake! Fried rabbit! Vegetable omelets called 'froschias'! Pasta fazool (macaroni and beans)! Soups! Salads! Fried eggs in 'sucu' (spaghetti sauce)! Biscuits (Biscotti)! Fried ricotta cheese pie! Cream puffs! And that wonderful homemade sweet bread called 'poteetza (poteca, potica)!" Those were the foods Connie remembers the most. The beverages at the DiSipio house that Connie remembers were Delaware Punch, Nehi pop, coffee and milk. We had a cobalt blue glass fluted pitcher that held Kool-Aid and lemonade. Grapette pop was a favorite of Pauline's.
There were also foods that Connie ate that Mother didn't make, like store-bought cinnamon rolls with that layer of white frosting you could peel off. Both Connie and Pauline dunked many a roll into "Hyde Park" milk for breakfast! Later, for a period of time, Hillside Dairy milk was delivered to the DiSipio house at 716 Elm Street. "The first piece of pizza I ate was at a church festival!" says Connie in an excited voice! "The pizza was VERY raised, two inches thick, with a LOT of tomato sauce and very little cheese!" Connie tells of a pizza of yesteryear.
Memories of the yard at 716 Elm Street are vivid as Connie describes a vegetable garden with "everything imaginable"! "Thank God for the vegetable garden, for that is what we survived on during the long summer steel mill strikes," Connie thankfully recalls the abundant vegetable garden. Tomatoes, bell peppers (which we called "mangoes"), green string beans, garlic, onions, sweet basil (which we called "basilico"), corn, parsley, fava horse beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, Swiss chard, mustard greens, asparagus, kohlrabi, and mint are some of those vegetables and herbs recalled by both Connie and Pauline.
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Dad did most of the work in the vegetable garden and tended to trees, hedges and grass while Mom nurtured her colorful, flourishing and abundant flower garden. There were lilacs, snowball bush, pussy willow tree, fruit trees … cherries, peaches, Italian plums … rhubarb, hedges, baby's breath, spirea (bridal wreath), trumpet vine, honeysuckle vine, roses, gladiolas, irises, white peonies, tulips, chrysanthemums, phlox, zinnias, sunflowers, and … BIG BEAUTIFUL dinner plate dahlias that could have won prizes at the Colorado State Fair! There were snapdragons that we called "puppies" that when squeezed, would "bark"! There were pansies and "baby ones called johnny jump-ups"! There were hollyhocks that grew wild in the alley. Petals from roses we wore as colorful "fingernails"! Mama spent hours looking at flower and seed mail order catalogs while Dad was reading the Readers Digest and a special Physics book and writing suggestions for improving steel-making and safety at the CF&I. Mom was outgoing, while Dad was a "loner". Both were very intelligent and hard-working.
Connie has olfactory memories … "I remember Dad's Fitch's Rose Hair Oil! And Evening in Paris perfume in that little blue bottle!" Speaking of perfume, Connie is a long-time AVON Representative, having received many AVON President Club awards for sales and excellence! Christmas for Mom and Pauline was extra exciting as AVON cosmetics, perfume and jewelry were unwrapped! They were all gifts from Connie.
Today, Connie, age 62, is on Social Security retirement but chooses to continue working. Besides selling AVON, a job which Connie "enjoys", she works at two restaurants part-time, seven days a week! Connie remains very active! She will be 63 on November 7, 2001. God Bless! Seeing and visiting with her children and grandchildren is an important part of Connie's life! Diane was born in 1962 and Brian was born in 1971. Connie's grandchildren, Sean and Clara Windingland, were born in 1989 and 1992. Clara, who was adopted by Kim and Diane when she was a baby, has the same birthday as her Great-Great-Grandmother
Concetta D'Orazio DiSipio.
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"My PETS are my #1 Hobby!" says Connie who also enjoys gardening and yard work, cooking, reading, writing and collecting figurines (cats and bunnies) and steins. Connie and Pauline recently compiled a cookbook together, just for Connie's family. It is called "A Tale of Two Sisters Heritage Cookbook".
Connie's favorite television program is "Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire!" Connie watches documentaries, talk shows. She likes news shows, like "20-20", "60 Minutes", "Dateline", "Nightline" and "Primetime". Connie likes movies, action films, crime shows, suspense movies, and series like "West Wing", "The Practice" and "Law and Order". Connie listens to weather reports regularly. Connie calls herself a "Survivor", having been through snowstorms, ice storms and windstorms!
It was the Great Flood of 1997 of Grand Forks, North Dakota that forced Connie to evacuate her home on University Avenue! While displaced, Connie stayed at a farm in Grafton, North Dakota and also at a motel. During that time, Connie wrote a book titled, "How to Survive a Flood or Other Catastrophe". It is a manual for Disaster Victims. Connie, with rescue teams, kept her pets alive, but it was during that flood that many of Connie's household items perished! Connie lost nine precious family photo albums! None of her precious pets died, except for a dove that was in the basement.
There is a memory that will never perish, for both Connie and Pauline, sisters who love each other and remember …
A SPECIAL MEMORY ...
"A blue-gray frame house with a wrap-around front porch and white picket fence … our childhood home at 716 Elm Street."
FOLLOWING IN MEMORIAM PUBLISHED IN "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017:
IN MEMORIAM Connie Marie DiSipio Williams Who Passed Away Ten Years Ago Today Nov. 7, 1938 to Sept. 26, 2007. PUBLISHED in "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017.
DR. CONCETTA CONSTANCE CONNIE MARIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS
November 7, 1938 to September 26, 2007
Dr. Connie Williams, 68, born Concetta Constance Marie DiSipio in Pueblo, Colorado, November 7, 1938, passed away September 26, 2007 at Crystal Care Center in Crystal, Minnesota. She had been ill for one year with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
Connie, a 40-year Grand Forks, North Dakota resident and renowned animal lover, is remembered as one of the founders of the Grand Forks Humane Society. Connie was an "Avon Lady" for more than 25 years, and also was a worker and hostess at various restaurants, most recently Kentucky Fried Chicken. Connie Williams, a prolific writer, who called herself a "pioneer and survivor", experienced the Grand Forks Great Flood of 1997 and wrote a book, "How to Survive a Flood and Other Disasters."
A scholar, Ms. Williams, a Pueblo, Colorado Central High School 1956 Top Ten graduate and school vice president and a Pueblo Junior College Homecoming Queen and graduate in 1958, continued her under-graduate and much of her graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado (Colorado State Teachers College) in Greeley, Colorado in the 1960's. In 1970, Connie earned a PhD in Counseling at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks.
She worked in several positions at UND, including working at the Counseling Center, teaching child development in the Home Economics Department and teaching mental health nursing in the College of Nursing. Dr. Connie Williams co-authored a book on mental health nursing.
Connie, who truly loved animals, owned hundreds of cats and many other pets over her lifetime and advocated for humane treatment of all animals. She was named Grand Forks Humane Society Humanitarian of the Year of 1975.
Dr. Connie Williams is survived by a daughter, Diane (Kim) Windingland, Rogers, Minnesota; a son, Brian (Penny) Williams, Red Lake Falls, Minnesota; grandchildren, Sean Windingland, Clara Windingland, Yuri Windingland, Carly Williams and Cody Landman; a sister, Pauline DiSipio, Montrose, Colorado; ex-husband John Delane Williams, Ocean Park, Washington; special friend Marilyn Woolsey, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Connie is survived by her last pet, her beloved Cat named Tuffy.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents, Anthony and Dorothy Passanante DiSipio, her stillborn brother, and other family members, including many beloved pets.
No Services, per her request.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Grand Forks Humane Society.
INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS – 2001
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Interview By Pauline Annette DiSipio Pueblo, Colorado:
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Representing the DiSipio Family is Connie DiSipio Williams. Ph.D, who recalls a childhood filled with "Precious Memories", those special years of growing up on Elm Street in Pueblo, Colorado.
Concetta Maria DiSipio, or Constance (Connie) Marie, was born November 7, 1938 to Antonio (Anthony, Tony) DiSipio and Dorotea (Dorothy, Delia, Dea) Passanante DiSipio of 732 Elm Street, which was next door to the Passanante house at 736 Elm Street. Both houses belonged to the bride's (Dorothy) Parents who were fulfilling a tradition by helping their daughter and husband get started in life.
Baby "Concettina's" birth took place at old St. Mary's Hospital on Quincy Street in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1940, 716 Elm Street became the DiSipio Family Home. Connie's Baptismal Godparents were her Uncle Carl (Charlie, Slew) Passanante and her Aunt Rosaria (Sarah) Passanante.
Connie's first of two memories is that of "Mama rocking me in a creaky rocking chair, holding me close to her breast and singing lullabies to me." Connie cites "Rock-a-Bye Baby" and "City of David" and mentions "Mom's soothing beautiful voice, and even better, a wonderful hearty laugh!" A second memory (before age 2) is that of next-door neighbor Donald Landorf holding Little Connie while he was visiting at 716 Elm Street.
"Most of the relatives lived on the same block or a block away," Connie points out the closeness of the Family. Grandma Passanante's grocery store at the upper end of our 700 block is recalled. "My favorite candy," Connie has a sweet memory, "were those licorice soft babies which sold for 5 cents each!"
A funny experience (funny now, not then!) happened to Connie when she was about five or six years old. Connie recalls … "I climbed up into the medicine cabinet where I found a box of Ex-Lax, a popular chocolate laxative. Thinking that it was a Hershey bar, I consumed the entire box! I was a sick little girl for two weeks!"
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Those "little rubber babies" at Woolworth's looked mighty good to little Connie, so good that, at age 5 or 6, she slipped two of those little tiny pink naked rubber babies into her coat pocket! Pangs of guilt, even at that early age, got the best of Connie. When she confessed to Mama, they promptly took the streetcar back downtown to that store! Connie, giving the babies back to the saleslady, told her that she was sorry for taking them. Her reward for telling the truth was that the saleslady let her keep the little rubber babies.
Connie remembers riding the streetcar with Mama downtown to shop. "The streetcar was an old-fashioned cable car that ran on rails in the middle of the streets," Connie describes a major mode of transportation at that time.
Connie's first "dolly" now sits in her bedroom at her home in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Though her dolly's clothes are no longer new (a torn pink dress, torn bonnet and bare feet), Dolly still has her "pretty face and big brown eyes".
Several "service men" are remembered by Connie. "I remember the mailman, the milk man, the sheeny man who was a junk collector with his donkey and cart, the coal man who brought us coal for our stoves, the ice man who brought blocks of ice for our 'ice box', and the ice cream man with his musical cart and whistle." Connie continues with a laugh, "I remember everyone laughing when I asked the ice cream man if I could see his 'birdie' (whistle)!"
In those early years, Connie states that Mama did not work outside the home. Later, Mom got a job in the Old Neighborhood at LaTronica's Restaurant, located on Abriendo Avenue five or six blocks from the DiSipio house. Dad worked at the steel mill (Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation) first in the Open Hearth, then in the Blast Furnace Department. The mill was about a mile from our house. "I remember Dad calling himself a 'grease monkey'!" Connie recalls.
Dad was hired in 1936 before he and Mom were married. At that time he was living on Routt Avenue in the Bessemer area of Pueblo and was boarding with the Mauro Family. He and John Mauro were good friends. Dad walked to the mill and back again for several years. His father Angelo
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DiSipio also "boarded" and worked at the mill. Dad and Mom met in the Old Neighborhood. When DiSipio, who was Abruzzese (Abruzza, Abruzzi, Italy) would go to Passanante's Grocery Store to buy cigarettes, he would wink at the pretty Sicilian (Sicily, Italy) lady named "Delia Passanante" who waited on him from behind the counter! It was on November 21, 1937 that they were married at Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Pueblo.
Mama told Pauline that Daddy's DiSipio Family lived on Elm Street when Daddy was a little boy, and it was later in the back yard of 736 Elm Street (the Passanante home later) where Daddy fell from an apple tree while playing with a friend! He had shown Mama his scar many times as he told the story. A Pueblo City Directory from 1916 confirms that Angelo and Concetta DiSipio lived at 1017 Elm Street, The directory also states that Angelo DiSipio was a steelworker.
It was in 1939 that Grandpa Angelo DiSipio left Pueblo for the last time to join his wife Concetta in the mountain village of Civitella Messer Raimondo, the Province of Chieti in the Region of Abruzzi in Central Italy. Although he spent many hours with Connie and watched her take her first steps. Grandfather DiSipio is not in Connie's memory. There is a snapshot of Grandpa DiSipio at the Pueblo Union Depot train station in 1939 before he got on the train. Baby Connie and her Mama are in the photo with Grandpa Angelo. Also pictured are Grandma Paolina Passanante (Mama Dea's Mama), Uncle Jack (Chase) Passanante and Uncle Slew Passanante, Cousin Lucille Capozzola and Compare and Comare Raffaele (Ralph) and Carmela (Carm Dorazio) Sarlo. That was 1939. And Grandfather Angelo never returned to the United States. But, many letters were written to his son Tony DiSipio and Family.
Connie remembers the early morning hours when Mama used to drive Daddy to work at the mill. A '38 Chrysler was the family's first car, replaced in the '50's by a DeSoto. Mom and Dad both taught Connie to drive. Connie recalls, " Mom learned to drive first, then she taught Dad how to drive, and later they taught me how to drive."
