What is Dead May Never Die
An Oral History from an Ironborn
In the hit TV show “Game of Thrones”, there is a place called the Iron Islands of Westeros, ruled by a family known as the Greyjoy’s. The Iron Islands are a group of seven rocky islands, and each of its inhabitants are known as “Ironborns”. The Greyjoy’s notorious “house words” are “what is dead may never die.” The reason that I bring this up is because my grandpap, the relative I am interviewing, is essentially the same as an Ironborn. He was born in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, which at the time was home to the largest steel mill in the world. Steel mills produce primarily steel, but blast furnaces are also capable of producing iron.
My grandpap was raised in a family that revolved around the steel mills, and every family around had some connection to the mill. Around 80% of Aliquippa citizens were employed by the J&L Steel Mills. Essentially, if the town of Aliquippa had it’s own words, they would be the same as that of the Iron Islands. Life in the steel mills is strenuous, and what is dead may never die.
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John Manfredi, Grandpap (JM): Hi Nick!
Nick Manfredi (NM): Hey, Grandpap how’s it going?
JM: You ready?
NM: Yes sir.
JM: Oh, you’re early.
NM: Yeah, I know I finished a little early.
JM: Ok, let me get to a quiet place.
JM: Ok, ready.
NM: So, has great-grandpap every told you any stories about their move from Italy?
JM: Ok, he was born in West Virginia.
NM: Ok.
JM: So, the stories I got from Italy were from my grandmother, his mother. So, yeah. Do you want me to tell you some of those stories or what?
NM: Yes sir, that would be great.
JM: Alright, so they lived in Potenza, and I’m sure you know that.
NM: Yes sir.
JM: And, as you know, Italy is not in states they’re in provinces. So, the province of Basilicata is the second one from the bottom. The bottom one where the boot is called Calabria.
NM: Ok.
JM: So Potenza is the capital of Basilicata and that’s where they grew up. She told me stories of the fact that they were farmers. She talked about all the animals and rats and things like that, that they had to deal with on their farm. So, basically the little I know about what happened there was that they were poor farmers. And then when the early 1900’s came about, and people started to leave, the politics in Italy was pretty bad and money was short. They followed a lot of other Italians in that area and went to Naples. And from Naples they took a boat to America, and when they went to America they were in New York, but only a couple of the Manfredi’s stayed there. One of my grandfather’s brothers became a carpet salesmen in New York and I actually visited him when I was a teenager. And then, my grandmother and her husband, his name was Joseph, they heard that there was work in West Virginia in coal mines. So, they moved to West Virginia but he didn’t actually work in coal mines. He had a little store, a little grocery store there and that’s how they made some money. And then they had my dad, they had Uncle Pat, they had Nick, and the twins and Aunt Minnie. And, then so, the coal was being utilized to make steel in Pittsburgh. So, they heard that there was better jobs in Pittbsurgh in the steel mills. So, the family moved there except for Uncle Pat, they left him in West Virginia with my grandmother’s sister. So, that’s how they got to Aliquippa.
NM: Ok cool. So can you tell me a little about how great-grandpap got involved in the steel mill and what his first couple of jobs were?
JM: Yeah, just like the Jews were not highly regarded in Germany and Europe, the people that immigrated in the early 1900’s, the Irish, the Slovaks, the Polish, and the Italian, they weren’t very highly regarded. In fact, my Uncle Nick, who was older than my dad by two years, he was the first Italian, first ethnic person to get a job above labor in the steel mill in Aliquippa. Then, he did such a good job and my dad did such a good job that he became a, what do they call it, a uhm…
NM: Was he a superintendent?
JM: It’s something like that. They’re called, I forget what they’re called, but it was above labor. And so that’s the kind of work that they did. So, they worked labor jobs in the tin mill until, oh a foreman that’s the terminology. He became a foreman. And then my dad actually became the general foreman which is actually above all the other foreman. It’s like the head coach above the assistant coaches in sports. That’s when he retired in the 60’s as a general foreman.
NM: Ok, awesome. So, was Aliquippa at the time pretty much over run by the steel mills?
JM: Oh, 80 plus percent of the jobs of the people of that community were steel workers. In fact, during the hay day, during when I was a kid and a teenager, there were about 40,000 people in Aliquippa and now there’s less than 9,000. The reduction in the population was heavily due to the fact that steel, the Japanese made steel a lot cheaper than we did. And because of the unions, it’s a complicated situation, the unions were detrimental to the workers because they kept demanding more and more raises and time off and benefits and this and that to the point where you have all these demands, the people who own Jones and Laughlin, and other people, American Steel, they had to raise the prices of steel to compensate the workers. You know what I mean?
