Luigi Turco

Luigi Turco was born on 7 June 1890 (his social security record, however, noted it as 28 May), in Riesi, Sicily to the nominally Roman Catholic family of Salvatore Turco and Giuseppa Rosaria Fasulo. He later noted that he was sent to a 'grammar' school in the town, and was considered a promising student. "Riesi", as he told his son, was "also the seat of a Waldensian Church" in Sicily.  Turco wrote, "My idea of Christianity, represented by both the Protestant and the Catholic people, was very vague. Until the age of twelve I never went to church; neither did any member of my family."  (Turco 2007) In 1910, Luigi Turco was conscripted for the Italian army; he served ("ironically", given his last name) for thirty months during the Turco-ltalian war (28 September 1911 to 18 October 1912), mostly in Rome. It was the first time he had ever left Sicily.  He was later to reflect that time in the eternal city of the Roman Catholic Church left almost no 'spiritual' mark on him. Sicily at the time was in some turmoil, with conflict between the 'fasci' and other peasant movements, sparked by the failure of 'Italian liberale' to extend the wealth of the North to the south, and to deal with the huge agricultural disruptions contingent on well-meaning but misguided land and tarriff reforms from Rome. As a consequence, many centres in the South lost ever-growing numbers of people to migration--particularly the United States. This was to have a signficant impact on the reach of Italian Protestantism back into these centres as these 'americani' brought their faith back on visits and through re-migration. In April 1913, Turco, his eldest sister (Vita), and her two boys Giuseppe (Joseph) and Salvatore,  left Sicily via Palermo to join her husband Giuseppe Sardella, a shoemaker who had preceded her in settling in the lower caste areas of Boston.    Joseph's life had gone on the slide during his absence abroad, affected by  drink and gambling. Both Vita and Luigi had to work to cover food and board. Luigi, though personally also caught up in the solaces of drink and smoking to deal with the labouring life, was prompted by his dissolute brother in law's condition  to seek for "a better moral and spiritual life". (Turco 2007)

In July 1915, Turco discovered an Italian Baptist church in Wakefield, MA, originally established on Shrewsbury  Street as a Mission of Lincoln  Square  Baptist  Church. He attended the morning worship service led by Rev. Gaetano Lisi (pastor, 1911-12; succeed by Antonio  Sannella from 1914).  He was powerfully touched during Lisi's sermon:  "My old way of living had died," he declared, and he subsequently he gave up smoking, drinking, and seeking illicit sexual experiences. He "went on a liquid diet so as to purge his body of the poisons he had subjected it to." He engaged in church work, and formed a desire to lead his family in America and in Italy into his new found faith. Witnessing to his sister and his two nephews only sparked a "terrific persecution" because he had left the Catholic Church. The change in him however eventually brought his sister arond. "Gradually she was converted, together with her family. They all became members of the Italian Baptist Church. He also wrote to his father in Riesi, "telling him and the rest of the family to go to the Waldensian Church, but he answered me negatively. He thought that I was [going mad]. I wrote to the minister of the church, Rev. Pietro Mingardi, an ex-monk of the Roman Catholic Church, to go and see my family and work for their conversion, but his efforts were not successful." (Turco 2007)

On 4 April 1917, after the sinking of the Lusitania and the impacts of unrestricted submarine warfare, the US Congress voted to declare War on Germany, and to actively join the Entente in the fighting in France. By 1917, on his draft registration card, Turco was noted as living at 346 Washington St, Haverhill, Essex, Massachusetts, and working for the Adams Shoe Company, Haverhill.  On 17 October 1918, having been drafted into the US Army, Turco was naturalized at Camp Upton, NY. His application for a passport in 1924 indicated that he served with the US Expeditionary Force in France from August to December, 1918. He was discharged after the Armistice, once again finding a job in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts. Then tragedy struck. Already weak in his left eye, Turco lost his right eye in a work related accident, leaving him "nearly blind"  (Turco 2007) It confronted with the dilemma of what to do for a living. His Minister at First Italian Baptist Church, Wakefield, a fellow Sicilian who was almost an exact contemporary, Theodore De Luca (b. 1890, Mirto, Messina),* suggested that he study for the ministry. "I {had} wanted to work for God ... but as a layman. Now I saw the light to ... study for the ministry."  (Turco 2007) In May 1919, he is noted as attending the annual dinner of the First Baptist Brotherhood (The Daily Item 7 May 07 1919: 11),  and in 1920 the census had him registered as a lodger in the home of Carmelo Del Rossi, in Wakefield, Boston.  Turco joined the Italian Department of Colgate Theological Seminary in Brooklyn, New York, then under the leadership of Antonio Mangano [q.v.]. The course was five years long, and mainly drew men over twenty years of age with little education. The curriculum involved instruction in the Italian and English languages; an introduction to American history, church history and theology, leavened by lectures from prominent visitors. I had gone to grammar school in Italy, and I was considered one of the best ... students, so one may see that at the end of the course the men were not well prepared for the work of the ministry."  (Turco 2007)

