Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(4)

There’s a message I want to deliver in this book: I love my country, and I’m grateful to be an American. I know where my freedom comes from, and I do not take for granted the sacrifices of those who provide it. Because of that, I want to do all I can to ensure America’s defenders and their families are never forgotten.

I want this book to help spread a spirit of joy, tribute, action, and ultimately gratefulness. In the pages to come, you’ll read how a wild kid from the suburbs of Chicago stumbled into theater, how he eventually developed from an actor into an advocate, and why his passionate commitment to support our nation’s defenders continually manifests into action.

As I’ve looked back on this life’s journey and seen anew how my story unfolded over the years, what I’ve seen has surprised even me. There have been any number of ups and downs in my life, and there was a time when I wasn’t concerned about too much more than my own career. But slowly things changed. It’s my hope that as I share these stories from my life, you will be entertained and maybe even inspired too—empowered to overcome obstacles, embrace gratitude, and engage in service above self.

So let’s go. First up: the vineyards of Ripacandida, a trip through Ellis Island, and a man who would have three wives.

Wait a minute.

What did he say?





CHAPTER 1


Yearning to Breathe Free


Let me take you back to old Italy, to the little village of Ripacandida in the province of Potenza. I want to look at how certain decisions, moments, and events in the past can shape and mold the present—and even the future—in uncanny ways.

While I’ve yet to travel there myself, I’m told that in Ripacandida you can see lush valleys and large cliffs, bright sunlight on the whitewashed houses. You smell fresh-baked bread and catch in the air the fruity tang of grapes. In the late 1880s, my great-grandfather Vito Sinisi (spelled with an i at the end) lived in Ripacandida with his family. My last name was pronounced Sin-NEEZ-zay. Say it out loud like a good Italian would.

The land was beautiful, the people vibrant and industrious, yet times were tough for Vito in the old country. So he traveled to Brazil and settled there for a while to try and make a buck working in the coffee fields. He then headed back to Italy, and when he was twenty-three, on January 22, 1887, he married a sixteen-year-old from the village named Anna Maria Fusco. They were happy, but times were still tough. He needed a land of opportunity. He needed a land that welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. Four years and two children later, in 1891, Vito and his young family came to America. They sailed past Lady Liberty, headed through Ellis Island, and when the American clerk who stamped forms saw the last name, he mispronounced it, saying it softer, like a whisper—Sineece. Rhymes with niece. Vito figured that’s how good Americans say his last name, and Vito wanted to be a good American, so the i was changed to an e, and ever after the Sinise family has said its last name the way that nameless clerk did.

Vito and his family wound up on the south side of Chicago, where he was soon able to buy a little house with a bakery and store out front. He created his own job, running his little grocery store and baking Italian bread twice a day. He sold his bread for ten cents a loaf as fast as he could bake it. Vito had nine children—the first two born in Ripacandida, and seven born in America. My great-grandmother Anna passed away in 1918, and after a period of mourning, Vito met and married Adiela Labriola, who had immigrated to Chicago from Italy in 1910. Adiela went by the more American name of Ethel. Sadly, a little over eighteen months after their marriage, she also died, so Vito returned to Italy in hopes of finding a new wife, this time meeting Maria Lucia Giambersio. They married in Ripacandida on December 30, 1920, and returned to America. Neither Adiela nor Maria Lucia had any other children with Vito. In later years, Vito worked in Rock Island, Illinois, as a crossing watchman, the person who flags automobile traffic when trains run through crossings, then for the city of Blue Island on a horse-drawn garbage wagon before he retired in 1940. He died in 1946, old and full of years in this new country, his family welcomed by the mighty woman with a torch.

My grandfather Donato Louis Sinise was called Daniel by everyone. He was one of Vito’s kids born in Chicago. Grandpa Dan arrived in 1900 and quickly grew into a hardworking kid who sold newspapers and peddled bread. He left home at fifteen to work in a glass factory. In 1917, Grandpa Dan joined the US Army to fight in World War I, and at eighteen found himself on the front lines in France in the Battle of the Argonne Forest. This huge, bloody battle saw some 26,277 American troops killed, more Americans than were killed in the entire Revolutionary War (25,324), or about six times the number of American troops killed on D-Day (4,414 killed on June 6, 1944).

After the war, Grandpa spoke little about his battle experiences except to tell one story. He served for a time as an ambulance driver, shuttling wounded from the front lines to the hospitals. You’d think that would be a safer job in a war, but the enemy targeted the big red crosses on the ambulances while Grandpa drove in convoy, and the shells began to whistle in. Kaboom! The ambulance in front of Grandpa blew up. More shells whistled in. Kaboom! The ambulance behind Grandpa blew up. More shells whistled in. Grandpa braced for the inevitable. But somehow—miraculously—Grandpa Dan’s ambulance wasn’t touched.

In 1920, during a second epidemic of flu at US Army Facility Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois, a young registered nurse named Vesta Lambertson worked at night in the pneumonia ward. Grandpa Dan became night supervisor and met her. Bells went off and they married three months later on April 23, 1920. Whenever Grandpa told this story, he said jokingly, “It was either marry me or else,” but he never explained what the “or else” meant. It cost two bucks to get married. He remembered that. A buck fifty for the license and fifty cents to the judge.