From Boys to Men and (Sometimes Back Again)

Between 1906 and 1923 both my paternal and maternal families took shape: three uncles on each side, six aunts, and my parents. The maternal line was rooted from the start in Chicago’s Little Italy; the paternal line began in Italy and made its way, by stages, to the same city. For the purposes of this family chronicle I will concentrate solely on the boys—my six uncles.

Top Row - The Poppas:  Fred, Lenny and Augie
Bottom Row - The DeLios:  Carmi, Mike and Johnny

The years that brought them into the world were restless ones. On the paternal side the family left the hill town of Orsara in Puglia during a period of economic hardship and political uncertainty in southern Italy, joining the great wave of Italian emigration that carried so many across the Atlantic. They paused first in Connecticut, where two of the boys were born, before settling in Chicago. On the maternal side the DeLios were already rooted on the city’s Near West Side—Chicago’s Little Italy—where the streets rang with southern Italian dialects and the smell of strong coffee and tomato sauce drifted from open windows.

By the time the youngest uncles were coming of age, the country had plunged into the Great Depression and then into the Second World War. Those two events shaped the work, the marriages, the moves, and the silences of an entire generation. The postwar years brought new neighborhoods, new jobs, and a different kind of American life, but the old patterns—family loyalty, loud arguments, fierce protectiveness, and the occasional boyish relapse—traveled with them.

 The Poppas

My father’s family produced four sons in eleven years: Fred in 1911 in Italy, my father Rocco in 1916 in Connecticut, Leonard in 1918 in Connecticut, and Augie in 1922 in Chicago. The three uncles are the ones I want to talk about here.

The Poppa Family- c. 1923
Front row l-r: Augie, Beth, Ann, Grandma Poppa, Rocco & Leonard
Back row l-r: Fred, Grandpa Poppa

The Poppa Men- c. 1983

Standing: Rocco 

Sittin l-r:  Augie, Fred & Leonard

Fred (34), Jennie (33), Joey (8-9 mths
c. 1945

Freddie

Fred, the eldest, is the logical place to begin. Following Italian naming conventions, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather, so his given name at birth was Fedele. Everyone in the family called him Fred or Freddie. He was born in Orsara, in the province of Foggia, Puglia, on March 19, 1911. He married Jennie Josephine Seno on January 2, 1943, and they had three children. He died in Chicago on September 18, 1984. Those are the bare bones.

The 1940 census recorded him as a laborer who had finished the eighth grade and worked the entire year of 1939. At 29 he was still unmarried and living at 1553 S. Drake with his mother and several siblings. In a household headed by a widow, that arrangement was less about staying a boy and more about the eldest son continuing to help carry the family. He worked at the Sawyer Biscuit Company, a steady job during those hard times. When he registered for the draft that October he was listed as five-foot-five, a hundred and thirty-five pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, light complexion, glasses, and a stutter. 

Fred (37-42)
c. 1948-1953

Weekly phone calls, check-ins, and card games kept the Poppa boys in regular contact most of their lives. My own time with Uncle Freddie was limited—mostly the usual hugs and kisses at the beginning and end of visits—simply because that was our normal family dynamic. The real continuity among the brothers happened in the adult male rituals: the pinochle table, the occasional lawn game (horseshoes, bocce ball) when the weather allowed. Freddie was right there in the middle of it—quieter than some of the others, but an active player, not a spectator. 

As the eldest he carried a natural, understated authority of chronology, nothing more. Even in the 1983 photograph of the four Poppa men, Freddie is still there, seated with his brothers, the same quiet continuity visible across six decades.

There was no such thing as a family gathering at my uncle’s house without enough food to feast on for several days. So when it was time to eat, everyone came back to the dining-room table and no one showed up without an appetite. The meal was always huge—some kind of pasta, meatballs, sausages, crusty Italian bread, a great bowl of salad passed from hand to hand, the children’s plates filled first. Afterward, just when you thought you couldn’t manage another bite, out came the platters of Italian pastries. I had been taught not to be rude, so of course I sampled one or two.

