by Michael Cozzi (KD8TUT)
My father, Abraham, died in January
2009. None of you knew him. But you should
have, you would have liked him. You would
have admired his abilities, his tenacity, and
his sense of humor.
He was born in Chicago, IL in 1932 to
an immigrant family who left Italy in 1911
for a better life. His parents had a total of
12 children, 6 of whom survived to adulthood.
The others died either at birth or within a
few weeks. It was a hard life on the streets
of Little Italy in Chicago. It was a world
where the good, the bad, and the
discriminated against were all tossed into
the same places around Chicago. They had to
be tough- and fend for themselves.
During my dad's youth he attended
school like all other children, with decent
grades. He was well liked and fell into a
small group of local kids who, like him, were
the children of immigrants. All were Italian
except for one, who was the son of the local
tailor and therefore Jewish.
These four kids, Abe, Dominic, Gene,
and Irving ran together their entire life.
These gentlemen were old school in
every respect and would never turn their
backs on each other. They were glued
together. My father benefited greatly from
their lifelong friendship. And the
connections forged in the old neighborhood
never seemed to go away. It wasn't the “mob”,
my dad was not by nature a criminal, it was a
familial connection shared by a common
struggle to survive.
A great story about my dad:
I had been attending the University
of Illinois in Chicago around 1985, and ate
lunch at this little Italian restaurant in
(what is left of) Little Italy almost every
day. It was a one man operation, with hand
made pasta you could see behind a glass
counter- like a sushi bar. It wasn't “high
end” so to speak, but it was Italian food,
for Italians. Tourists did come in and eat
there- but not during the day. During the day
all the women had “big hair” and the men were
your typical Chicago-Italian stock. People
spoke Italian in this restaurant, and you
drew stares if you did not. People would
laugh at me while I fumbled through ordering
in Italian. It really was a great place.
As time went by I became friendly
with the owner of the restaurant. His name
was “Sal”. An old school man about my
father's age.
One day, I had some papers laid out
with my name printed boldly on them, and he
must have noticed them. All of a sudden, the
interaction changed drastically:
“Hey, you Abe C's kid?” Sal blurted.
“Yes, my dad grew up at Taylor and
May St.” I responded.
Sal's whole expression changed before
he said: “No kid of Abe's pays to eat here!”.
And he promptly took the check and tore it up
violently.
He then went on to explain that he
and dad had been good friends, and the two of
them had been involved in working together as
teens “putting in air conditioners during the
war”.
The following Christmas I asked my
father about Sal. His face turned red as a
beet. And he said: “We weren't putting them
in”...
Needless to say, I ate for free for
the next two years at Sal's restaurant and
didn't ask any more questions. Hard times
make hard people. But Sal, always treated me
like family. He even tried to get me to date
his daughter. But I was still hung up on my
ex-girlfriend from high school.
My father married my mother at the
age of 18 and answered his country's call in
1950 and entered the army. Back then you had
to serve (or else). He gladly did it. And
since my father even at that age was a true
Mensch, even his superiors liked him. This
was the Korean War era... and because he was
liked- his superiors kept him in different
training schools until they could station him
outside of a war zone- in Europe. Eventually, after going through
artillery, cook, and radio schools he was
stationed in Germany running a radio unit
which engaged in maneuvers from time to time.
One story I was told about those days
was this:
My father had been ordered to deploy
his radio station. In some way, he was able
to deploy, and was “unofficially” allowed to
go on leave. So he and a friend decided they
would go skiing, for the first time ever,
while the operation as underway. They went down the wrong ski slope,
and apparently were skiing through the
maneuver they had just set up. He had a lot of stories like that.
They would get hundreds of retellings over
the years when his friends would get
together.
Dad returned from the army in 1952
and settled into married life with my mother,
Rosemary. She was an Irish orphan, raised by
Italians, and married to an Italian American. They made their home in the family
home on May St. in Chicago with my
grandparents. And my father attended Coyne
Institute for electronics training and
graduated. Television, radio, and anything
that had electrons flowing in it were objects
of passion to my father. He could tear apart
anything and fix it. Build anything. He used
to tell me he could close his eyes and see
the flow through a circuit
Skipping ahead through 13 years of
quiet family life...
I was born in November 1965, and
would be the only child. Just this same
month, my parents had moved from Little Italy
in Chicago to the north suburbs after the
City of Chicago used eminent domain to gut
Little Italy, and put the University of
Illinois in it's place. Very little remained
except for Taylor St. itself. It was the
destruction of a culture, and it was
intentional.
Our new neighborhood was different.
