Family History
“Never Stopped Dancing”
How a southern Kentucky coal miner’s daughter came to marry an American-Italian saxophone player
The two met at a dance after a big basketball game in Covington, KY. It was January, 1956 and the two both attended Morehead State University in Morehead, KY. That night they were both at a dance celebrating the Morehead Eagle’s basketball victory when they engaged in conversation. The two immediately hit it off and according to my grandfather, “never stopped dancing.”
When my grandfather, Eddie Sperduto, met my grandmother, Willie Perry, he was a classic, American-Italian man raised in New Jersey. While my grandmother on the other hand, was a very southern lady raised on a farm in Kentucky. Both were attending Morehead State to fulfill their passion of becoming teachers. My grandfather went there due to his talent playing the saxophone while my grandmother went there because it was close to home. The two grew up living very different lives in different parts of the country. They were in a sense, total opposites, but that didn’t stop them from becoming soulmates.
My grandfather, Eddie, has always been a class act. Growing up in a very American-Italian family, food and family were some of the most important values growing up. He played saxophone through high-school and even got offered a scholarship to play saxophone at Morehead State. He was a very diligent student, as well as a person, which is why he voluntarily decided to serve in the Navy to fight in the Korean War and later help the Marines while still in the Navy. In the Navy, he was stationed at multiple naval hospitals and later he was in Easy Med Co. to help the Marines. He played a very important role in the war being a medic. The war shaped him into the responsible and loving man he is today which is why my grandmother fell in love with him so easily.
When he returned from the war, he continued on to his second year at Morehead State on his path to become a teacher. This was still a culture shock to him coming from an Italian family in New Jersey to the deep, foreign south. The southern culture was an entirely new experience to him even though he went overseas to fight but it didn’t stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a teacher. He often tells me of his times with my grandmother’s family in Kentucky and it has always interested me.
My grandfather was not only a saxophone player, husband, veteran, teacher, or principle, he was also an avid swimmer and swim coach. He loved the sport of swimming and tried to teach my grandmother, but she was unable to learn. This supplemented his love for children as he focused on teaching and coaching younger swimmers. This opened his eyes to teach up North and continue his education at the prestigious Columbia University. Although, my grandfather says he liked Morehead State University more than Columbia. This surprised me and gave me more insight on his personality with his love for a smaller, rural school opposed to a popular Ivy League school in New York City.
Willie was raised almost entirely different from my grandfather, Eddie. She spent most her youth running around her family’s farm and swimming in the creek near the barn. The farm meant a lot to her family including tobacco farming and the coal camp nearby where her father worked as a coal-miner before becoming a farmer. On another piece of property, her family also illegally made moonshine which was popular in Kentucky at the time. Her family was by no means rich, but that did not matter. Her parents taught her, along with her eight siblings, valuable lessons that she continued to demonstrate until the day she passed. She was one of the kindest, sweetest people you could have ever met. She was also incredibly beautiful and loved by everyone so it was no surprise when she won Homecoming Queen at her high school, Morgan County High in West Liberty, KY. She was also runner-up for Homecoming Queen twice at Morehead State University. Once she graduated high school, she went on to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher at Morehead State University where she later met my grandfather.
The two had entirely different backgrounds which is why I chose this as my project. I wanted to study the culture blending of a Kentucky farm girl and an American-Italian saxophone player. I wanted to listen to the stories my grandfather had to offer about his visits to Kentucky such as how when he visited, they tried to cook an “Italian” meal. My grandmother’s family was completely clueless when it came to non-southern meals, which is why they used ketchup on the spaghetti instead of Italian red-sauce. These stories interest me and I wanted to re-live my grandfather’s past and the story of him and my grandmother. I wanted to learn the stories of my grandmother through my grandfather because she passed in 1989 and I never got to meet her. This study contains only a fraction of the history between my grandparents and the story behind them.
With this project, I have learned so much more about my grandparents than I ever knew before. I was always curious about their history and now I was able to hear it. My grandfather has always been one of my role-models and it was a pleasure being able to research him and his wife. With his help, I was also able to learn more about my grandmother in this project. She was my grandfather’s wife and the one who raised my mother so I am grateful to be able to hear some of her story. This story of my grandparents taught me a lot I did not know before and allowed me to understand more of my family.