After he had been attending the school for only a month, Turco was made student pastor of the Italian Baptist Mission at 586 Main St.,  Passaic, New Jersey, over the river from New York (Turco 2007), attending school during the week and doing church work--such as the running of vacation Bible Schools--on weekends and during holidays in Passaic. It could include some close calls. In 1922 a Carmelo Blundetto was charged with discharging a firearm during New Years celebrations, the bullet breaking Turco's window. (The Morning Call 17 January, 1922: 5) (In 1921, a Luigi Turco was listed as a member of the Lodge Giuseppe Verdi no. 252, in Philadelphia. This would not have been unusual for an Italian Baptist minister, but there is insufficient evidence to indicate it is the same person).  As his training at Colgate entered its last year, Turco and and his fellow students (Louis Maserati; Angelo and Agostino Pantaleo; Vincenzo Di Giorgio; Salvatore 'Sam' Silvestri; and Giuseppe 'Joseph' Dellutri) left on the SS Majestic (6 September 1924) for Italy via Plymouth, England, (Shipping lists, Ancestry.com) to spend the last year of their College studies with Mangano in Rome, at the Facoltà Valdese di Teologia di Roma.  (Turco 2007) While there, Turco visited his hometown, Riesi, several times. The first visit was in the second week of October 1924. "Naturally," he wrote, 

the minister of the church came to my home to see me and invite me to preach on the following Sunday. I accepted the invitation, of course! I had to preach for the evening service at 5 p.m. I went to the morning service together with my father and one of my brothers {certainly his older brother, also named Salvatore, not his younger brother Joseph}. There was a small group of people; about fourteen of them. I will never forget the words the minister uttered to me at the end of the service. He said, 'Brother Turco, you have no idea of the agony I am going through.' He was very discouraged. After years of hard work, the congregation of his church consisted of about 14 people. I preached in the evening service. Naturally, all the members of my family, and some of my relatives and friends, carne to hear me. Even people of the neighborhood who knew me as a common young man going to America to make a fortune, and now back in Riesi, after twelve years, as a minister, came to see me preaching, just for the curiosity. The church was filled to its capacity. Over 150 people were present, which was a miracle for the minister and his small group. I preached as best I could, and I was delighted to see tears coming from the eyes of my father, {Salvatore} and mother {Rosaria Fasulo} and one of my brothers {Salvatore the younger}. It was a great joy for me to see such a crowd, but much more joy for the minister and the small group of people of his congregation, because in my coming they saw a revival in their church; they saw the rehabilitation of their missionary work. (Turco 2007)

Turco spent Christmas 1924, and the following Easter vacation and the summer of 1925 doing missionary work in Riesi. He preached in the jail where there was a young man he knew who was serving time. His immediate family and some friends converted to Waldensianism, building up the work in Riesi. (Turco 2007) He sailed on the SS Patria out of Naples, arriving back in New York on 24 September 1925.

After spending some time back in Passaic (Passaic Daily News 23 Jan 1926: 7), Turco was appointed as pastor of the Second Italian Baptist Church at 184 Trenton Ave., Buffalo, New York, including some time overseeing Emmanuel Baptist Church, Buffalo. In Buffalo, he built a solid reputation for work in the Italian community, appearing at events (for example) when the local consular staff was rotated (as Pier Pasquale Spinelli was in Buffalo in 1930) (Buffalo Courier Express 20 May 1930: 12), and at Bible Society events (alongside, interestingly, Massimiliano Tosetto, the local pastor of the Italian CCNA congregation on Hudson Street). (The Buffalo News 8 Dec 1930: 32) He was also involved in the Buffalo subcommittee of the Waldensian Aid Committee, speaking at least one event on the Waldensian work in Riesi and Piazza Armerina (The Buffalo News, 5 Feb 1934: 10). He always felt his education was inadeguate--at the age of thirty-seven Turco returned to high school (while still in ministry) to take his matriculation diploma (June 1929). He then enrolled in the regular seminary of Colgate­ Rochester Divinity School - though he did not proceed to take out his degree. He spent his holidays doing mission work in Wakefield, where his sister was still living. There he met May Laura Putnam (1 Mary 1899-1985), the daughter of Willie H. and Laura Larsen Putnam (when she was born) of Wayne, Nebraska (later of Superior, Wisconsin). May was ten years his junior, a Methodist missionary from Wisconsin, and a graduate of the Boston University School of Religious Education (BRel.Ed. 1931). She had served for several years as a missionary with First Italian Methodist Church, Boston.  On 18 April 1933, May and Luigi were married at Second Italian Baptist by Antonio Mangano. (The Buffalo News 12 Apr 1933: 13) Their son Lewis Putnam Turco was born in 1934. He would credit his future interest to books to the fact that "Though we had no money during the Depression, when I was born, our home was full of books of all sorts. My mother read to me from the cradle, and I soon learned to read for myself. Nor was writing a mysterious act, because every week for as long as I can remember I watched my father hunched over his typewriter hunting out and pecking at his weekly sermons."  Turco Senior also 'hunt and pecked' out many articles on his typewriter for The New Aurora (I'Aurora), the magazine of the Italian Baptist Church. 