Lenny

Leonard—

Lenny (25-26 yrs)
c. 1944

Lenny to everyone—was born in Bridgeport on March 1, 1918. He married three times. The first, to Jeanne Ruth Ohrenstein in Clinton, Iowa, on February 15, 1941, ended only weeks later when she died on April 10 of that same year. The second, to Juanita Eileen Miller in Minneapolis on January 5, 1944, produced one  child and ended in divorce the following year. The third and lasting marriage was to Betty Lou Garris in Kansas on February 15, 1946; they had two children and stayed together until Leonard’s death on March 3, 1997.

Lenny (29-30) & Gail (3-4)
c. 1947-1948

Uncle Lenny was a character. He was the uncle who played the classic “I got your nose” game—pressing his knuckles on either side of a child’s nose, pulling his hand back with the thumb sticking out between his fingers, and delivering the line with perfect seriousness. He also kept an entire repertoire of corny jokes for every occasion. When my cousins and I were small we laughed at every one of them. In our twenties we rolled our eyes. As full-blown adults we just smiled—a lot.

He was a good-looking man; there was no denying it. More than once he told me that some people said he looked just like Gregory Peck while others insisted he looked just like Jeff Chandler. I would nod politely, though in truth he didn’t resemble either of them. When I repeated the story to my mother she laughed. “How could he look like both actors,” she said, “when they looked nothing like each other?” Good point.

Augie

Augie (20 yrs) c. 1942

Augie (born Agostino according to his birth certificate) arrived in Chicago on April 7, 1922. He was only sixteen months old when his father  died in 1923 and was raised by his widowed mother, with his older brothers showing him the ropes. He grew up a tough kid with a penchant for fighting and became a Golden Gloves bantamweight champion representing the South Side of Chicago at the age of twenty. 

On February 5, 1942, at the Coliseum, he went up against Harold Dade, a two-time previous champion. A coworker at the Maremont Automotive Company on South Ashland Avenue told the Chicago Tribune, “Nothing can scare that kid. He won’t admit that Dade might beat him and he’s offered to bet anyone that he won’t be knocked out.” Augie didn’t win that bout, but he kept boxing for another year or two and carried a broken nose as a souvenir. He seemed to live by the philosophy that he might not always win, but his opponent would know he’d been in a fight.

Augie (22 yrs) c. 1944

My mother jokingly told her future brother-in-law that if he showed up to my parents’ wedding—where he was to be a groomsman—with any bruises or shiners, she would give him a second broken nose. All was well: Augie arrived bruise-free and as handsome as ever.

He married three times. The first, to Marion “Mary” Akison in January 1946 in Chicago, produced two children and ended in divorce around July 1948. The second, to Kathryn DeBartolo on April 19, 1950, also produced two children and ended in 1956. The third, to the widow Elaine Mozer Mustari between 1966 and 1968, lasted until Augie’s death in 2004.

Augie and Two of his Sons, Ricky & Gus - The Next Generation

The DeLios

l-r:  Carmi (12 yrs), Mikey (9 yrs) and Johnny (4 yrs) - DeKalb Street - bet 1918 - 1924

The Delios - Grandma's Surprise Birthday Party - March 1955
seated l-r: Marilyn, Grandma DeLio, Josie and Francie
standing l-r: Carl, Johnny and Mike

Carmi

Carl was born Carmine Raffaele DeLio on April 17, 1906, in Chicago—the eldest of the DeLio boys. He was named after his father’s brother, who had died at three months of age; Raffaele was his grandfather’s name. By the time Carmi arrived, Theodore Roosevelt was president and San Francisco had just suffered its devastating earthquake. The Ford Model T would appear within two years, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was established in 1908.

Carl (38 yrs)
c. 07/02/1944

Known in the family as Carl or Carmi, he married Catherine Citro in June 1930 (the exact date isn’t known). They had two children. After his father Angelo’s death in February 1944, Carl became the family patriarch and, five months later, walked my mother down the aisle in his place. He was the natural choice. A man of great character, empathy, and love of family, he stepped in—sometimes behind the scenes—whenever he felt someone was being taken advantage of. His advice, whether sought out or volunteered, was respected. A saint? Of course not. Maybe he was effective simply because people didn’t want to hear that booming voice raised. He had one, and it pretty much ensured he would not be ignored.

My clearest memory of Uncle Carmi is of him sitting in  the kitchen of his house on Major Avenue, catching up over coffee with his sisters—my mother (Marilyn),  Francie, and Josie. When he’d had enough of that he would move out onto the enclosed back porch to watch television or read the paper, leaving the women with his wife, Katie. That’s where he could always find me if he was looking.

