Lakewood Lore

Nineties are a fine decade for lively senior volunteer

At age 91, Salvatore J. (Sal) Iannucci is a Lakewood man about town who plays drums in a dance band, carries ice skates in the trunk of his car and is a fusspot about doing his own home repairs.

Active in programs at Lakewood's office on Aging and at Cudell Recreational Center, 1910 West Blvd., Sal credits his volunteerism and a positive attitude for his well-being.

"Feeling good is all right, but doing good is better," Sal pontificates. And particularly for his senior citizen friends for whom he is a role model, he advises, "Don't feel sorry for yourself. Go out and do something about it."

Sal has played musical instruments and sung since he was 12. Today he is leader\drummer\tenor singer for a dance band that volunteers at Cudell Center on Tuesday afternoons and also provides free entertainment at local nursing homes and hospitals.

Our subject took up drums many years ago after meeting master percussionist Gene Krupa. But he also plays other instruments.

In Sal's home on Manor Park, we counted 11 violins, a piano, a guitar, a banjo, a mandolin, a harmonica and a set of chimes. He has hundreds of song sheets, too. The collection covers all golden-ager requests, but Sal is partial to the nostalgic melodies of the '20s and the big-band hits of the '30s and '40s.

Sal was born on a farm near Naples, Italy, on Oct. 19, 1900. When he was 4, he was brought to America by his mother to join his father, who had left Italy two years earlier and had found work in Yonkers, N.Y., as a construction man.

Sal quit school after the eighth grade to sell fruits and vegetables for peddlers who plied the streets of Yonkers with horse drawn wagons. Energetic, ambitious and itching to deep-test the waters of the workaday world, he got a job in a shop that manufactured foot plasters.

Later he helped make wooden barrels for a cooperage, drove a lift-truck in a sugar refinery and became a weaver for a carpet company before enlisting in World War I.

In 1917, when only 16, he convinced Army recruiters he was 18, and they dispatched him to Ft. Slocum in New Rochelle, N.Y. He remained there only 10 days before his screaming parents, armed with proof that he falsified his age, came and got him.

Soon after the armistice, he joined the Navy and served on a destroyer in the Atlantic. However, his parents again intervened to foreshorten his tour of duty -- this time because his father was out of work and the family sorely needed a breadwinner. Sal was discharged in 1920.

In 1925, he began a career with the Yonkers Police Department that spanned 25 years. As a detective in 1943, he solved the city's celebrated "Zoo-suit Murder Case," apprehending the killer twice before the charges stuck. Earlier, as a cop, he saved a man who, in a suicide attempt, had plunged into the Hudson River.

After Sal retired from the force in 1970, he and his wife, Genevieve, whom how had married in 1927, came to Lakewood to be near their daughter Nina (Mrs. Duane Waitzman), who teaches third grade at McKinley Elementary School. A second daughter, Catherine (Mrs. Frank Frankowski) lives in Warminster, Pa.

Sal's wife died three years ago at age 84. Today, besides his daughters, he has six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Three of the great-grandchildren are triplets.

In addition to his musical talents, Sal brought to Lakewood with him a second interest kindled in his youth -- that of boxing.

A one-time amateur lightweight and welterweight in the East, he served here several years as a volunteer coach for aspiring fighters who trained at Cleveland's Angle Gym under the tutelage of Jimmy Bivins, former local ring standout.

Exercise is still part of Sal's regimen for staying healthy. Besides ice skating, bicycling and dancing at every opportunity, he does calisthenics at home twice a day -- 15-minute sessions both in the morning and at night, using a slant board and two 15-pound dumbells. Furthermore, he is a lover of flowers who does his own gardening.

On the other hand, Sal seldom frets about his diet. He remains slim and trim although he eats spaghetti five or six times a week. He makes his own sauce and doesn't mind cooking, especially if there's someone else to cook for.

Regarding his home repairs, he comments, "There's always more satisfaction when you do it yourself." Which brings to mind the old age, "If you cut your own wood, it will warm you twice."

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post April 16, 1992. Reprinted with permission.

[Note: Mr. Iannucci died at age 95. His obituary appeared in the Plain Dealer December 6, 1995.]

More Lakewood Lore