NM: Yes sir.
JM: I mean if you’re running a business and your expenses are high, you therefore have to charge a lot for your product. That’s what they had to do. Consequently the Japanese were making steel and tin a lot cheaper and they overtook the industry. Therefore the steel mills went down, they went bankrupt. So, the people of Aliquippa that were working, which constituted about 80% of the jobs in the town, were decimated. And that was in the 1980’s.
NM: Ok, awesome. I had no idea about that. So, you went to Aliquippa high school right?
JM: Right.
NM: And is it true that you were in the same class as Mike Ditka?
JM: Oh, I was one year behind him.
NM: What was your relationship with Mike Ditka like, were y’all good friends?
JM: Yeah, we were good friends because his little town of Lindmar and our little town of West Aliquippa, we often got together. You know, in those days there weren’t leagues like Coney League or travel teams of anything like that. What would happen is that a bunch of us in West Aliquippa had baseball teams and football teams and basketball teams. We would play the people of Lindmar, and we would play them in football, and that’s where I met Mike Ditka because we played against them. And then, we went to high school and he was a year ahead of me. And I played high school baseball and so did he, but he was a year ahead of me.
NM: Did you ever try to play baseball professionally?
JM: Yeah, well I had a pretty good baseball career, I hit over .400 one year.
NM: Oh, really?
JM: Yeah, and the Philadelphia Phillies were looking at some of the guys on our team. I was a singles and doubles hitter and pretty fast, but I didn’t hit the long ball and I’m not very tall, I think that made a difference so I didn’t go very far. But I did get a tryout with them.
NM: Wow that’s pretty cool. Alright I’m gonna go back to talking about Aliquippa a little bit. So, was Aliquippa mostly Italian based?
JM: Yeah, mostly. There were mostly Italians. I would say that more than 50% of the people were Italian, of Italian heritage. And also, in West Aliquippa where I grew up, and I think you saw it one time.
NM: Yes sir, I did.
JM: It’s probably 80% of the people. I mean, on my little block where you saw where my father grew up and I grew up, if there were 20 homes, I would say 17 of them were Italian. So that gives you an idea. But, the town of Aliquippa was not just Italians. There was a lot of Greeks, and they had their own sections. When people came over from their country, Poland Czechoslovakia, and Greece, and Italy, what happened was, when they came over they would contact someone in their family or their town and that particular person would give them some kind of idea of where to live so they could be with their people. And then, that translated into churches. The Catholic Church was very big, it was big in Western Europe and therefore it was very big with the immigrants. A lot of the towns in Aliquippa and Pittsburgh had the Greek Catholic Church, the Italian Catholic Church, the Polish Catholic Church, the Irish Catholic Church, so the living was according to the people that are from your country. And then, the work was based on that and also the churches and grocery stores and etc. were related to your heritage.
NM: Ok. So, you know how in New York the Italians grouped together to form the mafia? Did that ever take place in Pittsburgh and Aliquippa?
JM: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And…
NM: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
JM: Ok, well, if you ever saw “The Godfather,” the reason the mafia became a thing was first of all it started in Sicily. And when the immigrants came over, they weren’t very well treated as I told ya before.
NM: Yes sir.
JM: They were given the base jobs. Well, to protect themselves they went to underground type people that had some criminal background and they would protect themselves that way. And, there was that. There was a little town called McKees Rocks in Pittsburgh. And that primarily was the heaviest concentration of mafia type people. And, as far as my family goes, I don’t know if your dad’s told you, but, my grandfather had seven kids and they all lived in that same house. And to make some money, a little money, they took on boarders. They would house people and feed them and make some money. And one time, my dad said he was nine or ten years old and he was coming down the stairs and there was a big group of people sitting at a big table in the kitchen with my grandfather. And one of the men was a mafia member and he asked my grandfather to join the group. My dad told me that my grandfather said, “Listen, you can do whatever you need to do, and you can still stay here, but I’m not gonna be a member of that group and let’s not ever talk about this again. You can stay with us, but I’m not gonna get involved in that.” So, that’s what I know about our family in the mafia.
NM: Wow, that’s incredible. I had no idea.
JM: But, his brother, who was the rug salesman in New York, was. He was in the mafia because when my dad took me to New York to visit him, when we had to go to his house, there were guards outside his house. So, he was clearly a member but I don’t know much about that.
NM: So, that’s your granddad’s brother?