We never had any deep conversations out there, but Uncle Carmi had a color TV that he let me control, and since I was the only person in the house under thirteen for an afternoon or evening, he could always retreat to his newspaper when my programming choices became too much for him. He died in Chicago at the age of 65 on June 4, 1971, surrounded by his family.

Carmi & Katie - The Great Pool Hustle
c. 04/17/1960

Mikey

Michael Joseph, named after his maternal grandfather, was born on July 3, 1909, also in Chicago. Intimate acquaintances called him Mike or Mikey. That year the Lincoln penny was introduced and has remained in circulation ever since. William Howard Taft became the twenty-seventh president, and the explorer Robert Peary reached the North Pole.

Johnny & Mikey on DeKalb Street
c. 1921

I never had the chance to know Uncle Mikey; he died in February 1956 when I was less than two years old. What I know about him comes from the first-hand recollections of others—few even then, and fewer now—and from a handful of photographs I inherited from my mother. From those pictures he looks a perfect blend of Uncle Carmi and Uncle Johnny, and I don’t think I’m going  out on a limb when I say the same was probably true of temperament. 

He was a cute little boy based on some photos I have seen, and, clearly a loving older brother to Johnny, as evidenced in the 1921 picture taken on DeKalb Street of the two of them.  

His draft registration card lists him as five-foot-seven, a hundred and thirty pounds, brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of his death he was a maintenance worker for the telephone company—a steady, unspectacular job that fit the middle-brother profile between the more forceful Carmi and the gruff Johnny.

Mike married Irene Urbaniak on November 18, 1939. Together they raised three children. It’s probably not the best-kept secret that my grandmother would have preferred her middle son marry a “nice Italian girl.” The DeLios lived in the heart of Chicago’s Little Italy, and to my knowledge there wasn’t a single non-Italian surname in the immediate family between 1906 and 1940. When Mikey brought Irene home I suspect it was a hard pill for Grandma to swallow at first.  

Mike & Irene's Wedding Day
c. 11/20/1939

That doesn’t mean she didn’t like Irene—she did. Irene made Mikey happy and gave him three beautiful children. Grandma eventually came to terms with the non-Italian parts of the relationship, and as long as they were both happy, that was what really mattered. If only she could have gotten them to move closer to DeKalb Street.

Mike & Family - Grandma's Birthday Party - March 1955

Johnny- abt 1943

Johnny

John Angelo DeLio, the youngest of the brothers, was born on September 10, 1920, in Chicago. He married twice; both marriages ended in divorce. With his second wife, Olga Mitrofaniak, he had one child who died at three months of age. Although married (and divorced) twice, Johnny was my bachelor uncle. He worked for the Department of Streets and Sanitation—street cleaning, snow plowing, and the rest. Because of the hours he kept, he was usually home in the afternoons. 

He had a gruff voice and, unless you got to know him well, a slightly gruff demeanor. He loved his nieces and nephews; you just wouldn’t always know it, and he could put the fear of God into us with just a look.

Johnny (47-48 yrs)
  c. 1967

One of my cousins called him The Enforcer. The reason was simple: whenever any of us got into trouble and our fathers were at work—or when Johnny happened to be visiting one of his sisters—he was called into action. Take the time my brother Patrick was playing ball in the schoolyard. Not looking to see if any cars were coming, he ran out into the middle of the street to catch a fly ball and missed being run over by inches. The driver was so upset he had to pull over, get out of the car, and sit on the curb to calm himself down. 

The school principal called the house and asked my mother to come pick Patrick up. Mom brought Uncle Johnny with her as backup. She was relieved to see that Patrick wasn’t hurt, though his clothes were filthy from falling in front of the car. She was also fit to be tied. Once they left the principal’s office, my brother was not allowed to sit down on Johnny’s clean upholstery all the way home. From the look on Uncle Johnny’s face, it was wise of Pat not to even try.

Birthday cake. Who doesn’t like a beautifully decorated birthday cake, all lit up with candles, everyone standing around singing “Happy Birthday,” the birthday boy or girl blowing out the candles, and slices passed around? Uncle Johnny would cut or scrape the frosting off his piece—not for any dietary reason, but because whoever blew out the candles had almost certainly spit all over the top of the cake. Persnickety? Maybe. Probably true.