"I remember," says Connie, "the coal and wood stove used for cooking in our kitchen. It was used to heat water and provide warmth." Connie tells about the many wonderful meals cooked on that old coal stove. She remembers the warmth it gave while she was being bathed in an iron tub set on two chairs right next to the stove. Connie remembers 4 of 16 kerosene heaters placed in a very cold bathroom that housed a deep, four-footed porcelain bathtub.
As a baby and again as a young child, Connie had the "mal occhio", which Connie terms as a "state of affairs creating violent headaches and incessant pain, abruptly initiated by someone with evil intentions who was staring at you!!" There was an old Italian (Sicilian) woman on "Goat Hill" who put a bowl of water on Connie's head and a water glass turned upside down. There was a burning candle in the glass. After circling her hands in prayer above Connie's head, she would pray and chant" in Italian (Sicilian). The "evil" spell of the "Bad Eye" (Mal Occhio) would be broken when the water from the bowl would rise into the overturned glass, extinguishing the candle, thereby ending the mal occhio.
A milestone in young Connie's early years was going to kindergarten at Strack School, where her teacher was Mrs. Slayden (Slayton). In the band, Connie played both tambourine and triangle. Connie's two kindergarten boyfriends were Charles Delpapa and Joe Pannunzio. A second milestone was First Holy Communion. Connie's Confirmation sponsor a few years later was Elm Street neighbor Mary "Sister" Runco.
"Christmas in early childhood was so very special with the lights, the wreaths in our windows, snowflakes drifting down, the beautiful tree with all the gifts, and the warm resounding music of our player piano rolls, Mom's singing, or radio music that heralded in the holiday spirit!" Connie creates a holiday picture of a most special time in her life. That player piano was a Packard, made in Fort Wayne, Indiana in either 1907 or 1909. We had about 300 piano rolls! Along with Christmas carols, Pauline remembers peddling to and singing some favorites … "Paper Doll", "Sidewalks of New York", "Chicago", "Witching Waves", "Colorado", "Beautiful Ohio", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and a BIG piano roll titled "Bugle Calls and War Songs"! Most of those piano rolls were made in the first or second decade of the 1900's. That player piano came with the house when Mom and Dad bought it from Mr. and Mrs. Sharpsteen in 1940. The player piano was willed to Pauline, who gave it to her niece Diane Williams Windingland,
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daughter of Connie and John Delane Williams. Dad's old tool collection, including several antique saws, went to Brian Troy Williams, son of Connie and John Delane Williams.
Examining a photograph from 1948, Connie and Pauline reminisce about Connie's Birthday Party when she was 10 years old. That photo was taken in front of 716 Elm Street in Pueblo, and Connie is pictured with some special kids from the Old Neighborhood. Helping Connie celebrate her 10th Birthday Party were "Dee Dee" Jaramillo, Pauline Louise Rusovick, Joe Patti, Joe Hurd, Chuck Delpapa, Tom Clementi, Andy "Sonny Boy" "Butch" Rusovick, Irene Aragon, Cecelia Kaye Townsend Passanante, Joan Nina Iacabone, Shirley Simmons, Beatrice "Bootie" Jaramillo, Ernest Vergilio, Sammy Spoone, (Carl) Anthony Capozzola, Marcia Brothers, Mary Pisciotte, Josephine "Baby Doll" Amore, Lillian "Babe" Sciortino, Sammy Sciortino, Jackie Dwain Passanante, Carl Jess Passanante, Pauline Annette DiSipio … and the Birthday Girl Constance Marie (Connie) DiSipio, kneeling and holding her Birthday Cake!
Fourth of July was special where on the hill by Sawyer's house overlooking the Arkansas River, the "Grove" and the Runyon Baseball Field, Connie and her cousin (and next-door neighbor) Kaye Passanante, and neighbor from across the alley Pauline Rusovick and best friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik all voted on favorite fireworks displays! Getting back for a moment to "Sawyer's house", Connie describes Mrs. Sawyer. "She was the matriarch of her family with the southern plantation style dress and speech. 'Miss Dea', 'Mr. Tony', 'Miss Connie' and 'Miss Pauline' … that is how Mrs. Sawyer addressed us." Connie remembers, allowing a memory to be resurrected for Pauline, who remembers the black family with fondness.
Connie and her sister Pauline, born in 1944, loved the Abbott and Costello movies, "The Little Match Girl", and Charlie Chan movies in the early Fifties! Connie went to see the "Superman" series with her friend Joan Iacabone. The series was every Saturday for fourteen weeks at the Uptown Theater in the Mesa Junction area of Pueblo. Tickets were 14
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cents and the final show was free if all thirteen series were attended! Connie missed one of the Saturdays because she was sick. Feeling heartbroken about not getting to see the last one, Connie says, "I got my little scissors out and cut a star-shaped punch for the one I missed!"
Going to baseball games at Runyon Field in Pueblo was one of Connie's favorite activities! A fan of the Pueblo Dodgers, Connie kept a scrapbook and had an autograph book with the players' signatures! "I went to all the games and listened to the out-of-town games on the radio! "Team manager," remembers Connie "was Ray Hathaway, and the shortstop's name was Kenny Lehman."
Keeping scrapbooks on movie stars was a popular pastime for Connie, Kaye and Carol. Connie's favorite movie star was Tab Hunter. (Today Connie likes Clint Eastwood!) Kaye's favorite movie star was Robert Wagner. And Carol's favorite movie star was Rock Hudson. Jeffrey Hunter was cited as another Favorite along with Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, Natalie Wood and Esther Williams. "You look like Elizabeth Taylor!" Pauline tells Connie.
When television became popular in the 1950's, two of Connie's favorite "never-miss" shows were "Liberace", and "Your Hit Parade".
Pauline was a "tag-along" in those early years (and probably later, too!) She accompanied Connie, Cousin Kaye Passanante, Carol Kacnik, Pauline Rusovick, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on many of their ventures. Connie even had a seat on the back of her Hawthorne bicycle where Pauline remembers riding with her legs sticking out so they wouldn't get caught in the spokes! Connie was glad when Pauline got her own Schwinn bicycle!
Aunts and Uncles are mentioned by Connie. Occasional family reunions included the Passanante, Luppino, Capozzola and Coffee Families. "Uncle Joe, Uncle Charlie (Carl, Slew), Uncle Jack, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Rena, Aunt Irene, Aunt Rose, Aunt Jackie, Uncle Mike and Uncle Dominick," Connie names her Pueblo, Colorado aunts and uncles (all on her Mama's side of the family). Connie says that she never met any of Dad's sisters, their spouses or cousins on the DiSipio side of the family.
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Connie's "peer cousins" were Kaye, Lucille and Anthony Capozzola. Andy ("Sonny" "Butch") Rusovick was a peer third cousin as his Mother Nina Luppino Rusovick and our Mama Dea Passanante DiSipio were first cousins. "I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes from my cousin Lucille," says Connie. Lucille was the first-born grandchild of Carlo (Cologero, Calogero) Passanante and Paolina (Paola, Pauline) Luppino Passanante.
Besides the black family from the South, which included Mrs. Sawyer, Henry, "Little Joe", Eva and Mattie Lou, there were other "memorables of an ethnically mixed neighborhood" mentioned by Connie. "Mike Uhal and his family, the Hinds, Sagonas, Jaramillos, Runcos, Luceros, Sciortinos, Morenos, Uriostes, Landorfs, Rusovicks, Passanantes and the Capozzolas." The Lucero children that Connie remembers the most are Gloria, Madeline, Barney and Orlando.
"We made fun out of the stuff in life that's free, like finding four-leaf clovers, making cloud pictures, hand shadow figures on the bedroom wall, telling stories especially GHOST stories like 'Bloody Bones'!" says Connie who says that fun doesn't have to cost money. Connie acknowledges the resourcefulness of yesterday's children. "Friends and families were on 'hunts'," Connie continues, "like rock hunts, colored glass hunts and grasshopper hunts!" Connie names other fun activities, "There were melted crayons, coloring books, water colors, easel painting, piano rolls, softball, Kick the Can, Hide and Go Seek, jump rope and embroidering! Card games like Rummy, Canasta and Briscola were fun, too!" Pauline comments remembering the early childhood simple card games like Book and War.
Connie goes on, "There were tricycles, bicycles, rollerskating with old-fashioned skate keys, wagons, pony rides … all part of this era." Connie goes on naming a wealth of activities … hopscotch, hangman, tic-tac-toe, the parks, the zoo and Monkey Mountain, the circus, Colorado State Fair, church festivals, comic books, marbles, jacks, ping pong (table tennis), paddle balls, yo-yo's, collecting trinkets, jigsaw puzzles, paper dolls, Chinese checkers, checkers, bingo, fiddlesticks, Monopoly, blow bubbles, bubble gum like Fleer's with comic wraps and Double Bubble Gum!
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There was no lack of things to do or places to go! In the radio, Connie listened to Hopalong Cassidy, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, My True Story, The Thin Man, The Shadow and Inner Sanctum. At this point Connie names the four movie theaters in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. "There were the 'Clyne' and 'Avalon' in the Bessemer District, the 'Uptown' in the Mesa Junction segment of town, and the 'Main' Theater downtown." Pauline thinks that the Main Theater was later called the Chief, and she remembers in later years in the Bessemer area the Victory Theater which showed Spanish-speaking movies.
Connie and Pauline both joined the "Y" for awhile and "tried " to learn how to swim. Connie was better at it than Pauline. We both decided that eating was more fun than trying to learn how to swim! One of Connie's favorite "hangouts" was Mesa Snack for great hamburgers with grilled onions! A favorite of mine, too!
There was Marshall's Drugstore in Bessemer for a LARGE bottle of Pepsi for 5 cents. There were three straws, shared by Connie, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on the way home from Bessemer Grade School! Pauline remembers going to Marshall's often in the '50's for ice cream cones with her friend and classmate Irene Julia Chavez, and sometimes with her friends Jessie Mae Ballagut and Marlene Todero.
Connie now names Sambo's Popcorn Shop (owned by Sam Corsentino who has since passed away) in the Mesa Junction where we went for "sherbert" (sherbet), cotton candy, candied apples and snow cones (sno-cones). Pauline remembers a "Patsy's" doll which was a chef with a white cap and a mustache! He was turning a crank of some kind … for taffy … ? … Pauline's memory is vague on this one. Melvin's Chicken was another favorite "hang-out" and eating place for Connie where she enjoyed eating "Chicken in a Basket" with Mom and Pauline.
When Connie was about fourteen years old, she experienced her first "true love". His name was Wayne Latka, her "heart throb" who was fifteen years old. They went steady for eight months. Connie recalls, "It was an innocent romance, with a total of four kisses … his birthday, my birthday, Christmas and Easter. Wayne gave me a beautiful gold cross necklace
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which I still have." Connie has nice memories of that special time in her life.
"These were the days of poodle skirts, gaucho belts, saddle shoes, scarves worn around the neck, squaw dresses, patio dresses and turtleneck sweaters! These were the times of the 50's music, Elvis, Rock'n Roll, the 'Bop', Bill Haley and the Comets, the Beatles … and 'Rock Around the Clock'!" Connie paints a picture of the 1950's.
Connie took both piano and violin lessons, but says that her "teachers always died". The last violin teacher Connie remembers was Mr. Hardwick. Music was important to the DiSipio Family. Connie gives another example, "Dad had a part-time job at KDZA Radio Station where he hosted an Italian music show on which he spoke and announced both in English and Italian and which featured dozens of Italian records! Mr. Dee Crouch was his manager. We also became friends with the 'Italian Nationals' – the DiMeglio Family, which included Ciro, Mary and son Mario. They were a very colorful and musical family!"
Connie's memory is serving her well! Connie, Joan Iacabone and Michael Dalio were on a local radio program where Connie sang the then popular song, "Because of You" and also sang the "Alphabet Song". (Connie sang both of them complete and with perfect pitch, vibrato and rich tone on the telephone for me while we were talking long distance one night!)
Not only is Connie a musician, she is also an artist! I remember all the animals she would draw, especially mountain lions and horses! And she had a painting kit with an easel and palette! A unique skill of hers was drawing cartoon comics on rolls of adding machine paper! (Those rolls probably came from Grandma and Grandpa Passanante's grocery store.) She still has those rolls of artwork!
Wine-making allows memories to surface for Connie … "I loved to watch Grandpa in his hip boots crushing the grapes in the trough and pouring the juice into barrels to ferment! One glass of Grandpa Passanante's wine would literally knock me out!" Connie tells of the potency and richness of Grandpa's homemade wine.
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Grandma had chickens in her back yard, and Pauline remembers getting too close once while watching Grandma clean a chicken! Pauline ran home crying!
Connie shares a warm memory, "I remember going to Grandma's house some nights and falling asleep to the chatter of busy voices in Italian … and some very loud card games! Grandma Passanante always served her homemade biscuits (biscotti) and coffee."
