Bocce Club assembles for all things Italian

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

They meet regularly on Sundays at Paki Hale near Kapi'olani Park to play bocce, the Italian version of lawn bowling, and enrich their cultural heritage.

Joe Saguto, right, prepares to roll a bocce ball at Paki Hale near Kapi'olani Park, where he and other Bocce Club members meet every Sunday to play the Italian version of lawn bowling and to enjoy authentic Italian cuisine. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

"There are very few Italians in Hawai'i," said 88-year-old Alfred Capasso, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native and Hawai'i resident since 1941 who joined the club earlier this year. "I wanted to improve my Italian. I had developed an accent. It's like when I speak English, you'll know I'm from New York because of the inflections."

Besides the opportunity to speak Sicilian with someone, Capasso enjoys the cuisine and camaraderie.

"It's the best-kept secret in town," Patty Nole of Kailua said of the weekly lunch spread. "It's real Italian food."

On a recent Sunday, the group was treated to homemade Italian pork sausage and beans in a tomato-based sauce prepared by 55-year-old Giampiero Morosi of Makiki, who is a hairdresser.

"I like to cook and I like to play bocce," said Morosi, who was born in Rome and raised in Cleveland.

There is a national Italian language as well as individual native dialects. Despite the different dialects, all Italians speak with hand gestures, noted 61-year-old Ezio Tamburrini of Nu'uanu, who is from Montecassino between Rome and Naples where the spoken dialect is Ciociaro.

"It's well known that Italians cannot talk without using their hands," Tamburrini tells the group at lunch. "A tourist in Rome asked an Italian for directions to Castelsant'iangelo. The guy was carrying a watermelon so he puts the watermelon down on the floor, shrugs I don't know, picks up the watermelon and goes on."

The story is greeted with laughter.

"It's a chance to socialize, enjoy good food and speak the language," said Brooklyn native Joe Saguto, a club member for five years.

When Capasso joined, it gave Saguto a chance to speak Sicilian with someone other than Michele Minuto. Capasso also learned that Saguto lived two blocks away from where he grew up in Brooklyn.

"This has brought me back 50 years," Capasso said of his new-found cultural experience. "The culture is the main thing for me. For 50 years, all I could do was talk about things Italian. I go to the opera and I've been trying to get my son-in-law and his family interested. I tell them opera is like a play, only it's singing, but I can't get them to go."

The group enjoys talking story, too.

Capasso, for example, was the first Italian-American agent in the U.S. Secret Service and guarded four presidents — Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. He retired in May 1963, six months before Kennedy was assassinated.

"Truman was my favorite," he said. "He loved to play poker and didn't like Secret Service agents around him because he loved to take long strolls alone."

Truman would tell the Secret Service that he planned to walk at 10 a.m. but would get up earlier and take his walks. "He'd walk to 15th and Constitution Avenue, stay on the corner, and watch the kids playing ball in the playground. He never knew that Secret Service agents out of view were watching him all the time."

People may not know that FDR was an avid stamp and coin collector, Capasso said. "He was jovial and most accessible," he said.

Capasso often was in the same room when FDR did his "fireside talks" to the nation. "Roosevelt, in my opinion, was good for the people."

Dominic Petillo, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker, had never played bocce until he joined the club 18 months ago. "My grandparents were from Naples but I don't speak Italian," said the 69-year-old. " ... I like the food and the company. I'm learning a lot and plan to go to Italy in October 2003."