Every summer I spent two weeks at Grandma’s house for vacation. During my sixth summer I was losing baby teeth the way most children that age do. It seemed like every day for the first three days of the visit I lost another one. I was a little intimidated by my uncle for no other reason than the timbre of his voice, so when I started to fall asleep on the daybed that had been set up for me and Johnny came into the room, I was a little apprehensive. He said, “I heard you lost a tooth today.” I nodded ever so slightly. “You know, if you put your tooth under your pillow, the tooth fairy will leave you money.” With nothing to lose, I did. The next morning there was a nickel in its place. By the afternoon I lost another tooth, and once again Uncle Johnny told me to put it under my pillow. Sure enough, the next morning there was money—only this time it was a dime. Later that day a third tooth fell out. If this kept up I’d be rich. I couldn’t wait for Johnny to come home so I could show him. He looked at the tooth, then at me, and said, “How many more teeth have you got?” Then he laughed and hugged me. After that I don’t think I was ever nervous or afraid of him again.

Uncle Johnny died on November 20, 1967. He had been living at Uncle Carmi’s house at the time. When the funeral parlor asked Carmi to bring in an outfit for the interment, Carmi went through Johnny’s closet and found a Brooks Brothers garment bag with a brand-new suit still inside, tags attached. It was a beautiful suit, so Carmi brought it. Johnny looked very dapper in it—he always was well dressed, and the end of his life was no exception. About a week after the funeral Carmi received a call from the Brooks Brothers shop. It seemed Uncle Johnny had not yet paid for the three-hundred-dollar suit in which he had been laid to rest. I guess it’s true that he who laughs last, laughs best.

They grew up, took on the weight of adult lives, and still kept pieces of the boys they had been—sometimes in the way they laughed, sometimes in the way they protected, sometimes in a brand-new suit that somehow never got paid for. From boys to men, and every so often, back again. I’m glad they did. And I'm glad the stories still know the way home.

A Street by Any Other Name Still Spells Home

What’s in a Street Name?

Some streets hold more than pavement and addresses. They hold the first footsteps of people who had just crossed an ocean, the smell of simmering tomato sauce and frying garlic drifting from open windows, the sharp cry of a street vendor, the soft clatter of wooden pushcarts on cobblestones. Mulberry Street in New York City and Taylor Street in Chicago were two such places. For hundreds of Italian immigrants—and for my own family—they were the closest thing to home that the New World would ever offer.

My great-grandfather Fedele Poppa 
lived at 114-118 Mulberry Street in NY, c 1906-1910
before settling in Bridgeport, CT

Neither street began as a place of wealth or prestige. Both were crowded, working-class neighborhoods that outsiders often looked down on. Yet within their own borders they became something stronger: Little Italys, insulated by language, custom, mutual-aid societies, and the simple
fact that almost everyone understood what it meant to have left everything behind. On summer evenings the air itself seemed Italian—thick with the scent of basil, espresso, and laundry hung between tenement windows.

New York was the great doorway. In the nineteenth century most immigrants stepped ashore at Castle Garden; after 1892 the processing moved to Ellis Island, which stayed open until 1954. Once the inspectors finished their work, many Italians walked straight to Mulberry Street. That short stretch of Lower Manhattan was the heart of the city’s Italian colony during the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

My great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my great-uncles were among them. They lived for a time in tenements, one at 62 Mulberry Street and two others at 114–118 Mulberry Street—buildings that no longer exist. 

I can almost picture the narrow stairwells, the shared hallways that smelled of coal smoke and cooking, the single window that looked out onto a fire escape crowded with geraniums and drying clothes. One lot later became a parking area, and by 2019 the others had been rebuilt yet again into mixed-use structures with luxury apartments. The place where so many families first “parked” while they found their footing has been transformed more than once, as if the city itself kept rewriting the story.

My grandfather, Isidoro Poppa
lived at 114-118 Mulberry St in NY,
then Bridgeport, CT and later,
 at 2160 DeKalb St in Chicago, c. 1920

At its largest, the Italian district ran roughly from Worth Street south to Houston Street north, and from Lafayette Street west to the Bowery east. Today only a few blocks of Mulberry Street still carry the name and the feeling of Little Italy. 

