Good morning everyone, and welcome---our family joins me in thanking you for coming today to support us and more importantly, to honor and remember my grandfather.
The story of a junior starts with a senior. Paul and Mary welcomed the newborn Paul Jr. in 1944 and gave him his competing Italian-Irish heritage, though his very Italian neighborhood of 49th Street, West Philadelphia made sure the Italian side in him won out. Our Lady of Angels was his home parish. Before long he attended Annunciation, and then Monsignor Bonner and briefly St. Joseph’s University. Vietnam raged by that time, and the Marine Corps came calling for him.
Pop, as we called him, traveled the country with the Marines. He trained mostly on helicopters. As we remember him telling it, just before he was scheduled for deployment in Asia, there was a change in the military’s plans, and he thankfully never had to see combat.
Upon his homecoming he finished at St. Joe’s---ever a source of shared pride between him and my brother Brian---and he took jobs teaching at colleges and as a tax accountant. He admired Cadillacs and loved doo-wop---Deon and the Belmonts, Frankie Valli, the days when harmony was king.