Grapevines, a very special fig tree (from Sicily), the smell of boiling tomatoes for canning, and "babalucci" snails scooting along the kitchen walls are some of Pauline's memories of 736 Elm Street, Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Pauline especially remembers, "Grandma had a 'weather station' sitting on her kitchen window sill. It was a small house about six inches high with a witch on one side and Hansel and Gretel on the other side. When the witch came out, it was going to be cold, stormy or rainy. Hansel and Gretel coming forward meant it would be a nice day!" Pauline was captivated with that "magical" barometer!
Grandpa "Nonnu" Passanante worked at the steel mill. In addition to wine-making, he tended a big vegetable garden in the middle of the 700 block of Elm Street. Both Grandma and Grandpa belonged to Italian and Catholic lodges. Mostly Grandma.
Connie now names some areas past the Old Bessemer Neighborhood and heading toward downtown. There were Mesa Junction, Union Avenue and Main Street. Connie and Pauline both remember "dragging Main" during their high school years. "The Grove District down by the Arkansas River and the railroad tracks, " Connie claims, "made 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' Series as Pueblo, Colorado being the only city where 3 churches were found on three of four corners, all adjacent." Connie goes on naming … "Mount Carmel Catholic Church for the Italians and Spanish, St. Anthony's Catholic Church for the Czechoslovakians ('Slovaks'), and the third church was either a Russian Orthodox Church or St. Mary's Catholic Church for the Slavic people,
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Yugoslavians, Slovenians."
Connie attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Churches in Pueblo, and she would sometimes go to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the Grove with her friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik. Pauline remembers going with Connie and Carol to St. Anthony's Church and watching the Arkansas River flow beneath as she looked through the cracks between the rotting floor boards of that old bridge! That was a pretty scary walk for Pauline, six years younger than Connie! Both Connie and Pauline sang in Assumption Catholic Church choir. Assumption Church was nearby on the 900 block of Evans Avenue. Connie was Pauline's Confirmation sponsor, and Pauline took Connie's middle name "Marie" for her Confirmation name.
Pueblo schools attended by Connie were Strack (formerly Danforth), Bessemer, Keating Junior High School, Central High School and Pueblo College. Connie was an "A" student and a good speller. However, Connie has a sad memory of misspelling a word in a spelling bee. "I remember going down in a spelling bee when I missed the word 'ecclesiastical'," recalls Connie in a voice that still tells of disappointment.
Connie DiSipio was a member of many clubs and organizations, the recipient of many awards and was vice president of the student body of Pueblo Central High School, 1955 – 1956. Joe Hurd was president of the student body. Pauline recalls that DeSoto Jordan was the student body president at Central, 1961 – 1962, during Pauline's senior year there.
Pauline remembers the joy and tears of happiness expressed by Mom and especially Dad when Connie was crowned Homecoming Queen at Pueblo Junior College for 1957 – 1958!
Connie now shares a humorous incident that happened when she was a junior in high school, a memory that brings a smile to her face. "I had to cross a vacant lot on my way home from school. Loaded down with books, I trudged along and suddenly heard what sounded like thundering hooves of horses!" When Connie looked behind her, she saw the Central Baseball Team working out, running track right down her path! "They seemed to come out of nowhere! All of a sudden, I was leading the pack, running with all my might until I finally got out of their way!"
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Going to the Senior Prom on a double date with the twins Bob and Joe Hughes, was a highlight for Connie. "I was Bob's date, and Rayetta Arnold was Joe's date."
A Knights of Columbus picnic when she was "sweet sixteen" was where Connie met her future husband, John Delane Williams. "We dated for a year, went steady for a year, were engaged for a year and married September 6, 1958." John graduated in 1956 from Pueblo Catholic High School where he played football. To Connie and John (who were divorced in 1979) were born Diane and Brian. Diane and her husband Kim Windingland have two children, Sean and Clara, and they live in Rogers, Minnesota. Brian lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and is engaged to Penny Landman, who has a son named Cody. Brian and Penny plan to marry in August of 2002.
John, Ph.D., works full-time at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) and part-time with his wife Jole, Ph.D. in her psychology business. John and Jole have a son Delane Williams who plays on a junior hockey team in Minnesota. There is another family member not to be left out … a cat named Tommy!
"I was in theater in both high school and junior college and played lead roles," Connie tells of another skill and talent of hers! "The only play title I remember was 'Seven Keys to Baldpate'. Dean Wenstrom was theater instructor in junior college at that time."
"Uncles in the United States Army … letters sent home … rationing of food and gas and other commodities (like sugar) ...recession … hard times..." these are some of Connie's memories of World War II, which ended in 1945 when Connie was about seven years old. Connie can still picture the RCA Victrola and can sing many of the words and tunes to special war songs, like "Dear Mom" and "I Remember Pearl Harbor"! Connie remembers the photographs of Uncle Charlie, Uncle Jack and Uncle Joe, all in their military uniforms.
"We could only have one cat at a time," says Connie who today has many cats, dogs and other pets. She says that there was a limit on the number of pets she could have at 716 Elm Street where she grew up. She
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did, however, mention the 50 pigeons which roosted in the garage in the back yard of the 716 Elm Street home! "One day Dad brought a pigeon home from the steel mill. I named her 'Tootsie'. Then, a second pigeon came, and I named 'him' 'Snowball'. And that was how the 50 pigeons got their start!" explains Connie who says that sacks of wheat were kept in the garage for feed. Some of Connie's pet pigeons became "squab in spaghetti sauce"! That was a sad time for Connie who had grown close to her pet pigeons.
Tommy and Panther were her two cats, and there were turtles and parakeets. Nicky, Ricky, Gum Drop and Jelly Bean were the parakeets. Pauline remembers playing the "teaching parakeets to talk" phonograph record over and over … "Hello … Hello, Baby … Hello … Hello, Baby ...". Pauline doesn't think those birds ever learned to talk!
Connie remembers having one dog for a short time, but he "ran away". Grandma Passanante's white sheepdog "Butchie" and a big black-gray cat named "Inky" were visited often by Connie, who loved them both very much! Connie's love for animals carried into her adult years. In 1975, Connie was one of the original founders of the Grand Forks Humane
Society in North Dakota.
Now, a memory surfaces for Pauline who remembers asking Daddy why we couldn't have a dog. After all, he had dogs in Italy and a horse, too! And he replied, "Dogs need a lot of room to run around." And when Pauline asked Daddy where Italy was, we'd go to the back yard and he'd point to the east. Thinking that Italy couldn't be that far away, Pauline couldn't understand why we just couldn't go there right then!
Much of the DiSipio family history is not known to Connie or Pauline. Most of the information seemed to be in those letters that Grandfather Angelo DiSipio and Aunt Luisa wrote to our Daddy, Mama and family! Daddy very seldom talked about his DiSipio family. Mama passed on to us what Daddy told her. And .. she had her own memories of her husband's father before he left here in 1939. Mama always talked about Grandpa in a positive light, "Your Grandpa Angelo DiSipio was a kind and generous man!"
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And now the interview shifts to … FOOD!
"There were all those wonderful foods that only Mom could make!" Connie begins naming the foods that have left a lasting impression. "Home made bread (I can smell it now)! Sunday dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, lettuce and tomato salad and strawberry shortcake! Fried rabbit! Vegetable omelets called 'froschias'! Pasta fazool (macaroni and beans)! Soups! Salads! Fried eggs in 'sucu' (spaghetti sauce)! Biscuits (Biscotti)! Fried ricotta cheese pie! Cream puffs! And that wonderful homemade sweet bread called 'poteetza (poteca, potica)!" Those were the foods Connie remembers the most. The beverages at the DiSipio house that Connie remembers were Delaware Punch, Nehi pop, coffee and milk. We had a cobalt blue glass fluted pitcher that held Kool-Aid and lemonade. Grapette pop was a favorite of Pauline's.
There were also foods that Connie ate that Mother didn't make, like store-bought cinnamon rolls with that layer of white frosting you could peel off. Both Connie and Pauline dunked many a roll into "Hyde Park" milk for breakfast! Later, for a period of time, Hillside Dairy milk was delivered to the DiSipio house at 716 Elm Street. "The first piece of pizza I ate was at a church festival!" says Connie in an excited voice! "The pizza was VERY raised, two inches thick, with a LOT of tomato sauce and very little cheese!" Connie tells of a pizza of yesteryear.
Memories of the yard at 716 Elm Street are vivid as Connie describes a vegetable garden with "everything imaginable"! "Thank God for the vegetable garden, for that is what we survived on during the long summer steel mill strikes," Connie thankfully recalls the abundant vegetable garden. Tomatoes, bell peppers (which we called "mangoes"), green string beans, garlic, onions, sweet basil (which we called "basilico"), corn, parsley, fava horse beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, Swiss chard, mustard greens, asparagus, kohlrabi, and mint are some of those vegetables and herbs recalled by both Connie and Pauline.
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Dad did most of the work in the vegetable garden and tended to trees, hedges and grass while Mom nurtured her colorful, flourishing and abundant flower garden. There were lilacs, snowball bush, pussy willow tree, fruit trees … cherries, peaches, Italian plums … rhubarb, hedges, baby's breath, spirea (bridal wreath), trumpet vine, honeysuckle vine, roses, gladiolas, irises, white peonies, tulips, chrysanthemums, phlox, zinnias, sunflowers, and … BIG BEAUTIFUL dinner plate dahlias that could have won prizes at the Colorado State Fair! There were snapdragons that we called "puppies" that when squeezed, would "bark"! There were pansies and "baby ones called johnny jump-ups"! There were hollyhocks that grew wild in the alley. Petals from roses we wore as colorful "fingernails"! Mama spent hours looking at flower and seed mail order catalogs while Dad was reading the Readers Digest and a special Physics book and writing suggestions for improving steel-making and safety at the CF&I. Mom was outgoing, while Dad was a "loner". Both were very intelligent and hard-working.
Connie has olfactory memories … "I remember Dad's Fitch's Rose Hair Oil! And Evening in Paris perfume in that little blue bottle!" Speaking of perfume, Connie is a long-time AVON Representative, having received many AVON President Club awards for sales and excellence! Christmas for Mom and Pauline was extra exciting as AVON cosmetics, perfume and jewelry were unwrapped! They were all gifts from Connie.
Today, Connie, age 62, is on Social Security retirement but chooses to continue working. Besides selling AVON, a job which Connie "enjoys", she works at two restaurants part-time, seven days a week! Connie remains very active! She will be 63 on November 7, 2001. God Bless! Seeing and visiting with her children and grandchildren is an important part of Connie's life! Diane was born in 1962 and Brian was born in 1971. Connie's grandchildren, Sean and Clara Windingland, were born in 1989 and 1992. Clara, who was adopted by Kim and Diane when she was a baby, has the same birthday as her Great-Great-Grandmother
Concetta D'Orazio DiSipio.
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"My PETS are my #1 Hobby!" says Connie who also enjoys gardening and yard work, cooking, reading, writing and collecting figurines (cats and bunnies) and steins. Connie and Pauline recently compiled a cookbook together, just for Connie's family. It is called "A Tale of Two Sisters Heritage Cookbook".
Connie's favorite television program is "Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire!" Connie watches documentaries, talk shows. She likes news shows, like "20-20", "60 Minutes", "Dateline", "Nightline" and "Primetime". Connie likes movies, action films, crime shows, suspense movies, and series like "West Wing", "The Practice" and "Law and Order". Connie listens to weather reports regularly. Connie calls herself a "Survivor", having been through snowstorms, ice storms and windstorms!
It was the Great Flood of 1997 of Grand Forks, North Dakota that forced Connie to evacuate her home on University Avenue! While displaced, Connie stayed at a farm in Grafton, North Dakota and also at a motel. During that time, Connie wrote a book titled, "How to Survive a Flood or Other Catastrophe". It is a manual for Disaster Victims. Connie, with rescue teams, kept her pets alive, but it was during that flood that many of Connie's household items perished! Connie lost nine precious family photo albums! None of her precious pets died, except for a dove that was in the basement.
There is a memory that will never perish, for both Connie and Pauline, sisters who love each other and remember …
A SPECIAL MEMORY ...
"A blue-gray frame house with a wrap-around front porch and white picket fence … our childhood home at 716 Elm Street."
FOLLOWING IN MEMORIAM PUBLISHED IN "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017:
IN MEMORIAM Connie Marie DiSipio Williams Who Passed Away Ten Years Ago Today Nov. 7, 1938 to Sept. 26, 2007. PUBLISHED in "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017.
CONNIE MARIE DiSIPIO WILLIAMS
DR. CONCETTA CONSTANCE CONNIE MARIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS
November 7, 1938 to September 26, 2007
Dr. Connie Williams, 68, born Concetta Constance Marie DiSipio in Pueblo, Colorado, November 7, 1938, passed away September 26, 2007 at Crystal Care Center in Crystal, Minnesota. She had been ill for one year with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
Connie, a 40-year Grand Forks, North Dakota resident and renowned animal lover, is remembered as one of the founders of the Grand Forks Humane Society. Connie was an "Avon Lady" for more than 25 years, and also was a worker and hostess at various restaurants, most recently Kentucky Fried Chicken. Connie Williams, a prolific writer, who called herself a "pioneer and survivor", experienced the Grand Forks Great Flood of 1997 and wrote a book, "How to Survive a Flood and Other Disasters."