“You know what, you’d be a good teacher”
A Conversation with Ed Sperduto
When I first asked my grandfather’s permission to interview him about his past, he was thrilled. I also, was thrilled because I have always wanted to learn about what made my grandfather, Ed Sperduto. I have always looked up to him and his accomplishments and I was very excited to be able to hear his stories. I had told him about the project and the reason behind the interview about a week before I called him. In that time, I prepared questions that would help me with this project while he “refreshed his memory”. On Wednesday, September 11th, at 7:30 pm, I called.
Before the interview, I was unsure what it was going to be like or what it was like interviewing someone. I am glad that I was unsure. The interview surpassed all of my expectations and taught me so much about my grandfather that I didn’t know before. The questions I had prepared were almost tickets into different experiences like stories or jokes. I now know so much more about Ed Sperduto than I did before I called him that night.
Could you please state your full name and date of birth?
- Eduard Steven Sperduto. Date of birth is December 28th, 1930.
What was it like growing up in New Jersey?
- Wonderful, it was a small town but it had everything we needed. Lot of fields and open space to play baseball, football and whatever else.
What made you voluntarily enlist in the Navy to fight in the Korean War?
- Well partly because I needed to grow up, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and partly patriotic reasons to serve my country and all of those were achieved. I served my country proudly, I’m glad I did it and I knew what I wanted to do when I was in service. When I came out I knew I wanted to go into school.
Did any of your friends from high school also enlist? If so, who?
- Yes, a whole bunch of them. Some got drafted and some enlisted. Some of my really close friends served too; one went in the Air Force and another one went into the Navy and several were in the Army.
Did you make any friendships while you were over there? Did you stay friends with the people from high school too?
- Yes I did, and oh definitely, I stayed with my friends from high school all through life and unfortunately most of them have passed away but I was very close with a group of guys.
Who was your closest friend while serving in the Korean War?
- Tony Simminelli from I forget where in California. Also, John Corken, he was from Rock Island, Illinois. Andy Cracker from Davenport, Iowa. I lost touch over the years, everyone was busy in their lives with going to school or whatever and I lost track of what happened to them. I tried to relocate them but I was never able to.
Why did you serve in both the Navy and the Marines?
- I was never a Marine, I was still in the Navy and I was a Navy corpsman which is the medical part of the Navy where the Navy takes care of the Marines and sometimes the Navy corpsman get assigned to the Marines to take care of them. I was still in the Navy though.
What was it like to travel overseas to fight for your country when you were so young?
- In the beginning it was exciting and I didn’t know it was going to happen and we were all sitting on a big ship and going overseas and chatting on what it was going to be like and having thoughts about what it would be like. Although it was nothing like what we thought it was going to be like.
What is one of your most memorable/impactful memories while serving?
- Boy, I have to search my memory for that one, it was so long ago those things go out of your head! I don’t think I can answer that one right now because there was a lot of impactful things. I think going overseas and seeing the culture of different countries was very impactful to me being such a young man and seeing how differently other people lived especially in the Far East.
What were your parents’ reactions when you told them you were enlisting?
- They weren’t too happy about it because my older brother, Vito, who went by Dick, served in the Navy and he served in World War II Pacific against the Japanese and he had endured his time in the Navy and in the war. I remember when I went to New York for the physical and I called them all happy because I had passed the physical and I was going to boot camp when my mother cried.
Did you play any sports in high school?
- No I didn’t, but I wanted to and I wanted to play football but I was unable to because I didn’t weigh enough and band took a lot of time.
What was your favorite subject in school growing up?
- Probably geography, I love maps like your dad does.
Was either of your parents teachers like you?
- No, my father was a supervisor who worked for Johns Manville Corporation and my mother was a correspondent for a newspaper, she was like a reporter.
Have you seen any of your closest childhood friends since after you left home?
- Yes, I used to see them a lot but as I said earlier, most of them have passed away and the only one left lives in Ohio near Dayton. He went to the same college as I did and I was his best man when he got married and when he had his 50th wedding anniversary, my wife and I drove out to Ohio to see him.
Were there other factors besides the saxophone scholarship that made you attend Morehead State?
- It was basically the scholarship, but I probably would have gone without the scholarship also but the scholarship helped. I was unsure of what I wanted to do before college and I was very immature in high school with that being I didn’t know what I wanted. When I was a senior I was 16 and I turned 17 during that senior year.
What made you want to become a teacher?