The neighborhood began as Mulberry Bend, a densely packed section once described as “the foul core of New York’s slums” by the reformer and photographer Jacob Riis. In those years the street pulsed with life: the constant murmur of southern Italian dialects, the rattle of wagons, the high-pitched calls of children playing in the gutters. Mass immigration from Italy in the 1880s filled the area with families, pushcarts, and storefronts.

After World War II many residents moved outward to Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey. When immigration rules loosened in 1965, neighboring Chinatown expanded northward. In 2010 the combined Chinatown and Little Italy area was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places—recognition that arrived long after most of the original families had moved on.

My great-grandfather Leonardo DiFoggia
 lived at 62 Mulberry St in NY
 and later in Chicago, c. 1906/1910

In Chicago the same story unfolded along Taylor Street. That corridor became the main gathering place for the city’s Italian immigrants and the neighborhood most often called Little Italy. It sits inside the larger Near West Side, a district that at the turn of the twentieth century also held sizable Greek and Jewish communities. Over time most of those other groups moved away, leaving a strong Italian presence that lasted for decades. 

On market days the sidewalks smelled of fresh bread, sharp cheese, and the sweet, yeasty air that poured from bakery doorways. Men stood outside social clubs arguing politics in the old language; women leaned from windows to call children home for supper. 

The air itself seemed to carry the neighborhood's pulse—garlic and basil drifting from open kitchens, the rattle of pushcarts, the quick laughter of kids darting between stoops.

Many Italians first arrived in Chicago in small numbers in the 1850s. By 1880 the city counted 1,357 Italian residents. Immigration accelerated sharply in the decades that followed; the foreign-born Italian population rose from roughly 16,000 in 1900 to a peak of nearly 74,000 in 1930. The Taylor Street area held the largest concentration. By the late 1920s Italian-owned businesses—hundreds of grocery stores, restaurants, and pastry shops—had become a familiar part of Chicago’s food landscape and helped introduce Italian cooking to the wider city. The scent of cannoli frying in hot oil, the gleam of polished espresso machines, the soft thud of dough being kneaded—these became part of the neighborhood’s everyday music.

The Italian population on Taylor Street reached its height in the 1950s and early 1960s. After the University of Illinois decided to locate a campus in the neighborhood in 1963, the residential community began to shrink. Blocks that had once held dense rows of flats and storefronts gave way to new institutional buildings, and many families dispersed. A number of long-standing Italian restaurants and shops still line the corridor today, carrying the memory of what was once a denser, louder, more tightly knit world.

I never lived on Taylor Street or in the surrounding Tri-Taylor, University Village, or Maxwell Street areas. My grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and a few cousins did, so I claim a connection through family. The stories I grew up hearing mixed hardship with warmth: the Spanish Influenza, the Depression, scarce jobs, many mouths to feed, two World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. Yet they also spoke of closeness among relatives and neighbors—of kitchens that always seemed full, of the comfort of hearing the same dialect on every corner, of pride in the community and in Italian heritage. Those feelings still surface whenever those who were there share their memories. Not a bad thing.

What’s in a street name? Sometimes an entire beginning. Sometimes the only home a family would know for a generation. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, a handful of stories that still carry the smell of sauce and the sound of laughter long after the tenements are gone.

Grandma Poppa and Family on DeKalb Street - July 15, 1951

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Citations for direct quotes and specific facts

• Jacob Riis quotation (“the foul core of New York’s slums”): from his writings on Mulberry Bend, commonly referenced in historical accounts of the neighborhood (including How the Other Half Lives and later summaries).
• Former boundaries of Manhattan’s Little Italy and the reduction to roughly three blocks: standard historical description drawn from accounts of the neighborhood’s extent.
• Castle Garden (19th century) and Ellis Island (1892–1954) as the main processing centers: widely documented immigration history.
• Chicago Italian population figures (1,357 in 1880; approx. 16,000 foreign-born in 1900; peak of nearly 74,000 in 1930): from historical demographic records summarized in sources such as the Encyclopedia of Chicago and related scholarship.
• 1927 business counts (hundreds of Italian-owned grocery stores, restaurants, and pastry shops): drawn from period economic surveys of Italian neighborhoods in Chicago.
• Peak Italian population on Taylor Street in the 1950s–early 1960s and the impact of the 1963 University of Illinois campus decision: standard local historical narrative.
• 2010 National Register listing of the Chinatown and Little Italy historic district: official designation.