A scholar, Ms. Williams, a Pueblo, Colorado Central High School 1956 Top Ten graduate and school vice president and a Pueblo Junior College Homecoming Queen and graduate in 1958, continued her under-graduate and much of her graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado (Colorado State Teachers College) in Greeley, Colorado in the 1960's. In 1970, Connie earned a PhD in Counseling at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks.
She worked in several positions at UND, including working at the Counseling Center, teaching child development in the Home Economics Department and teaching mental health nursing in the College of Nursing. Dr. Connie Williams co-authored a book on mental health nursing.
Connie, who truly loved animals, owned hundreds of cats and many other pets over her lifetime and advocated for humane treatment of all animals. She was named Grand Forks Humane Society Humanitarian of the Year of 1975.
Dr. Connie Williams is survived by a daughter, Diane (Kim) Windingland, Rogers, Minnesota; a son, Brian (Penny) Williams, Red Lake Falls, Minnesota; grandchildren, Sean Windingland, Clara Windingland, Yuri Windingland, Carly Williams and Cody Landman; a sister, Pauline DiSipio, Montrose, Colorado; ex-husband John Delane Williams, Ocean Park, Washington; special friend Marilyn Woolsey, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Connie is survived by her last pet, her beloved Cat named Tuffy.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents, Anthony and Dorothy Passanante DiSipio, her stillborn brother, and other family members, including many beloved pets.
No Services, per her request.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Grand Forks Humane Society.
INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS – 2001
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Interview By Pauline Annette DiSipio Pueblo, Colorado:
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Representing the DiSipio Family is Connie DiSipio Williams. Ph.D, who recalls a childhood filled with "Precious Memories", those special years of growing up on Elm Street in Pueblo, Colorado.
Concetta Maria DiSipio, or Constance (Connie) Marie, was born November 7, 1938 to Antonio (Anthony, Tony) DiSipio and Dorotea (Dorothy, Delia, Dea) Passanante DiSipio of 732 Elm Street, which was next door to the Passanante house at 736 Elm Street. Both houses belonged to the bride's (Dorothy) Parents who were fulfilling a tradition by helping their daughter and husband get started in life.
Baby "Concettina's" birth took place at old St. Mary's Hospital on Quincy Street in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1940, 716 Elm Street became the DiSipio Family Home. Connie's Baptismal Godparents were her Uncle Carl (Charlie, Slew) Passanante and her Aunt Rosaria (Sarah) Passanante.
Connie's first of two memories is that of "Mama rocking me in a creaky rocking chair, holding me close to her breast and singing lullabies to me." Connie cites "Rock-a-Bye Baby" and "City of David" and mentions "Mom's soothing beautiful voice, and even better, a wonderful hearty laugh!" A second memory (before age 2) is that of next-door neighbor Donald Landorf holding Little Connie while he was visiting at 716 Elm Street.
"Most of the relatives lived on the same block or a block away," Connie points out the closeness of the Family. Grandma Passanante's grocery store at the upper end of our 700 block is recalled. "My favorite candy," Connie has a sweet memory, "were those licorice soft babies which sold for 5 cents each!"
A funny experience (funny now, not then!) happened to Connie when she was about five or six years old. Connie recalls … "I climbed up into the medicine cabinet where I found a box of Ex-Lax, a popular chocolate laxative. Thinking that it was a Hershey bar, I consumed the entire box! I was a sick little girl for two weeks!"
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Those "little rubber babies" at Woolworth's looked mighty good to little Connie, so good that, at age 5 or 6, she slipped two of those little tiny pink naked rubber babies into her coat pocket! Pangs of guilt, even at that early age, got the best of Connie. When she confessed to Mama, they promptly took the streetcar back downtown to that store! Connie, giving the babies back to the saleslady, told her that she was sorry for taking them. Her reward for telling the truth was that the saleslady let her keep the little rubber babies.
Connie remembers riding the streetcar with Mama downtown to shop. "The streetcar was an old-fashioned cable car that ran on rails in the middle of the streets," Connie describes a major mode of transportation at that time.
Connie's first "dolly" now sits in her bedroom at her home in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Though her dolly's clothes are no longer new (a torn pink dress, torn bonnet and bare feet), Dolly still has her "pretty face and big brown eyes".
Several "service men" are remembered by Connie. "I remember the mailman, the milk man, the sheeny man who was a junk collector with his donkey and cart, the coal man who brought us coal for our stoves, the ice man who brought blocks of ice for our 'ice box', and the ice cream man with his musical cart and whistle." Connie continues with a laugh, "I remember everyone laughing when I asked the ice cream man if I could see his 'birdie' (whistle)!"
In those early years, Connie states that Mama did not work outside the home. Later, Mom got a job in the Old Neighborhood at LaTronica's Restaurant, located on Abriendo Avenue five or six blocks from the DiSipio house. Dad worked at the steel mill (Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation) first in the Open Hearth, then in the Blast Furnace Department. The mill was about a mile from our house. "I remember Dad calling himself a 'grease monkey'!" Connie recalls.
Dad was hired in 1936 before he and Mom were married. At that time he was living on Routt Avenue in the Bessemer area of Pueblo and was boarding with the Mauro Family. He and John Mauro were good friends. Dad walked to the mill and back again for several years. His father Angelo
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DiSipio also "boarded" and worked at the mill. Dad and Mom met in the Old Neighborhood. When DiSipio, who was Abruzzese (Abruzza, Abruzzi, Italy) would go to Passanante's Grocery Store to buy cigarettes, he would wink at the pretty Sicilian (Sicily, Italy) lady named "Delia Passanante" who waited on him from behind the counter! It was on November 21, 1937 that they were married at Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Pueblo.
Mama told Pauline that Daddy's DiSipio Family lived on Elm Street when Daddy was a little boy, and it was later in the back yard of 736 Elm Street (the Passanante home later) where Daddy fell from an apple tree while playing with a friend! He had shown Mama his scar many times as he told the story. A Pueblo City Directory from 1916 confirms that Angelo and Concetta DiSipio lived at 1017 Elm Street, The directory also states that Angelo DiSipio was a steelworker.
It was in 1939 that Grandpa Angelo DiSipio left Pueblo for the last time to join his wife Concetta in the mountain village of Civitella Messer Raimondo, the Province of Chieti in the Region of Abruzzi in Central Italy. Although he spent many hours with Connie and watched her take her first steps. Grandfather DiSipio is not in Connie's memory. There is a snapshot of Grandpa DiSipio at the Pueblo Union Depot train station in 1939 before he got on the train. Baby Connie and her Mama are in the photo with Grandpa Angelo. Also pictured are Grandma Paolina Passanante (Mama Dea's Mama), Uncle Jack (Chase) Passanante and Uncle Slew Passanante, Cousin Lucille Capozzola and Compare and Comare Raffaele (Ralph) and Carmela (Carm Dorazio) Sarlo. That was 1939. And Grandfather Angelo never returned to the United States. But, many letters were written to his son Tony DiSipio and Family.
Connie remembers the early morning hours when Mama used to drive Daddy to work at the mill. A '38 Chrysler was the family's first car, replaced in the '50's by a DeSoto. Mom and Dad both taught Connie to drive. Connie recalls, " Mom learned to drive first, then she taught Dad how to drive, and later they taught me how to drive."
"I remember," says Connie, "the coal and wood stove used for cooking in our kitchen. It was used to heat water and provide warmth." Connie tells about the many wonderful meals cooked on that old coal stove. She remembers the warmth it gave while she was being bathed in an iron tub set on two chairs right next to the stove. Connie remembers 4 of 16 kerosene heaters placed in a very cold bathroom that housed a deep, four-footed porcelain bathtub.
As a baby and again as a young child, Connie had the "mal occhio", which Connie terms as a "state of affairs creating violent headaches and incessant pain, abruptly initiated by someone with evil intentions who was staring at you!!" There was an old Italian (Sicilian) woman on "Goat Hill" who put a bowl of water on Connie's head and a water glass turned upside down. There was a burning candle in the glass. After circling her hands in prayer above Connie's head, she would pray and chant" in Italian (Sicilian). The "evil" spell of the "Bad Eye" (Mal Occhio) would be broken when the water from the bowl would rise into the overturned glass, extinguishing the candle, thereby ending the mal occhio.
A milestone in young Connie's early years was going to kindergarten at Strack School, where her teacher was Mrs. Slayden (Slayton). In the band, Connie played both tambourine and triangle. Connie's two kindergarten boyfriends were Charles Delpapa and Joe Pannunzio. A second milestone was First Holy Communion. Connie's Confirmation sponsor a few years later was Elm Street neighbor Mary "Sister" Runco.
"Christmas in early childhood was so very special with the lights, the wreaths in our windows, snowflakes drifting down, the beautiful tree with all the gifts, and the warm resounding music of our player piano rolls, Mom's singing, or radio music that heralded in the holiday spirit!" Connie creates a holiday picture of a most special time in her life. That player piano was a Packard, made in Fort Wayne, Indiana in either 1907 or 1909. We had about 300 piano rolls! Along with Christmas carols, Pauline remembers peddling to and singing some favorites … "Paper Doll", "Sidewalks of New York", "Chicago", "Witching Waves", "Colorado", "Beautiful Ohio", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and a BIG piano roll titled "Bugle Calls and War Songs"! Most of those piano rolls were made in the first or second decade of the 1900's. That player piano came with the house when Mom and Dad bought it from Mr. and Mrs. Sharpsteen in 1940. The player piano was willed to Pauline, who gave it to her niece Diane Williams Windingland,
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daughter of Connie and John Delane Williams. Dad's old tool collection, including several antique saws, went to Brian Troy Williams, son of Connie and John Delane Williams.
Examining a photograph from 1948, Connie and Pauline reminisce about Connie's Birthday Party when she was 10 years old. That photo was taken in front of 716 Elm Street in Pueblo, and Connie is pictured with some special kids from the Old Neighborhood. Helping Connie celebrate her 10th Birthday Party were "Dee Dee" Jaramillo, Pauline Louise Rusovick, Joe Patti, Joe Hurd, Chuck Delpapa, Tom Clementi, Andy "Sonny Boy" "Butch" Rusovick, Irene Aragon, Cecelia Kaye Townsend Passanante, Joan Nina Iacabone, Shirley Simmons, Beatrice "Bootie" Jaramillo, Ernest Vergilio, Sammy Spoone, (Carl) Anthony Capozzola, Marcia Brothers, Mary Pisciotte, Josephine "Baby Doll" Amore, Lillian "Babe" Sciortino, Sammy Sciortino, Jackie Dwain Passanante, Carl Jess Passanante, Pauline Annette DiSipio … and the Birthday Girl Constance Marie (Connie) DiSipio, kneeling and holding her Birthday Cake!
Fourth of July was special where on the hill by Sawyer's house overlooking the Arkansas River, the "Grove" and the Runyon Baseball Field, Connie and her cousin (and next-door neighbor) Kaye Passanante, and neighbor from across the alley Pauline Rusovick and best friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik all voted on favorite fireworks displays! Getting back for a moment to "Sawyer's house", Connie describes Mrs. Sawyer. "She was the matriarch of her family with the southern plantation style dress and speech. 'Miss Dea', 'Mr. Tony', 'Miss Connie' and 'Miss Pauline' … that is how Mrs. Sawyer addressed us." Connie remembers, allowing a memory to be resurrected for Pauline, who remembers the black family with fondness.
Connie and her sister Pauline, born in 1944, loved the Abbott and Costello movies, "The Little Match Girl", and Charlie Chan movies in the early Fifties! Connie went to see the "Superman" series with her friend Joan Iacabone. The series was every Saturday for fourteen weeks at the Uptown Theater in the Mesa Junction area of Pueblo. Tickets were 14
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cents and the final show was free if all thirteen series were attended! Connie missed one of the Saturdays because she was sick. Feeling heartbroken about not getting to see the last one, Connie says, "I got my little scissors out and cut a star-shaped punch for the one I missed!"
Going to baseball games at Runyon Field in Pueblo was one of Connie's favorite activities! A fan of the Pueblo Dodgers, Connie kept a scrapbook and had an autograph book with the players' signatures! "I went to all the games and listened to the out-of-town games on the radio! "Team manager," remembers Connie "was Ray Hathaway, and the shortstop's name was Kenny Lehman."
Keeping scrapbooks on movie stars was a popular pastime for Connie, Kaye and Carol. Connie's favorite movie star was Tab Hunter. (Today Connie likes Clint Eastwood!) Kaye's favorite movie star was Robert Wagner. And Carol's favorite movie star was Rock Hudson. Jeffrey Hunter was cited as another Favorite along with Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, Natalie Wood and Esther Williams. "You look like Elizabeth Taylor!" Pauline tells Connie.
When television became popular in the 1950's, two of Connie's favorite "never-miss" shows were "Liberace", and "Your Hit Parade".
Pauline was a "tag-along" in those early years (and probably later, too!) She accompanied Connie, Cousin Kaye Passanante, Carol Kacnik, Pauline Rusovick, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on many of their ventures. Connie even had a seat on the back of her Hawthorne bicycle where Pauline remembers riding with her legs sticking out so they wouldn't get caught in the spokes! Connie was glad when Pauline got her own Schwinn bicycle!
