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ITALIANS
Yeagley’s first personal encounter with Italian people was at Oberlin College. It was connected with opera, but also included a beautiful girl, a soprano named Cindy. Yeagley had left Oklahoma quite socially naïve, and he was accustomed to being the only dark colored individual in his environment. Naturally, at a cosmopolitan campus like Oberlin, Yeagley seemed to fall in with people who looked similar.
But it wasn’t until his arrival at New Haven, CT, to study at Yale, that Yeagley really became involved in Italian American culture. His first encounter was with the immigrant soccer crowd. These were mostly Neopolitan common folk, without refinement of manners or intellect. However, to Yeagley, they were the most authentic people he’d ever met. To him, they had refinement of emotion. “They never really cared for me,” he recalls, “but I sure loved them.” They were clannish, in tight with their own social club, and Yeagley was merely tolerated. “Well, they must have liked me a little bit, because I sure couldn’t play good soccer. Yet, they let me hang around. I always practiced with them. One season I even wore their uniform. I played a full three minutes one game.”
One of the main things that attracted Yeagley to Italians was their lack of inhibitions in general. Everyone on the east coast is a little brazen, but, the Italians were Yeagley’s first encounter with these naturally gregarious people. “I was fairly shy, and these people really helped me develop a little more confidence, socially.”
The educated Italians were abundant at Yale, many of whom were radically female. It was this particular aspect of Italian culture which left perhaps the deepest impression on Yeagley, both intellectually and emotionally. “Italian women somehow reminded me of home. They felt like home. Maybe it was their coloring, you know, the dark eyes and hair.”
But as one who had never experience romance with an Italian female, Yeagley was unprepared for the personal holocaust. An old Italian stone quarry worker once said, “An Italian woman is like a piece of marble. She’s cold, hard, yet fragile and beautiful.” Yeagley was simply inexperienced in stone cutting. Though he found it a ‘crushing’ experience, he did see all sorts of historical significance in Italian women. He noticed stereotypes in early American literature, and the same characteristics aggrandized in the characters portrayed by Sophia Loren. His reactions to the Italian female were so dramatic, at one point, Yeagley even invented a fictional Italian female character, Lenora Montiverdi, through which he tried to correct all the ills he’d personally experienced. The novelette was in the form of correspondence, partly real, partly fiction.
Yeagley found a sense of recovery and inspiration in the personal life and ideas of Grace Mirabella, a nice Italian gal from Newark. Grace truly comprised all the best of Italian history, culture, and above all, humanisim. “When she talks to you, it’s like your family,” Yeagley says. “That Olive Garden TV advertisement is not kidding.” Yeagley says, “Mirabella is like a Medici. Her greatest concern is the pleasure of the people.” Yeagley has always believed that fashion people like Mirabella, and also Diane von Furstenberg, with their understanding of the people’s needs, should be in politics. “Mirabella is a natural,” Yeagley says. “She could do a lot of good.”
As far as Italian men go, Yeagley counts them among his best friends. “What’s really interesting is to find an Italian conservative Christian. Italians know the ego, like no other Europeans. They’re ancient at it. Therefore, when an Italian man espouses Christ, it is most elucidating.” Yeagley is quite impressed with the scholar Samuele Bacchiocchi, for example. Bacchiocci is a renowned Christian scholar and writer. But then there are simple men, of natural talent, like Phil Balisciano. “Phil is tops,” Yeagley says. “You can’t get a trick passed Phil.” Yeagley met Phil in West Haven, CT. Phil was a barber, but who reads avidly, and has an inborn ability to distinguish between pretense and truth even in the most abstract ecclesiology. “It’s all in understanding human nature,” Yeagley says. “Phil has a knack for it.”
“Italian female Christians?” Yeagley hesitates. “Well, when they say they want what God wants for you, I can’t distinguish their wants from God’s. Their ego is that strong. I suppose there’s nothing else like it.”
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