- Well going back to when I was young, I was in the Boy Scouts, and for my merit badge I had to teach something, I don’t even remember what the topic was now. One of the assistant scoutmasters was a teacher and I presented what I did to the troop and later he said, “you know what, you’d be a good teacher” and at that time I was really close with him.
What do you like most about teaching?
- I got really attached to my kids and I got very attached to my classes and at the end of the school year I hated to say goodbye to them. Sometimes I saw them the next year, sometimes I didn’t. I only taught 7 years, and four of them were in Plainfield, New Jersey at Cedar Brook School and the other 3 years were at William Attire School. I was also teaching part-time at Teachers College also known as the College of New Jersey. I worked with Juniors learning how to be teachers. One of my jobs was about 8 miles away from my house while the other was about 30 miles so they were pretty close to home.
Did you like teaching or being the principle better?
- I enjoyed being a principal more because I got to do more things, I was more versatile being able to get around and do this or that where as a teacher, I was confined to just a classroom experience with kids where is the other way around I had more flexibility and I enjoyed that. I was a teacher for 7 years and a principle for 27 years.
If you could go back in time and relive one memory what would it be?
- I guess my marriage to your grandmother on June 7th 1958.
What was your first reaction when you met my Grandmother at the dance?
- I said, “this is somebody I’d like to date!” and I told my roommate because we were at a basketball game in Cincinnati Ohio, and where we were in Kentucky wasn’t very far away from there and Covington Kentucky was across the river. There was a party after the game with a dance and we were all dancing and she was there, and I saw her, and I knew her from campus and I was good friends with her sister but I really didn’t know her and so I danced with her. When I got back to campus I told my roommate I would like to ask her on a date.
When was it that you knew you wanted to marry her?
- Interesting question, I guess it was in the back of my mind somewhere when we first dated but somewhere by springtime I thought so, but I didn’t say anything, I was a cautious guy and she was a cautious woman too. So it was during the summer time I was in summer school and she was in Dayton Ohio at her brother’s working for the summer and she came down one weekend from Ohio and I was lifeguarding at the college pool and she said to me I’m going home, why don’t you come over tonight and I went over and met her family and then that’s when I knew I wanted to marry her.
How often did you travel to Kentucky to visit my grandmother?
- Well I saw her mostly because we were in college and I didn’t have to travel to Kentucky to see her because I saw her in school. When she graduated a year before me, that summer she went and got a job in Ohio, and because she had a couple brothers that lived in Dayton Ohio, I would go up every other weekend from Kentucky to see her and then I finished first semester the next year and I went up to Dayton Ohio also and I got a teaching job there for half a year and then we got married.
Have you ever drank Kentucky moonshine?
- Yeah I can tell you a story about it, I used to go down there every summer, and we used to sit out by the barn on a bench on Saturday and pass the jug around. Anyway, it was moonshine and I really didn’t like it and Uncle Bill, who was my father-in-law’s brother and he and I got along very well, and so would they would pass the Moonshine around and I used to drink Scotch and I didn’t want to drink the Moonshine. Anyways, they take the bottle, they put the finger to a spot, and they would drink until they reach where the finger level was and they wanted me to do the same thing so I would take the little bit and Uncle Bill would say to me, and I’m going to try and talk like a Kentuckian, “Ah shit Ed, you just wet your lips!”. They also used to take me to The Bootlegger where they made it and it was someplace else because they made it illegally.
How did the culture shock of visiting my Grandmother’s family affect your outlook on your family compared to her family?
- Well, you used the term Italian-American, and I like to use the term American of Italian descent because I consider myself an American not an Italian. But it was very different and when I first went there, I got invited to dinner and I went over from campus and I was sitting on the porch trying to find a common ground to talk to my father-in-law, or future father-in-law at that time and you know, he was a farmer and a miner and it was hard to break the cultural change. So one of the things he asked me was, “you like roastenears?” and I said, “I’ve never had roastenears so I don’t know if I like it or not” because I didn’t know what he was talking about. So we had dinner and we had fresh corn on the cob and he said, “I thought you didn’t like roastenears? and I said, “I didn’t know, I thought they call it corn on the cob!” That was one of the other things that happened with words and phrases and differences and over the years, I learned to appreciate it all.
What is your favorite story or memory of your family culturally blending with my Grandmother’s family?