JM: Yeah, my dad’s uncle.
NM: Ok, so my dad’s told me about stories about family gatherings in Aliquippa, and how sometimes great-grandma Stella would be cooking a big meal and invite people in from the streets to come eat with y’all. How often did that happen?
JM: It happened a lot, but primarily, the major occasion, the big thing in our town was St. Joseph’s Church midnight mass. It was tradition ever since I was a little boy until I left and went to college and etc. it continued is that midnight mass would occur and everyone from our family would meet at our house. My mother would put out these, on the table, big trays of food of all different types: fish, meats, sandwiches and alcohol. Not only would our family attend, but the priest who had the mass would come over. That was the tradition. As far as other dinners, there wasn’t, we would meet across the street at my grandmothers, and my Aunt Mary’s, and down the street at Aunt Carm’s, and up to Aunt Minnie’s house. We would meet periodically, but there was no routine, it wasn’t every Sunday.
NM: Yes sir. So, where did the original recipe book that we have from Stella originate?
JM: Well, it was originally from her. But, she was one of those people that wasn’t very specific. I mean, she would say a pinch of this, a pinch of that. It wasn’t very specific. I mean, it was handed down. I mean, when she died, she died many years before my dad. She died of cancer. And when she died, her recipe book was still there. Both my sisters have copies of it, but my dad kept the original. And, when Julie and I married, she sat with my dad for days and wrote down many of the recipes. So, we have most of ’em here.
NM: So, when you were growing up in Aliquippa, was the main language around the house Italian or would they only speak English to y’all?
JM: They spoke both languages very fluently. And to me, unfortunately for me, they didn’t speak much Italian to me. Just like when Julie and I have friends over, couples over for dinner or a drink, well they would have, and most of those people were Italian. When they were talking about dating, or sex or things like that, they would speak Italian so I wouldn’t understand. They were fluent in Italian. My grandmother never spoke English. And my mother’s family, called the Berarducci’s, they were very poor, they didn’t speak much English, especially my grandmother there. When my parents would go across the street and talk to my grandmother, when they’d go up to Ohio to talk to my other grandparents, they always spoke Italian. So, it was mostly with their own people, not to us kids.
NM: Have you tried to learn Italian?
JM: Well, my first six years, the way I grew up, the first six years of my life I lived in my grandmother’s house, which is 508 Beaver Avenue, right across the street from 509 where I grew up, I mean where we eventually bought the house. But, for the first six years of my life we lived with her, and I spent a lot of my time with her. She spoke a lot of Italian to me because that’s all she understood, so I got a little bit of the slang and the language from her, but not beyond that unfortunately. My mother and father never spent time with me with Italian.
NM: Ok, have you ever travelled to Italy and visited Potenza?
JM: No, but I want to some day. The first time I went, with Julie, and the second time I went, with Tony, my son, we were on tours, and therefore you had to stay with the group. Potenza wasn’t on the tour. But, when I was in Naples, I talked to my tour leader, her name was Myrna. I said, “Myrna, I’d like to go visit Potenza,” and she said “it’s not that far away, you can rent a car and go there. It would be about an hour away from here, in Naples, but you would miss some of the tour sites we would see.” So, I never rented the car and did that.
NM: Well, hopefully we can go there sometime together. Thank you so much for letting me interview you.
JM: Of course. Am I gonna get to see you this weekend?
NM: Yes sir, I’m coming up on Friday to play golf with y’all.
JM: Oh, well awesome I can’t wait to see ya! I hope this was helpful to you.
NM: Yeah of course it was, thank you so much again.
JM: Alright, I’ll see you soon.
NM: Sounds great, I can’t wait to see y’all!
JM: Alright, now, b-bye!
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My grandpap’s story relates to my community in both the present and the past because at every big family gathering, the meal served is always Italian. Tradition never dies, and my family has embraced our Italian heritage passed down to us through stories from my grandpap and our ancestors before us. Prior to this interview, I had only read about the culture and life in both Aliquippa, Pennsylvania and Potenza, Italy. Although my research has given me general ideas about life in these two cities, it would have been impossible for me to understand the full reality without the help of my grandpap. After the interview, I had a full understanding and sense of respect for the troubles that my great-grandpap had to endure in order to help his family climb through the poverty of a poor Italian farmer to the family’s first college educated child. Thankfully, this project has pushed me to explore the depths of my family history, which, prior to this project, I never would have taken the time to do. Maybe in a a few decades I will be able to tell my children and grand-children the same stories, as well as a few stories of my own upbringing.