Aunts and Uncles are mentioned by Connie. Occasional family reunions included the Passanante, Luppino, Capozzola and Coffee Families. "Uncle Joe, Uncle Charlie (Carl, Slew), Uncle Jack, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Rena, Aunt Irene, Aunt Rose, Aunt Jackie, Uncle Mike and Uncle Dominick," Connie names her Pueblo, Colorado aunts and uncles (all on her Mama's side of the family). Connie says that she never met any of Dad's sisters, their spouses or cousins on the DiSipio side of the family.
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Connie's "peer cousins" were Kaye, Lucille and Anthony Capozzola. Andy ("Sonny" "Butch") Rusovick was a peer third cousin as his Mother Nina Luppino Rusovick and our Mama Dea Passanante DiSipio were first cousins. "I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes from my cousin Lucille," says Connie. Lucille was the first-born grandchild of Carlo (Cologero, Calogero) Passanante and Paolina (Paola, Pauline) Luppino Passanante.
Besides the black family from the South, which included Mrs. Sawyer, Henry, "Little Joe", Eva and Mattie Lou, there were other "memorables of an ethnically mixed neighborhood" mentioned by Connie. "Mike Uhal and his family, the Hinds, Sagonas, Jaramillos, Runcos, Luceros, Sciortinos, Morenos, Uriostes, Landorfs, Rusovicks, Passanantes and the Capozzolas." The Lucero children that Connie remembers the most are Gloria, Madeline, Barney and Orlando.
"We made fun out of the stuff in life that's free, like finding four-leaf clovers, making cloud pictures, hand shadow figures on the bedroom wall, telling stories especially GHOST stories like 'Bloody Bones'!" says Connie who says that fun doesn't have to cost money. Connie acknowledges the resourcefulness of yesterday's children. "Friends and families were on 'hunts'," Connie continues, "like rock hunts, colored glass hunts and grasshopper hunts!" Connie names other fun activities, "There were melted crayons, coloring books, water colors, easel painting, piano rolls, softball, Kick the Can, Hide and Go Seek, jump rope and embroidering! Card games like Rummy, Canasta and Briscola were fun, too!" Pauline comments remembering the early childhood simple card games like Book and War.
Connie goes on, "There were tricycles, bicycles, rollerskating with old-fashioned skate keys, wagons, pony rides … all part of this era." Connie goes on naming a wealth of activities … hopscotch, hangman, tic-tac-toe, the parks, the zoo and Monkey Mountain, the circus, Colorado State Fair, church festivals, comic books, marbles, jacks, ping pong (table tennis), paddle balls, yo-yo's, collecting trinkets, jigsaw puzzles, paper dolls, Chinese checkers, checkers, bingo, fiddlesticks, Monopoly, blow bubbles, bubble gum like Fleer's with comic wraps and Double Bubble Gum!
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There was no lack of things to do or places to go! In the radio, Connie listened to Hopalong Cassidy, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, My True Story, The Thin Man, The Shadow and Inner Sanctum. At this point Connie names the four movie theaters in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. "There were the 'Clyne' and 'Avalon' in the Bessemer District, the 'Uptown' in the Mesa Junction segment of town, and the 'Main' Theater downtown." Pauline thinks that the Main Theater was later called the Chief, and she remembers in later years in the Bessemer area the Victory Theater which showed Spanish-speaking movies.
Connie and Pauline both joined the "Y" for awhile and "tried " to learn how to swim. Connie was better at it than Pauline. We both decided that eating was more fun than trying to learn how to swim! One of Connie's favorite "hangouts" was Mesa Snack for great hamburgers with grilled onions! A favorite of mine, too!
There was Marshall's Drugstore in Bessemer for a LARGE bottle of Pepsi for 5 cents. There were three straws, shared by Connie, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on the way home from Bessemer Grade School! Pauline remembers going to Marshall's often in the '50's for ice cream cones with her friend and classmate Irene Julia Chavez, and sometimes with her friends Jessie Mae Ballagut and Marlene Todero.
Connie now names Sambo's Popcorn Shop (owned by Sam Corsentino who has since passed away) in the Mesa Junction where we went for "sherbert" (sherbet), cotton candy, candied apples and snow cones (sno-cones). Pauline remembers a "Patsy's" doll which was a chef with a white cap and a mustache! He was turning a crank of some kind … for taffy … ? … Pauline's memory is vague on this one. Melvin's Chicken was another favorite "hang-out" and eating place for Connie where she enjoyed eating "Chicken in a Basket" with Mom and Pauline.
When Connie was about fourteen years old, she experienced her first "true love". His name was Wayne Latka, her "heart throb" who was fifteen years old. They went steady for eight months. Connie recalls, "It was an innocent romance, with a total of four kisses … his birthday, my birthday, Christmas and Easter. Wayne gave me a beautiful gold cross necklace
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which I still have." Connie has nice memories of that special time in her life.
"These were the days of poodle skirts, gaucho belts, saddle shoes, scarves worn around the neck, squaw dresses, patio dresses and turtleneck sweaters! These were the times of the 50's music, Elvis, Rock'n Roll, the 'Bop', Bill Haley and the Comets, the Beatles … and 'Rock Around the Clock'!" Connie paints a picture of the 1950's.
Connie took both piano and violin lessons, but says that her "teachers always died". The last violin teacher Connie remembers was Mr. Hardwick. Music was important to the DiSipio Family. Connie gives another example, "Dad had a part-time job at KDZA Radio Station where he hosted an Italian music show on which he spoke and announced both in English and Italian and which featured dozens of Italian records! Mr. Dee Crouch was his manager. We also became friends with the 'Italian Nationals' – the DiMeglio Family, which included Ciro, Mary and son Mario. They were a very colorful and musical family!"
Connie's memory is serving her well! Connie, Joan Iacabone and Michael Dalio were on a local radio program where Connie sang the then popular song, "Because of You" and also sang the "Alphabet Song". (Connie sang both of them complete and with perfect pitch, vibrato and rich tone on the telephone for me while we were talking long distance one night!)
Not only is Connie a musician, she is also an artist! I remember all the animals she would draw, especially mountain lions and horses! And she had a painting kit with an easel and palette! A unique skill of hers was drawing cartoon comics on rolls of adding machine paper! (Those rolls probably came from Grandma and Grandpa Passanante's grocery store.) She still has those rolls of artwork!
Wine-making allows memories to surface for Connie … "I loved to watch Grandpa in his hip boots crushing the grapes in the trough and pouring the juice into barrels to ferment! One glass of Grandpa Passanante's wine would literally knock me out!" Connie tells of the potency and richness of Grandpa's homemade wine.
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Grandma had chickens in her back yard, and Pauline remembers getting too close once while watching Grandma clean a chicken! Pauline ran home crying!
Connie shares a warm memory, "I remember going to Grandma's house some nights and falling asleep to the chatter of busy voices in Italian … and some very loud card games! Grandma Passanante always served her homemade biscuits (biscotti) and coffee."
Grapevines, a very special fig tree (from Sicily), the smell of boiling tomatoes for canning, and "babalucci" snails scooting along the kitchen walls are some of Pauline's memories of 736 Elm Street, Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Pauline especially remembers, "Grandma had a 'weather station' sitting on her kitchen window sill. It was a small house about six inches high with a witch on one side and Hansel and Gretel on the other side. When the witch came out, it was going to be cold, stormy or rainy. Hansel and Gretel coming forward meant it would be a nice day!" Pauline was captivated with that "magical" barometer!
Grandpa "Nonnu" Passanante worked at the steel mill. In addition to wine-making, he tended a big vegetable garden in the middle of the 700 block of Elm Street. Both Grandma and Grandpa belonged to Italian and Catholic lodges. Mostly Grandma.
Connie now names some areas past the Old Bessemer Neighborhood and heading toward downtown. There were Mesa Junction, Union Avenue and Main Street. Connie and Pauline both remember "dragging Main" during their high school years. "The Grove District down by the Arkansas River and the railroad tracks, " Connie claims, "made 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' Series as Pueblo, Colorado being the only city where 3 churches were found on three of four corners, all adjacent." Connie goes on naming … "Mount Carmel Catholic Church for the Italians and Spanish, St. Anthony's Catholic Church for the Czechoslovakians ('Slovaks'), and the third church was either a Russian Orthodox Church or St. Mary's Catholic Church for the Slavic people,
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Yugoslavians, Slovenians."
Connie attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Churches in Pueblo, and she would sometimes go to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the Grove with her friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik. Pauline remembers going with Connie and Carol to St. Anthony's Church and watching the Arkansas River flow beneath as she looked through the cracks between the rotting floor boards of that old bridge! That was a pretty scary walk for Pauline, six years younger than Connie! Both Connie and Pauline sang in Assumption Catholic Church choir. Assumption Church was nearby on the 900 block of Evans Avenue. Connie was Pauline's Confirmation sponsor, and Pauline took Connie's middle name "Marie" for her Confirmation name.
Pueblo schools attended by Connie were Strack (formerly Danforth), Bessemer, Keating Junior High School, Central High School and Pueblo College. Connie was an "A" student and a good speller. However, Connie has a sad memory of misspelling a word in a spelling bee. "I remember going down in a spelling bee when I missed the word 'ecclesiastical'," recalls Connie in a voice that still tells of disappointment.
Connie DiSipio was a member of many clubs and organizations, the recipient of many awards and was vice president of the student body of Pueblo Central High School, 1955 – 1956. Joe Hurd was president of the student body. Pauline recalls that DeSoto Jordan was the student body president at Central, 1961 – 1962, during Pauline's senior year there.
Pauline remembers the joy and tears of happiness expressed by Mom and especially Dad when Connie was crowned Homecoming Queen at Pueblo Junior College for 1957 – 1958!
Connie now shares a humorous incident that happened when she was a junior in high school, a memory that brings a smile to her face. "I had to cross a vacant lot on my way home from school. Loaded down with books, I trudged along and suddenly heard what sounded like thundering hooves of horses!" When Connie looked behind her, she saw the Central Baseball Team working out, running track right down her path! "They seemed to come out of nowhere! All of a sudden, I was leading the pack, running with all my might until I finally got out of their way!"
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Going to the Senior Prom on a double date with the twins Bob and Joe Hughes, was a highlight for Connie. "I was Bob's date, and Rayetta Arnold was Joe's date."
A Knights of Columbus picnic when she was "sweet sixteen" was where Connie met her future husband, John Delane Williams. "We dated for a year, went steady for a year, were engaged for a year and married September 6, 1958." John graduated in 1956 from Pueblo Catholic High School where he played football. To Connie and John (who were divorced in 1979) were born Diane and Brian. Diane and her husband Kim Windingland have two children, Sean and Clara, and they live in Rogers, Minnesota. Brian lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and is engaged to Penny Landman, who has a son named Cody. Brian and Penny plan to marry in August of 2002.
John, Ph.D., works full-time at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) and part-time with his wife Jole, Ph.D. in her psychology business. John and Jole have a son Delane Williams who plays on a junior hockey team in Minnesota. There is another family member not to be left out … a cat named Tommy!
"I was in theater in both high school and junior college and played lead roles," Connie tells of another skill and talent of hers! "The only play title I remember was 'Seven Keys to Baldpate'. Dean Wenstrom was theater instructor in junior college at that time."
"Uncles in the United States Army … letters sent home … rationing of food and gas and other commodities (like sugar) ...recession … hard times..." these are some of Connie's memories of World War II, which ended in 1945 when Connie was about seven years old. Connie can still picture the RCA Victrola and can sing many of the words and tunes to special war songs, like "Dear Mom" and "I Remember Pearl Harbor"! Connie remembers the photographs of Uncle Charlie, Uncle Jack and Uncle Joe, all in their military uniforms.
"We could only have one cat at a time," says Connie who today has many cats, dogs and other pets. She says that there was a limit on the number of pets she could have at 716 Elm Street where she grew up. She
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did, however, mention the 50 pigeons which roosted in the garage in the back yard of the 716 Elm Street home! "One day Dad brought a pigeon home from the steel mill. I named her 'Tootsie'. Then, a second pigeon came, and I named 'him' 'Snowball'. And that was how the 50 pigeons got their start!" explains Connie who says that sacks of wheat were kept in the garage for feed. Some of Connie's pet pigeons became "squab in spaghetti sauce"! That was a sad time for Connie who had grown close to her pet pigeons.
Tommy and Panther were her two cats, and there were turtles and parakeets. Nicky, Ricky, Gum Drop and Jelly Bean were the parakeets. Pauline remembers playing the "teaching parakeets to talk" phonograph record over and over … "Hello … Hello, Baby … Hello … Hello, Baby ...". Pauline doesn't think those birds ever learned to talk!
Connie remembers having one dog for a short time, but he "ran away". Grandma Passanante's white sheepdog "Butchie" and a big black-gray cat named "Inky" were visited often by Connie, who loved them both very much! Connie's love for animals carried into her adult years. In 1975, Connie was one of the original founders of the Grand Forks Humane
Society in North Dakota.
Now, a memory surfaces for Pauline who remembers asking Daddy why we couldn't have a dog. After all, he had dogs in Italy and a horse, too! And he replied, "Dogs need a lot of room to run around." And when Pauline asked Daddy where Italy was, we'd go to the back yard and he'd point to the east. Thinking that Italy couldn't be that far away, Pauline couldn't understand why we just couldn't go there right then!