On 1 February 1938 Turco was appointed minister of the First Italian Baptist Church of Meriden, Connecticut, a congregation which had not had a pastor for some two years previously (since the resignation of Rev Frank Fasano in 1936). He would have to work had to rebuild the congregation, explaining why his son would remember moving house almost every year, as the family sought cheap rental accommodation. Turco was pastor for seventeen years, until 1955. Newspaper records point to office holders such as Enrico Tomasetti (church treasurer) and Dominico Cirillo; Michele Arisco and Eugene Parisi. Fund raising included a memorial organ for Raymond Zavaglia, who was killed in World War I. (Meriden Record-Journal Jan 17, 1947: 2). In 1939, their second son, Eugene ('Gene'), was born. He would later take up residence in Bristol. Finally, in 1946, the Turcos bought a parsonage on the corner of Windsor and Soundview Sts, which enabled them to stop moving every year.  Lewis would enlist in the Navy, and then become a poet, writer and an English scholar and teacher at Cleveland State University, and the State University of New York, Oswego. He remembered "When [we] were growing up, the word among our generation was, "Assimilate!" And that's what we had done, though the idea of the Melting Pot is not a popular one nowadays."  Succeeded by Samuel Reese Binch, Turco's church eventually "became the Grace Baptist Church because the members wanted to assimilate; later on, after one of those divisive squabbles that congregations are prone to, it split and the members of both sides began to attend other locai churches. The Grace Baptist is no more", having merged with the former German Baptist congregation in the town.  Turco had raised much of the money for both the original rectangular white clapboard wooden box on the corner of Springdale and Windsor Streets, Meriden, and "the newer, fancier structure built next to it after he retired". ('Author brings memories of youth to life', Meriden Record-Journal 19 April 2005: 9) Over time, as in many former Italian 'colonies', the neighbourhood became predominately Hispanic. (Turco 2007)

Turco retired in 1954 from First Italian Baptist, Meriden, and went for some time to minister at St John the Baptist Church, in the Bronx, NY. Aware of his faulty English, in 1957, he sent his autobiographical manuscript to his older son and asked him for help for correction of his English. In retirement in 1966-67, he translated some of his older son's poetry into Italian - 'He thought in Italian, and in order to communicate, he had first to transiate his thoughts into English.'  (Turco 2007) In 1968, Lewis Putnam Turco would posthumously edit his father's work under the title The Spiritual Autobiography of Luigi Turco (and deposit it in the Center for Immigration Studies of the University of Minnesota). Lewis's own wife was of Huguenot descent (Jean Houdlette, the daughter of one of Lewis' former teachers), which elicited an interest in the Protestant minority histories in Western European countries.  

Luigi Turco died on 18 September 1968, at his home, 75 South Ave, Meriden, New Haven, Connecticut, USA; he was buried in the Walnut Grove Cemetery, Meriden. His wife, May, died in Farmington Convalescent Home, Farmington in 1985, and would also be buried in the same Cemetery. 

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Note:

* De Luca (DD LLD) seems to have had a 'mobile' ministerial experience -- which as Di Gioacchino notes was not unusual for Italo-American Protestant pastors, whose gifts were in demand between denominations. He is also to be found ministering at a Unitarian church, and endowing a memorial scholarship under the name of his first wife, Isabel (nee Michelini, m. 1922), at the Seventh Day Adventist Atlantic Union College. A teacher of 'romance and classical languages', he had studied variously at Phillips Andover College, Tufts, Colgate, Crane theological, Harvard, Yale and Boston universities. In 1942, he took up the pastorate at Hawes Unitarian Church (The Boston Globe 28 Mar 28, 1942: 8) One daughter married Charles L. Hinton of Baton Rouge, LA, and another (by his second wife Ursula nee Ricci, 1906-1997) was living in Malden at the time of his death in Wakefield on 12 March 1967. 

Sources:

• Ancestry.com

• Hutchinson, Mark, 'Antono Mangano (1869-1951)', Explorations in Italian Protestantism, https://sites.google.com/view/explorations-in-italian-protes/k-o/mangano-antonio-1869-1951

• Mangano, Antonio, Antonio Mangano papers, A1037, Colgate University Archives.

• Nutt, Charles, The History of Worcester and its Peoples, vol. II, (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1919)

• 'Obituary', Meriden Record-Journal, 19 September 1968: 1.

• Turco, Lewis, 'The Story of an Italian Protestant', Italian Americana 25.2 (Summer 2007): 197-206.

• Turco, Lewis, Fantaseers: a book of memories (Scottsdale, AZ: Star Cloud Press, 2005)

• Turco, Lewis, "How I got into Books", at Lewisturco.typepad.com, Poetics and Ruminations: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Poetry (and Everything Else), but Were Afraid to Ask. April 30, 2007