It was full of doctors, lawyers, politicians,
and well educated people. The majority was
Jewish. More importantly, my dad's friend, my
uncle Irving, lived in the same neighborhood.
My father had purchased the cheapest house in
the neighborhood, and planned to fix it up.
Over the years he had changed
professions from TV/Radio/Electronics repair
to a union electrician. He was a very skilled
tradesman as well.... and he rebuilt the
house into a (Italian) version of a palace:
Two kitchens, three bedrooms, finished
basement, a gas barbeque, and two car garage.
We had a Heathkit store 6 blocks from
us, and yes... he started taking me there at
the age of four. And at the age of four, with
my father's help, I built a crystal radio-
and was listening to it.
My dad was always obsessed with
electronics. We used to drive around on
garbage day, picking up televisions that were
thrown out by our apparently rich neighbors.
We'd bring the TVs home, and we would either
fix them or strip them for parts. This was an
ongoing activity, on a weekly basis, from as
early as I can remember until I was a
teenager.
Every few months there was a new TV
in the house. Someone's garbage, had been
fixed and sat in our living room.
One time, we picked up a Zenith Space
Command TV and fixed it. My dad couldn’t
figure out how to get a replacement for the
remote control, so we returned to the house
we picked up the TV from, and made a deal for
the remote control.
Imagine getting a top of the line TV
for $5? That was dad. I still remember him
explaining to me how the mechanical
ultrasonic elements in the remote made the TV
change channels. Then he made the TV change
channels by jingling his keys in front of it.
Brilliant!
Then there were flee markets, and ham
fests. I think my first ham fest was when I
was 7 in Dupage IL at the Dupage County
Fairgrounds.
In 1972, my father brought home a
Hallicrafters CB-3a, a tube driven CB, and a
quarter wave omnidirectional antenna. We
applied for and were granted a FCC license
KKZ-9634, and radio... took over my life.
From there on out it was building
kits, talking on the radio (before the stupid
movies ruined it), and short wave listening.
For both of us. Dad would work third party on
a friends amateur station... he taught me how
to call CQ. He used to drill me with a ham
related platitude: “Hams Call!!”
We were having a good time. And I
knew little about Amateur Radio at the time.
But dad was forging us forward. One of my
great-uncles was the technical lead at Devry
Institute in Chicago, and began giving me
their instructional materials for free. He
used to drill me all the time:
“So what are the four things in
electronics?” Uncle John would ask.
I'd gulp: “Inductance... um...
errr... resistance... uh... reactance...
erm... hmmmm... capacitance...???”
Sometimes I'd get it right. When I
did... dad would look proud. I was only 12
after all.
Sometime in my 13th year my dad
decided we were going for our ham tickets. We
attended the novice classes at Gompers Park
in Chicago. We studied. But we never sat for
the exam.
I did not figure out until college
why we never sat for the exam. I could have
passed. He certainly could have passed.
Right? Wrong. He would have failed.
My father... could not read.
He could look at a schematic and
understand it. But he could not read. He hid
this his whole life.
This realization hit me like a brick.
It finally made sense... he used to have me
read everything to him. He could not read it
himself. He used to try and read... it would
take him a month to get through a book. He
couldn't read the exam questions. He probably
could not do code.
He was functionally illiterate, most
likely from dyslexia. Here was a man with a
genius IQ, who could not show anyone how
smart he was. He used compensatory skills. He
befriended his instructors and learned
verbally in social situations. He tape
recorded lectures. He did everything hands
on. I witnessed him doing this- and never put
it together.
His teachers, hams he knew, and my
uncle who wrote for Devry- considered him a
genius. They treated him as an equal.
And no one knew he could not read.
How did he graduate Coyne? My guess is that
he was so good hands on, they graduated him
with bad test scores, the fact that he could
lecture you on theory and he knew it cold.
But he could not write it down. He wasn't
lazy and he wasn't stupid- he was disabled.
He could not face an FCC examiner. It
just wouldn't have worked.
Pop died in January 2009 surrounded
by his 2nd wife, myself, and my step sister.
His last words were to me:
“You're a pretty good guy”.
Coming from my dad, that's the
highest praise possible.
So every year, I try to do something
to honor him. Last year it was getting my
ticket. Which was a real blessing because I
found out I really still loved radio. This
year it's this article, and perhaps taking
some of his ashes to W1AW.
He was a great man.
And I want you to know him. He was,
in by mind, our brother. But could never
formally be acknowledged. He had done most of
what radio amateurs do, but could never earn
the call sign.
He's the ham, you never knew. My
father.
Abraham.