Much of the DiSipio family history is not known to Connie or Pauline. Most of the information seemed to be in those letters that Grandfather Angelo DiSipio and Aunt Luisa wrote to our Daddy, Mama and family! Daddy very seldom talked about his DiSipio family. Mama passed on to us what Daddy told her. And .. she had her own memories of her husband's father before he left here in 1939. Mama always talked about Grandpa in a positive light, "Your Grandpa Angelo DiSipio was a kind and generous man!"
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And now the interview shifts to … FOOD!
"There were all those wonderful foods that only Mom could make!" Connie begins naming the foods that have left a lasting impression. "Home made bread (I can smell it now)! Sunday dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, lettuce and tomato salad and strawberry shortcake! Fried rabbit! Vegetable omelets called 'froschias'! Pasta fazool (macaroni and beans)! Soups! Salads! Fried eggs in 'sucu' (spaghetti sauce)! Biscuits (Biscotti)! Fried ricotta cheese pie! Cream puffs! And that wonderful homemade sweet bread called 'poteetza (poteca, potica)!" Those were the foods Connie remembers the most. The beverages at the DiSipio house that Connie remembers were Delaware Punch, Nehi pop, coffee and milk. We had a cobalt blue glass fluted pitcher that held Kool-Aid and lemonade. Grapette pop was a favorite of Pauline's.
There were also foods that Connie ate that Mother didn't make, like store-bought cinnamon rolls with that layer of white frosting you could peel off. Both Connie and Pauline dunked many a roll into "Hyde Park" milk for breakfast! Later, for a period of time, Hillside Dairy milk was delivered to the DiSipio house at 716 Elm Street. "The first piece of pizza I ate was at a church festival!" says Connie in an excited voice! "The pizza was VERY raised, two inches thick, with a LOT of tomato sauce and very little cheese!" Connie tells of a pizza of yesteryear.
Memories of the yard at 716 Elm Street are vivid as Connie describes a vegetable garden with "everything imaginable"! "Thank God for the vegetable garden, for that is what we survived on during the long summer steel mill strikes," Connie thankfully recalls the abundant vegetable garden. Tomatoes, bell peppers (which we called "mangoes"), green string beans, garlic, onions, sweet basil (which we called "basilico"), corn, parsley, fava horse beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, Swiss chard, mustard greens, asparagus, kohlrabi, and mint are some of those vegetables and herbs recalled by both Connie and Pauline.
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Dad did most of the work in the vegetable garden and tended to trees, hedges and grass while Mom nurtured her colorful, flourishing and abundant flower garden. There were lilacs, snowball bush, pussy willow tree, fruit trees … cherries, peaches, Italian plums … rhubarb, hedges, baby's breath, spirea (bridal wreath), trumpet vine, honeysuckle vine, roses, gladiolas, irises, white peonies, tulips, chrysanthemums, phlox, zinnias, sunflowers, and … BIG BEAUTIFUL dinner plate dahlias that could have won prizes at the Colorado State Fair! There were snapdragons that we called "puppies" that when squeezed, would "bark"! There were pansies and "baby ones called johnny jump-ups"! There were hollyhocks that grew wild in the alley. Petals from roses we wore as colorful "fingernails"! Mama spent hours looking at flower and seed mail order catalogs while Dad was reading the Readers Digest and a special Physics book and writing suggestions for improving steel-making and safety at the CF&I. Mom was outgoing, while Dad was a "loner". Both were very intelligent and hard-working.
Connie has olfactory memories … "I remember Dad's Fitch's Rose Hair Oil! And Evening in Paris perfume in that little blue bottle!" Speaking of perfume, Connie is a long-time AVON Representative, having received many AVON President Club awards for sales and excellence! Christmas for Mom and Pauline was extra exciting as AVON cosmetics, perfume and jewelry were unwrapped! They were all gifts from Connie.
Today, Connie, age 62, is on Social Security retirement but chooses to continue working. Besides selling AVON, a job which Connie "enjoys", she works at two restaurants part-time, seven days a week! Connie remains very active! She will be 63 on November 7, 2001. God Bless! Seeing and visiting with her children and grandchildren is an important part of Connie's life! Diane was born in 1962 and Brian was born in 1971. Connie's grandchildren, Sean and Clara Windingland, were born in 1989 and 1992. Clara, who was adopted by Kim and Diane when she was a baby, has the same birthday as her Great-Great-Grandmother
Concetta D'Orazio DiSipio.
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"My PETS are my #1 Hobby!" says Connie who also enjoys gardening and yard work, cooking, reading, writing and collecting figurines (cats and bunnies) and steins. Connie and Pauline recently compiled a cookbook together, just for Connie's family. It is called "A Tale of Two Sisters Heritage Cookbook".
Connie's favorite television program is "Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire!" Connie watches documentaries, talk shows. She likes news shows, like "20-20", "60 Minutes", "Dateline", "Nightline" and "Primetime". Connie likes movies, action films, crime shows, suspense movies, and series like "West Wing", "The Practice" and "Law and Order". Connie listens to weather reports regularly. Connie calls herself a "Survivor", having been through snowstorms, ice storms and windstorms!
It was the Great Flood of 1997 of Grand Forks, North Dakota that forced Connie to evacuate her home on University Avenue! While displaced, Connie stayed at a farm in Grafton, North Dakota and also at a motel. During that time, Connie wrote a book titled, "How to Survive a Flood or Other Catastrophe". It is a manual for Disaster Victims. Connie, with rescue teams, kept her pets alive, but it was during that flood that many of Connie's household items perished! Connie lost nine precious family photo albums! None of her precious pets died, except for a dove that was in the basement.
There is a memory that will never perish, for both Connie and Pauline, sisters who love each other and remember …
A SPECIAL MEMORY ...
"A blue-gray frame house with a wrap-around front porch and white picket fence … our childhood home at 716 Elm Street."
FOLLOWING IN MEMORIAM PUBLISHED IN "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017:
IN MEMORIAM Connie Marie DiSipio Williams Who Passed Away Ten Years Ago Today Nov. 7, 1938 to Sept. 26, 2007. PUBLISHED in "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017.
DR. CONCETTA CONSTANCE CONNIE MARIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS
November 7, 1938 to September 26, 2007
Dr. Connie Williams, 68, born Concetta Constance Marie DiSipio in Pueblo, Colorado, November 7, 1938, passed away September 26, 2007 at Crystal Care Center in Crystal, Minnesota. She had been ill for one year with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.
Connie, a 40-year Grand Forks, North Dakota resident and renowned animal lover, is remembered as one of the founders of the Grand Forks Humane Society. Connie was an "Avon Lady" for more than 25 years, and also was a worker and hostess at various restaurants, most recently Kentucky Fried Chicken. Connie Williams, a prolific writer, who called herself a "pioneer and survivor", experienced the Grand Forks Great Flood of 1997 and wrote a book, "How to Survive a Flood and Other Disasters."
A scholar, Ms. Williams, a Pueblo, Colorado Central High School 1956 Top Ten graduate and school vice president and a Pueblo Junior College Homecoming Queen and graduate in 1958, continued her under-graduate and much of her graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado (Colorado State Teachers College) in Greeley, Colorado in the 1960's. In 1970, Connie earned a PhD in Counseling at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks.
She worked in several positions at UND, including working at the Counseling Center, teaching child development in the Home Economics Department and teaching mental health nursing in the College of Nursing. Dr. Connie Williams co-authored a book on mental health nursing.
Connie, who truly loved animals, owned hundreds of cats and many other pets over her lifetime and advocated for humane treatment of all animals. She was named Grand Forks Humane Society Humanitarian of the Year of 1975.
Dr. Connie Williams is survived by a daughter, Diane (Kim) Windingland, Rogers, Minnesota; a son, Brian (Penny) Williams, Red Lake Falls, Minnesota; grandchildren, Sean Windingland, Clara Windingland, Yuri Windingland, Carly Williams and Cody Landman; a sister, Pauline DiSipio, Montrose, Colorado; ex-husband John Delane Williams, Ocean Park, Washington; special friend Marilyn Woolsey, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Connie is survived by her last pet, her beloved Cat named Tuffy.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents, Anthony and Dorothy Passanante DiSipio, her stillborn brother, and other family members, including many beloved pets.
No Services, per her request.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Grand Forks Humane Society.
INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE DISIPIO WILLIAMS – 2001
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Interview By Pauline Annette DiSipio Pueblo, Colorado:
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Representing the DiSipio Family is Connie DiSipio Williams. Ph.D, who recalls a childhood filled with "Precious Memories", those special years of growing up on Elm Street in Pueblo, Colorado.
Concetta Maria DiSipio, or Constance (Connie) Marie, was born November 7, 1938 to Antonio (Anthony, Tony) DiSipio and Dorotea (Dorothy, Delia, Dea) Passanante DiSipio of 732 Elm Street, which was next door to the Passanante house at 736 Elm Street. Both houses belonged to the bride's (Dorothy) Parents who were fulfilling a tradition by helping their daughter and husband get started in life.
Baby "Concettina's" birth took place at old St. Mary's Hospital on Quincy Street in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1940, 716 Elm Street became the DiSipio Family Home. Connie's Baptismal Godparents were her Uncle Carl (Charlie, Slew) Passanante and her Aunt Rosaria (Sarah) Passanante.
Connie's first of two memories is that of "Mama rocking me in a creaky rocking chair, holding me close to her breast and singing lullabies to me." Connie cites "Rock-a-Bye Baby" and "City of David" and mentions "Mom's soothing beautiful voice, and even better, a wonderful hearty laugh!" A second memory (before age 2) is that of next-door neighbor Donald Landorf holding Little Connie while he was visiting at 716 Elm Street.
"Most of the relatives lived on the same block or a block away," Connie points out the closeness of the Family. Grandma Passanante's grocery store at the upper end of our 700 block is recalled. "My favorite candy," Connie has a sweet memory, "were those licorice soft babies which sold for 5 cents each!"
A funny experience (funny now, not then!) happened to Connie when she was about five or six years old. Connie recalls … "I climbed up into the medicine cabinet where I found a box of Ex-Lax, a popular chocolate laxative. Thinking that it was a Hershey bar, I consumed the entire box! I was a sick little girl for two weeks!"
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Those "little rubber babies" at Woolworth's looked mighty good to little Connie, so good that, at age 5 or 6, she slipped two of those little tiny pink naked rubber babies into her coat pocket! Pangs of guilt, even at that early age, got the best of Connie. When she confessed to Mama, they promptly took the streetcar back downtown to that store! Connie, giving the babies back to the saleslady, told her that she was sorry for taking them. Her reward for telling the truth was that the saleslady let her keep the little rubber babies.
Connie remembers riding the streetcar with Mama downtown to shop. "The streetcar was an old-fashioned cable car that ran on rails in the middle of the streets," Connie describes a major mode of transportation at that time.
Connie's first "dolly" now sits in her bedroom at her home in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Though her dolly's clothes are no longer new (a torn pink dress, torn bonnet and bare feet), Dolly still has her "pretty face and big brown eyes".
Several "service men" are remembered by Connie. "I remember the mailman, the milk man, the sheeny man who was a junk collector with his donkey and cart, the coal man who brought us coal for our stoves, the ice man who brought blocks of ice for our 'ice box', and the ice cream man with his musical cart and whistle." Connie continues with a laugh, "I remember everyone laughing when I asked the ice cream man if I could see his 'birdie' (whistle)!"
In those early years, Connie states that Mama did not work outside the home. Later, Mom got a job in the Old Neighborhood at LaTronica's Restaurant, located on Abriendo Avenue five or six blocks from the DiSipio house. Dad worked at the steel mill (Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation) first in the Open Hearth, then in the Blast Furnace Department. The mill was about a mile from our house. "I remember Dad calling himself a 'grease monkey'!" Connie recalls.
Dad was hired in 1936 before he and Mom were married. At that time he was living on Routt Avenue in the Bessemer area of Pueblo and was boarding with the Mauro Family. He and John Mauro were good friends. Dad walked to the mill and back again for several years. His father Angelo
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DiSipio also "boarded" and worked at the mill. Dad and Mom met in the Old Neighborhood. When DiSipio, who was Abruzzese (Abruzza, Abruzzi, Italy) would go to Passanante's Grocery Store to buy cigarettes, he would wink at the pretty Sicilian (Sicily, Italy) lady named "Delia Passanante" who waited on him from behind the counter! It was on November 21, 1937 that they were married at Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Pueblo.
Mama told Pauline that Daddy's DiSipio Family lived on Elm Street when Daddy was a little boy, and it was later in the back yard of 736 Elm Street (the Passanante home later) where Daddy fell from an apple tree while playing with a friend! He had shown Mama his scar many times as he told the story. A Pueblo City Directory from 1916 confirms that Angelo and Concetta DiSipio lived at 1017 Elm Street, The directory also states that Angelo DiSipio was a steelworker.