- When our families met each other you mean? Well, my mother and father, brother and his wife drove to Kentucky for my college graduation. Then we all went up to Dayton Ohio because that’s where we got married and all the guys got together in the house and I don’t know what the women were doing, and they were passing some stuff around to drink and my father saw the whiskey label and when they handed it to him, he took a drink of the bottle and I was watching his face, and it was moonshine, and I didn’t tell my father and I could see the look on his face and I can tell you that he didn’t like it but he didn’t say anything. He then sat next to me and said, “Ed, what’s in that bottle?” and I got a good laugh.
What is the Uncle Frank story?
- They called my father Frank but his real name was Sebastian, and that’s a story on how he got to be called Frank. When he was starting to go to school at that time, in the olden days, you didn’t need to get signed up by your mother and father to go to school and he had two older cousins who were girls who are already in school, and they took him to school. So when they asked him what his name was, they didn’t know it was Sebastian so they called him Frank and then they asked what his last name was and so then they gave him another name.
Why did you and my grandmother own a pool even though she can’t swim?
- Yeah she was not a good swimmer but I didn’t get very far teaching her but I liked to swim and we had Dina [my mother] and I used to coach and teach swimming and Dina enjoyed the pool and Dina grew up with all our friends using our pool all the time.
Why did my Grandmother move up North with you instead of you moving down South with her?
- Well, Kentucky at that time was not a good place to go into education because the teacher salaries were very poor to begin with and the other reason, really the main reason, was because I wanted to go to Columbia University in New York for postgraduate school and that’s why we went up there. I enjoyed the smaller college atmosphere more though than I liked Columbia.
If you went to college for music, why did you pursue teaching?
- Well actually my major in college was not music, I got a music scholarship and I had to participate in all the musical activities, but I did not major in music. I majored in elementary education. At Columbia, I went to get a Masters In Supervision which gave me credentials to be a principal and/or a superintendent.
What was your favorite thing about my grandmother?
- She was a wonderful person, steady, beautiful personality and a beautiful person.
If you could use one word to describe her, what would it be?
- Awesome.
Oral History Reflection Questions:
How did your perception of community history change, from before the interview to now?
- My perception of community history changed when referring to where both my grandfather and grandmother attended college. I had heard of Morehead State University before the oral interview but now after the interview, I am curious of what it is really like. My perception of it changed with the interview because at first I thought it was just a school but now I have heard of its importance in my grandparent’s lives. I have never visited but now hearing its role, I want to see the Morehead State community and what is has to offer.
How did this project inspire you to learn more about your family and community?
- This project inspired me to learn more about my family and the community through the research. When I was trying to find old pictures for my proposal, I found old letters and pictures I never knew existed. These finds inspired me because they made me want to dig deeper. I want to know why the letter was written and the background behind it. These types of situations made me more indulged in the project and inspired me to learn more about my family and the community around it. I also was able to learn more about my grandmother through pictures and my grandfather. This was inspiring to me because I had heard so much about her and I was finally able to go into more depth.
What were some of the challenges you faced during this project? What could you do differently in your next oral history interview?
- Some of the challenges I faced during this project were unexpected. I was troubled with choosing what to focus on and what I should lightly include. All of the details in the project are important because the details make up the whole, but I was troubled by what details to include. In my next oral history interview, I would send the tradition-bearer my questions and some of the things I would include before I conducted the interview. This would allow a better preparation for the interview with a refreshed memory in both roles.
If the roles were reversed and you became the tradition-bearer, what stories would you like to tell?
- I would tell some stories that include my family or some that changed my life. I would tell the story of when my family was stuck in Idaho with no service and how my dad hitchhiked into civilization to figure out the situation. I would tell the story of how I came to Christ School and how it heavily involved lacrosse. I would describe how lacrosse has allowed me to meet new people and discover new things. These are just some of the stories that have shaped me and given me experiences that have changed the way I have lived since.
Sources:
Willigen, John and Willigen, Anne. Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky Family Farms, 1920–1950 (Kentucky Remembered: An Oral History Series). University Press of Kentucky. 2006. Print
Martone, Eric. Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People. ABC-CLIO. 2016. Print.
Stivason, Dave. Thirteen Weeks of Hell: This Is What It Takes to Become a US Marine. Author House. 2017. Print.
Stronge, James. Qualities of Effective Teachers. ASCD. 2002. Print.
