A lot of memories of Big Pete March 3, 2012

  

Big Pete had numerous bouts with death over his 80 long year life, starting back when he was very young, and he fell off a hay wagon he wasn’t supposed to be on and didn’t tell anybody about until the infection settled into his neck and ears.

It took him two years to recover.

Raised in The Bronx, he grew up going to the zoo and playing stick ball in the streets with his brothers and his cousins.

When he married, he eventually settled into Fairfield, and the extended family from the Bronx came with him.

“It was as if our family had taken over Fairfield,” Little Peter said.

Once successful, Big Pete purchased a place in Long Branch where the family routinely spent their summers. His granddaughter said Big Pete loved to listen to Frank Sinatra, smoke cigars and sit out on the beach staring at the ocean.

He also rode a bicycle and was constantly falling off of it. One time, he ran into a car door that was flung open in front of him. Little Peter got a call in which Big Pete said, “We got a problem,” a standard phrase he used for when one of his schemes went haywire.

His granddaughter said Big Pete was completely honest and recalled her efforts to learn how to cook, and how he praised her for it, and she valued this because he really meant it.

One of the priests recalled the day Big Pete told him he was leaving the seminary, one of those life decisions that eventually led him to marry my aunt, Alice.

Those two lived the life of King Arthur and Guinevere.

Another priest, who became a close friend of Big Pete recalled when Big Pete and the kids took him into their house. This was after Big Pete’s mistaken marriage, when his four kids from Alice walked out of the house they grew up in and moved into a nearby house on Hollywood Ave, only to be joined a short time later by Big Pete, who realized how big mistake his second marriage was and moved in with his kids.

I briefly visited them at that time, heard their tale of woe, heard that a future priest was living there, but never saw him.

The priest, however, recalled Big Pete’s rituals, putting on coffee in the morning, getting the kids off to school.

His granddaughter recalled when she was very young, he would take them to the store for bagels and buns, and how he would sit them on his lap and let them steer the car as he drove. One time they passed a patrol car and she got scared the police would stop them, Big Pete only said, “Don’t worry about it.”

Big Pete worried about very little even though other people might have seen parts of his life that were full of pain. He always helped people when he could, and according to Little Peter, left a footprint as big as his name.

The elderly priest from Big Pete’s days at the seminary recalled taking his sister to Sloan Kettering and while there, heard Big Pete’s name called and went over to find a frail version of the man he once knew.

“Eight months ago, my sister died of cancer,” the priest said. “Now Pete is gone.”

Little Peter said Big Pete’s legacy was in the people he left behind his family and his friends.

The younger priest recalled Big Pete’s trips to work, driving into Jersey City and then searching for a parking space.

As a young child, Little Peter remembered his father taking him to the office from time to time, but only realized later just how people in that office were like second family to Big Pete – many of whom came to the wake or the funeral.

Little Pete recalled his father’s legendary poker games with men from the neighborhood – a lot of talk and cigar smoke.

At the funeral, Big Pete’s granddaughter choked up before she could finish her tribute to him in an emotional moment that was a bigger tribute than words, big enough for Big Pete.


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