It was in 1939 that Grandpa Angelo DiSipio left Pueblo for the last time to join his wife Concetta in the mountain village of Civitella Messer Raimondo, the Province of Chieti in the Region of Abruzzi in Central Italy. Although he spent many hours with Connie and watched her take her first steps. Grandfather DiSipio is not in Connie's memory. There is a snapshot of Grandpa DiSipio at the Pueblo Union Depot train station in 1939 before he got on the train. Baby Connie and her Mama are in the photo with Grandpa Angelo. Also pictured are Grandma Paolina Passanante (Mama Dea's Mama), Uncle Jack (Chase) Passanante and Uncle Slew Passanante, Cousin Lucille Capozzola and Compare and Comare Raffaele (Ralph) and Carmela (Carm Dorazio) Sarlo. That was 1939. And Grandfather Angelo never returned to the United States. But, many letters were written to his son Tony DiSipio and Family.
Connie remembers the early morning hours when Mama used to drive Daddy to work at the mill. A '38 Chrysler was the family's first car, replaced in the '50's by a DeSoto. Mom and Dad both taught Connie to drive. Connie recalls, " Mom learned to drive first, then she taught Dad how to drive, and later they taught me how to drive."
"I remember," says Connie, "the coal and wood stove used for cooking in our kitchen. It was used to heat water and provide warmth." Connie tells about the many wonderful meals cooked on that old coal stove. She remembers the warmth it gave while she was being bathed in an iron tub set on two chairs right next to the stove. Connie remembers 4 of 16 kerosene heaters placed in a very cold bathroom that housed a deep, four-footed porcelain bathtub.
As a baby and again as a young child, Connie had the "mal occhio", which Connie terms as a "state of affairs creating violent headaches and incessant pain, abruptly initiated by someone with evil intentions who was staring at you!!" There was an old Italian (Sicilian) woman on "Goat Hill" who put a bowl of water on Connie's head and a water glass turned upside down. There was a burning candle in the glass. After circling her hands in prayer above Connie's head, she would pray and chant" in Italian (Sicilian). The "evil" spell of the "Bad Eye" (Mal Occhio) would be broken when the water from the bowl would rise into the overturned glass, extinguishing the candle, thereby ending the mal occhio.
A milestone in young Connie's early years was going to kindergarten at Strack School, where her teacher was Mrs. Slayden (Slayton). In the band, Connie played both tambourine and triangle. Connie's two kindergarten boyfriends were Charles Delpapa and Joe Pannunzio. A second milestone was First Holy Communion. Connie's Confirmation sponsor a few years later was Elm Street neighbor Mary "Sister" Runco.
"Christmas in early childhood was so very special with the lights, the wreaths in our windows, snowflakes drifting down, the beautiful tree with all the gifts, and the warm resounding music of our player piano rolls, Mom's singing, or radio music that heralded in the holiday spirit!" Connie creates a holiday picture of a most special time in her life. That player piano was a Packard, made in Fort Wayne, Indiana in either 1907 or 1909. We had about 300 piano rolls! Along with Christmas carols, Pauline remembers peddling to and singing some favorites … "Paper Doll", "Sidewalks of New York", "Chicago", "Witching Waves", "Colorado", "Beautiful Ohio", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and a BIG piano roll titled "Bugle Calls and War Songs"! Most of those piano rolls were made in the first or second decade of the 1900's. That player piano came with the house when Mom and Dad bought it from Mr. and Mrs. Sharpsteen in 1940. The player piano was willed to Pauline, who gave it to her niece Diane Williams Windingland,
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daughter of Connie and John Delane Williams. Dad's old tool collection, including several antique saws, went to Brian Troy Williams, son of Connie and John Delane Williams.
Examining a photograph from 1948, Connie and Pauline reminisce about Connie's Birthday Party when she was 10 years old. That photo was taken in front of 716 Elm Street in Pueblo, and Connie is pictured with some special kids from the Old Neighborhood. Helping Connie celebrate her 10th Birthday Party were "Dee Dee" Jaramillo, Pauline Louise Rusovick, Joe Patti, Joe Hurd, Chuck Delpapa, Tom Clementi, Andy "Sonny Boy" "Butch" Rusovick, Irene Aragon, Cecelia Kaye Townsend Passanante, Joan Nina Iacabone, Shirley Simmons, Beatrice "Bootie" Jaramillo, Ernest Vergilio, Sammy Spoone, (Carl) Anthony Capozzola, Marcia Brothers, Mary Pisciotte, Josephine "Baby Doll" Amore, Lillian "Babe" Sciortino, Sammy Sciortino, Jackie Dwain Passanante, Carl Jess Passanante, Pauline Annette DiSipio … and the Birthday Girl Constance Marie (Connie) DiSipio, kneeling and holding her Birthday Cake!
Fourth of July was special where on the hill by Sawyer's house overlooking the Arkansas River, the "Grove" and the Runyon Baseball Field, Connie and her cousin (and next-door neighbor) Kaye Passanante, and neighbor from across the alley Pauline Rusovick and best friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik all voted on favorite fireworks displays! Getting back for a moment to "Sawyer's house", Connie describes Mrs. Sawyer. "She was the matriarch of her family with the southern plantation style dress and speech. 'Miss Dea', 'Mr. Tony', 'Miss Connie' and 'Miss Pauline' … that is how Mrs. Sawyer addressed us." Connie remembers, allowing a memory to be resurrected for Pauline, who remembers the black family with fondness.
Connie and her sister Pauline, born in 1944, loved the Abbott and Costello movies, "The Little Match Girl", and Charlie Chan movies in the early Fifties! Connie went to see the "Superman" series with her friend Joan Iacabone. The series was every Saturday for fourteen weeks at the Uptown Theater in the Mesa Junction area of Pueblo. Tickets were 14
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cents and the final show was free if all thirteen series were attended! Connie missed one of the Saturdays because she was sick. Feeling heartbroken about not getting to see the last one, Connie says, "I got my little scissors out and cut a star-shaped punch for the one I missed!"
Going to baseball games at Runyon Field in Pueblo was one of Connie's favorite activities! A fan of the Pueblo Dodgers, Connie kept a scrapbook and had an autograph book with the players' signatures! "I went to all the games and listened to the out-of-town games on the radio! "Team manager," remembers Connie "was Ray Hathaway, and the shortstop's name was Kenny Lehman."
Keeping scrapbooks on movie stars was a popular pastime for Connie, Kaye and Carol. Connie's favorite movie star was Tab Hunter. (Today Connie likes Clint Eastwood!) Kaye's favorite movie star was Robert Wagner. And Carol's favorite movie star was Rock Hudson. Jeffrey Hunter was cited as another Favorite along with Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, Natalie Wood and Esther Williams. "You look like Elizabeth Taylor!" Pauline tells Connie.
When television became popular in the 1950's, two of Connie's favorite "never-miss" shows were "Liberace", and "Your Hit Parade".
Pauline was a "tag-along" in those early years (and probably later, too!) She accompanied Connie, Cousin Kaye Passanante, Carol Kacnik, Pauline Rusovick, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on many of their ventures. Connie even had a seat on the back of her Hawthorne bicycle where Pauline remembers riding with her legs sticking out so they wouldn't get caught in the spokes! Connie was glad when Pauline got her own Schwinn bicycle!
Aunts and Uncles are mentioned by Connie. Occasional family reunions included the Passanante, Luppino, Capozzola and Coffee Families. "Uncle Joe, Uncle Charlie (Carl, Slew), Uncle Jack, Aunt Sarah, Aunt Rena, Aunt Irene, Aunt Rose, Aunt Jackie, Uncle Mike and Uncle Dominick," Connie names her Pueblo, Colorado aunts and uncles (all on her Mama's side of the family). Connie says that she never met any of Dad's sisters, their spouses or cousins on the DiSipio side of the family.
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Connie's "peer cousins" were Kaye, Lucille and Anthony Capozzola. Andy ("Sonny" "Butch") Rusovick was a peer third cousin as his Mother Nina Luppino Rusovick and our Mama Dea Passanante DiSipio were first cousins. "I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes from my cousin Lucille," says Connie. Lucille was the first-born grandchild of Carlo (Cologero, Calogero) Passanante and Paolina (Paola, Pauline) Luppino Passanante.
Besides the black family from the South, which included Mrs. Sawyer, Henry, "Little Joe", Eva and Mattie Lou, there were other "memorables of an ethnically mixed neighborhood" mentioned by Connie. "Mike Uhal and his family, the Hinds, Sagonas, Jaramillos, Runcos, Luceros, Sciortinos, Morenos, Uriostes, Landorfs, Rusovicks, Passanantes and the Capozzolas." The Lucero children that Connie remembers the most are Gloria, Madeline, Barney and Orlando.
"We made fun out of the stuff in life that's free, like finding four-leaf clovers, making cloud pictures, hand shadow figures on the bedroom wall, telling stories especially GHOST stories like 'Bloody Bones'!" says Connie who says that fun doesn't have to cost money. Connie acknowledges the resourcefulness of yesterday's children. "Friends and families were on 'hunts'," Connie continues, "like rock hunts, colored glass hunts and grasshopper hunts!" Connie names other fun activities, "There were melted crayons, coloring books, water colors, easel painting, piano rolls, softball, Kick the Can, Hide and Go Seek, jump rope and embroidering! Card games like Rummy, Canasta and Briscola were fun, too!" Pauline comments remembering the early childhood simple card games like Book and War.
Connie goes on, "There were tricycles, bicycles, rollerskating with old-fashioned skate keys, wagons, pony rides … all part of this era." Connie goes on naming a wealth of activities … hopscotch, hangman, tic-tac-toe, the parks, the zoo and Monkey Mountain, the circus, Colorado State Fair, church festivals, comic books, marbles, jacks, ping pong (table tennis), paddle balls, yo-yo's, collecting trinkets, jigsaw puzzles, paper dolls, Chinese checkers, checkers, bingo, fiddlesticks, Monopoly, blow bubbles, bubble gum like Fleer's with comic wraps and Double Bubble Gum!
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There was no lack of things to do or places to go! In the radio, Connie listened to Hopalong Cassidy, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, My True Story, The Thin Man, The Shadow and Inner Sanctum. At this point Connie names the four movie theaters in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. "There were the 'Clyne' and 'Avalon' in the Bessemer District, the 'Uptown' in the Mesa Junction segment of town, and the 'Main' Theater downtown." Pauline thinks that the Main Theater was later called the Chief, and she remembers in later years in the Bessemer area the Victory Theater which showed Spanish-speaking movies.
Connie and Pauline both joined the "Y" for awhile and "tried " to learn how to swim. Connie was better at it than Pauline. We both decided that eating was more fun than trying to learn how to swim! One of Connie's favorite "hangouts" was Mesa Snack for great hamburgers with grilled onions! A favorite of mine, too!
There was Marshall's Drugstore in Bessemer for a LARGE bottle of Pepsi for 5 cents. There were three straws, shared by Connie, Joan Iacabone and Irene Aragon on the way home from Bessemer Grade School! Pauline remembers going to Marshall's often in the '50's for ice cream cones with her friend and classmate Irene Julia Chavez, and sometimes with her friends Jessie Mae Ballagut and Marlene Todero.
Connie now names Sambo's Popcorn Shop (owned by Sam Corsentino who has since passed away) in the Mesa Junction where we went for "sherbert" (sherbet), cotton candy, candied apples and snow cones (sno-cones). Pauline remembers a "Patsy's" doll which was a chef with a white cap and a mustache! He was turning a crank of some kind … for taffy … ? … Pauline's memory is vague on this one. Melvin's Chicken was another favorite "hang-out" and eating place for Connie where she enjoyed eating "Chicken in a Basket" with Mom and Pauline.
When Connie was about fourteen years old, she experienced her first "true love". His name was Wayne Latka, her "heart throb" who was fifteen years old. They went steady for eight months. Connie recalls, "It was an innocent romance, with a total of four kisses … his birthday, my birthday, Christmas and Easter. Wayne gave me a beautiful gold cross necklace
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which I still have." Connie has nice memories of that special time in her life.
"These were the days of poodle skirts, gaucho belts, saddle shoes, scarves worn around the neck, squaw dresses, patio dresses and turtleneck sweaters! These were the times of the 50's music, Elvis, Rock'n Roll, the 'Bop', Bill Haley and the Comets, the Beatles … and 'Rock Around the Clock'!" Connie paints a picture of the 1950's.
Connie took both piano and violin lessons, but says that her "teachers always died". The last violin teacher Connie remembers was Mr. Hardwick. Music was important to the DiSipio Family. Connie gives another example, "Dad had a part-time job at KDZA Radio Station where he hosted an Italian music show on which he spoke and announced both in English and Italian and which featured dozens of Italian records! Mr. Dee Crouch was his manager. We also became friends with the 'Italian Nationals' – the DiMeglio Family, which included Ciro, Mary and son Mario. They were a very colorful and musical family!"
Connie's memory is serving her well! Connie, Joan Iacabone and Michael Dalio were on a local radio program where Connie sang the then popular song, "Because of You" and also sang the "Alphabet Song". (Connie sang both of them complete and with perfect pitch, vibrato and rich tone on the telephone for me while we were talking long distance one night!)
Not only is Connie a musician, she is also an artist! I remember all the animals she would draw, especially mountain lions and horses! And she had a painting kit with an easel and palette! A unique skill of hers was drawing cartoon comics on rolls of adding machine paper! (Those rolls probably came from Grandma and Grandpa Passanante's grocery store.) She still has those rolls of artwork!
Wine-making allows memories to surface for Connie … "I loved to watch Grandpa in his hip boots crushing the grapes in the trough and pouring the juice into barrels to ferment! One glass of Grandpa Passanante's wine would literally knock me out!" Connie tells of the potency and richness of Grandpa's homemade wine.
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Grandma had chickens in her back yard, and Pauline remembers getting too close once while watching Grandma clean a chicken! Pauline ran home crying!
Connie shares a warm memory, "I remember going to Grandma's house some nights and falling asleep to the chatter of busy voices in Italian … and some very loud card games! Grandma Passanante always served her homemade biscuits (biscotti) and coffee."
Grapevines, a very special fig tree (from Sicily), the smell of boiling tomatoes for canning, and "babalucci" snails scooting along the kitchen walls are some of Pauline's memories of 736 Elm Street, Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Pauline especially remembers, "Grandma had a 'weather station' sitting on her kitchen window sill. It was a small house about six inches high with a witch on one side and Hansel and Gretel on the other side. When the witch came out, it was going to be cold, stormy or rainy. Hansel and Gretel coming forward meant it would be a nice day!" Pauline was captivated with that "magical" barometer!
Grandpa "Nonnu" Passanante worked at the steel mill. In addition to wine-making, he tended a big vegetable garden in the middle of the 700 block of Elm Street. Both Grandma and Grandpa belonged to Italian and Catholic lodges. Mostly Grandma.
Connie now names some areas past the Old Bessemer Neighborhood and heading toward downtown. There were Mesa Junction, Union Avenue and Main Street. Connie and Pauline both remember "dragging Main" during their high school years. "The Grove District down by the Arkansas River and the railroad tracks, " Connie claims, "made 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' Series as Pueblo, Colorado being the only city where 3 churches were found on three of four corners, all adjacent." Connie goes on naming … "Mount Carmel Catholic Church for the Italians and Spanish, St. Anthony's Catholic Church for the Czechoslovakians ('Slovaks'), and the third church was either a Russian Orthodox Church or St. Mary's Catholic Church for the Slavic people,
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Yugoslavians, Slovenians."
Connie attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Churches in Pueblo, and she would sometimes go to St. Anthony's Catholic Church in the Grove with her friend and neighbor Carol Kacnik. Pauline remembers going with Connie and Carol to St. Anthony's Church and watching the Arkansas River flow beneath as she looked through the cracks between the rotting floor boards of that old bridge! That was a pretty scary walk for Pauline, six years younger than Connie! Both Connie and Pauline sang in Assumption Catholic Church choir. Assumption Church was nearby on the 900 block of Evans Avenue. Connie was Pauline's Confirmation sponsor, and Pauline took Connie's middle name "Marie" for her Confirmation name.
Pueblo schools attended by Connie were Strack (formerly Danforth), Bessemer, Keating Junior High School, Central High School and Pueblo College. Connie was an "A" student and a good speller. However, Connie has a sad memory of misspelling a word in a spelling bee. "I remember going down in a spelling bee when I missed the word 'ecclesiastical'," recalls Connie in a voice that still tells of disappointment.
Connie DiSipio was a member of many clubs and organizations, the recipient of many awards and was vice president of the student body of Pueblo Central High School, 1955 – 1956. Joe Hurd was president of the student body. Pauline recalls that DeSoto Jordan was the student body president at Central, 1961 – 1962, during Pauline's senior year there.
Pauline remembers the joy and tears of happiness expressed by Mom and especially Dad when Connie was crowned Homecoming Queen at Pueblo Junior College for 1957 – 1958!
Connie now shares a humorous incident that happened when she was a junior in high school, a memory that brings a smile to her face. "I had to cross a vacant lot on my way home from school. Loaded down with books, I trudged along and suddenly heard what sounded like thundering hooves of horses!" When Connie looked behind her, she saw the Central Baseball Team working out, running track right down her path! "They seemed to come out of nowhere! All of a sudden, I was leading the pack, running with all my might until I finally got out of their way!"
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Going to the Senior Prom on a double date with the twins Bob and Joe Hughes, was a highlight for Connie. "I was Bob's date, and Rayetta Arnold was Joe's date."
A Knights of Columbus picnic when she was "sweet sixteen" was where Connie met her future husband, John Delane Williams. "We dated for a year, went steady for a year, were engaged for a year and married September 6, 1958." John graduated in 1956 from Pueblo Catholic High School where he played football. To Connie and John (who were divorced in 1979) were born Diane and Brian. Diane and her husband Kim Windingland have two children, Sean and Clara, and they live in Rogers, Minnesota. Brian lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and is engaged to Penny Landman, who has a son named Cody. Brian and Penny plan to marry in August of 2002.
John, Ph.D., works full-time at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) and part-time with his wife Jole, Ph.D. in her psychology business. John and Jole have a son Delane Williams who plays on a junior hockey team in Minnesota. There is another family member not to be left out … a cat named Tommy!
"I was in theater in both high school and junior college and played lead roles," Connie tells of another skill and talent of hers! "The only play title I remember was 'Seven Keys to Baldpate'. Dean Wenstrom was theater instructor in junior college at that time."
"Uncles in the United States Army … letters sent home … rationing of food and gas and other commodities (like sugar) ...recession … hard times..." these are some of Connie's memories of World War II, which ended in 1945 when Connie was about seven years old. Connie can still picture the RCA Victrola and can sing many of the words and tunes to special war songs, like "Dear Mom" and "I Remember Pearl Harbor"! Connie remembers the photographs of Uncle Charlie, Uncle Jack and Uncle Joe, all in their military uniforms.
"We could only have one cat at a time," says Connie who today has many cats, dogs and other pets. She says that there was a limit on the number of pets she could have at 716 Elm Street where she grew up. She
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did, however, mention the 50 pigeons which roosted in the garage in the back yard of the 716 Elm Street home! "One day Dad brought a pigeon home from the steel mill. I named her 'Tootsie'. Then, a second pigeon came, and I named 'him' 'Snowball'. And that was how the 50 pigeons got their start!" explains Connie who says that sacks of wheat were kept in the garage for feed. Some of Connie's pet pigeons became "squab in spaghetti sauce"! That was a sad time for Connie who had grown close to her pet pigeons.
Tommy and Panther were her two cats, and there were turtles and parakeets. Nicky, Ricky, Gum Drop and Jelly Bean were the parakeets. Pauline remembers playing the "teaching parakeets to talk" phonograph record over and over … "Hello … Hello, Baby … Hello … Hello, Baby ...". Pauline doesn't think those birds ever learned to talk!
Connie remembers having one dog for a short time, but he "ran away". Grandma Passanante's white sheepdog "Butchie" and a big black-gray cat named "Inky" were visited often by Connie, who loved them both very much! Connie's love for animals carried into her adult years. In 1975, Connie was one of the original founders of the Grand Forks Humane
Society in North Dakota.
Now, a memory surfaces for Pauline who remembers asking Daddy why we couldn't have a dog. After all, he had dogs in Italy and a horse, too! And he replied, "Dogs need a lot of room to run around." And when Pauline asked Daddy where Italy was, we'd go to the back yard and he'd point to the east. Thinking that Italy couldn't be that far away, Pauline couldn't understand why we just couldn't go there right then!
Much of the DiSipio family history is not known to Connie or Pauline. Most of the information seemed to be in those letters that Grandfather Angelo DiSipio and Aunt Luisa wrote to our Daddy, Mama and family! Daddy very seldom talked about his DiSipio family. Mama passed on to us what Daddy told her. And .. she had her own memories of her husband's father before he left here in 1939. Mama always talked about Grandpa in a positive light, "Your Grandpa Angelo DiSipio was a kind and generous man!"
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And now the interview shifts to … FOOD!
"There were all those wonderful foods that only Mom could make!" Connie begins naming the foods that have left a lasting impression. "Home made bread (I can smell it now)! Sunday dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, lettuce and tomato salad and strawberry shortcake! Fried rabbit! Vegetable omelets called 'froschias'! Pasta fazool (macaroni and beans)! Soups! Salads! Fried eggs in 'sucu' (spaghetti sauce)! Biscuits (Biscotti)! Fried ricotta cheese pie! Cream puffs! And that wonderful homemade sweet bread called 'poteetza (poteca, potica)!" Those were the foods Connie remembers the most. The beverages at the DiSipio house that Connie remembers were Delaware Punch, Nehi pop, coffee and milk. We had a cobalt blue glass fluted pitcher that held Kool-Aid and lemonade. Grapette pop was a favorite of Pauline's.
There were also foods that Connie ate that Mother didn't make, like store-bought cinnamon rolls with that layer of white frosting you could peel off. Both Connie and Pauline dunked many a roll into "Hyde Park" milk for breakfast! Later, for a period of time, Hillside Dairy milk was delivered to the DiSipio house at 716 Elm Street. "The first piece of pizza I ate was at a church festival!" says Connie in an excited voice! "The pizza was VERY raised, two inches thick, with a LOT of tomato sauce and very little cheese!" Connie tells of a pizza of yesteryear.
Memories of the yard at 716 Elm Street are vivid as Connie describes a vegetable garden with "everything imaginable"! "Thank God for the vegetable garden, for that is what we survived on during the long summer steel mill strikes," Connie thankfully recalls the abundant vegetable garden. Tomatoes, bell peppers (which we called "mangoes"), green string beans, garlic, onions, sweet basil (which we called "basilico"), corn, parsley, fava horse beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, Swiss chard, mustard greens, asparagus, kohlrabi, and mint are some of those vegetables and herbs recalled by both Connie and Pauline.
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Dad did most of the work in the vegetable garden and tended to trees, hedges and grass while Mom nurtured her colorful, flourishing and abundant flower garden. There were lilacs, snowball bush, pussy willow tree, fruit trees … cherries, peaches, Italian plums … rhubarb, hedges, baby's breath, spirea (bridal wreath), trumpet vine, honeysuckle vine, roses, gladiolas, irises, white peonies, tulips, chrysanthemums, phlox, zinnias, sunflowers, and … BIG BEAUTIFUL dinner plate dahlias that could have won prizes at the Colorado State Fair! There were snapdragons that we called "puppies" that when squeezed, would "bark"! There were pansies and "baby ones called johnny jump-ups"! There were hollyhocks that grew wild in the alley. Petals from roses we wore as colorful "fingernails"! Mama spent hours looking at flower and seed mail order catalogs while Dad was reading the Readers Digest and a special Physics book and writing suggestions for improving steel-making and safety at the CF&I. Mom was outgoing, while Dad was a "loner". Both were very intelligent and hard-working.
Connie has olfactory memories … "I remember Dad's Fitch's Rose Hair Oil! And Evening in Paris perfume in that little blue bottle!" Speaking of perfume, Connie is a long-time AVON Representative, having received many AVON President Club awards for sales and excellence! Christmas for Mom and Pauline was extra exciting as AVON cosmetics, perfume and jewelry were unwrapped! They were all gifts from Connie.
Today, Connie, age 62, is on Social Security retirement but chooses to continue working. Besides selling AVON, a job which Connie "enjoys", she works at two restaurants part-time, seven days a week! Connie remains very active! She will be 63 on November 7, 2001. God Bless! Seeing and visiting with her children and grandchildren is an important part of Connie's life! Diane was born in 1962 and Brian was born in 1971. Connie's grandchildren, Sean and Clara Windingland, were born in 1989 and 1992. Clara, who was adopted by Kim and Diane when she was a baby, has the same birthday as her Great-Great-Grandmother
Concetta D'Orazio DiSipio.
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"My PETS are my #1 Hobby!" says Connie who also enjoys gardening and yard work, cooking, reading, writing and collecting figurines (cats and bunnies) and steins. Connie and Pauline recently compiled a cookbook together, just for Connie's family. It is called "A Tale of Two Sisters Heritage Cookbook".
Connie's favorite television program is "Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire!" Connie watches documentaries, talk shows. She likes news shows, like "20-20", "60 Minutes", "Dateline", "Nightline" and "Primetime". Connie likes movies, action films, crime shows, suspense movies, and series like "West Wing", "The Practice" and "Law and Order". Connie listens to weather reports regularly. Connie calls herself a "Survivor", having been through snowstorms, ice storms and windstorms!
It was the Great Flood of 1997 of Grand Forks, North Dakota that forced Connie to evacuate her home on University Avenue! While displaced, Connie stayed at a farm in Grafton, North Dakota and also at a motel. During that time, Connie wrote a book titled, "How to Survive a Flood or Other Catastrophe". It is a manual for Disaster Victims. Connie, with rescue teams, kept her pets alive, but it was during that flood that many of Connie's household items perished! Connie lost nine precious family photo albums! None of her precious pets died, except for a dove that was in the basement.
There is a memory that will never perish, for both Connie and Pauline, sisters who love each other and remember …
A SPECIAL MEMORY ...
"A blue-gray frame house with a wrap-around front porch and white picket fence … our childhood home at 716 Elm Street."
FOLLOWING IN MEMORIAM PUBLISHED IN "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017:
IN MEMORIAM Connie Marie DiSipio Williams Who Passed Away Ten Years Ago Today Nov. 7, 1938 to Sept. 26, 2007. PUBLISHED in "The Pueblo Chieftain", Pueblo, Colorado, Tuesday, September 26, 2017.
