Gene Magnani; died Friday, on his 87th birthday. He was an amazing artisan. Worked at a local refinery after WW II (fought at Battle of the Bulge and served as a witness to the concentration camp atrocities), and did home repairs and additions on the side. One day he came home from work and it was hot, so he asked his kids did they want a pool. Three days later it was ready to fill with water. He added an addition to our house when I was in grade school. Always ready with a joke, and two years ago he was as spry as a 20 year old. Built three homes in a row in the countryside from the foundation to the roof and the stone chimneys entirely by himself. Wish I had his garage: three car, extra deep and wide , with an I-beam (custom bent between a few trees) with a trolley lift that ran across all three bays and then curved to run over the workbench along the outside wall.
In the 1970s I would ride my bicycle out in that area of Pennsylvania and I recall one time stopping to watch him heading into the air in a scissor-lift coal delivery truck, the bed full of stone as he continued work on the chimney of the home he was building for his mother.
Just last month our youngest daughter and I were bicycling back into town from out in Maryland, having just watched the movie, "Children of a Lesser God" the night before. I was telling her one of the actors was Barry Magnani, and describing his father Gene to her. At a red light a van pulls up next to us and I hear this Italian accented voice call out: "Hey you, come visit me". It was Gene and his son, Ray. I told them we'd just seen Barry the night before, which surprised them (as he lives in New York) until I explained what movie we'd watched.
I am sorry I did not take his advice to go visit. Unknown to many of us he was dealing with leukemia, and declined rapidly over these past four weeks.
He was always busy doing something for someone. In addition to all the work he did he found time to have fun, too. He was always finding great deals and making gold out of rust: I remember he bought an accident-damaged Jaguar sedan at auction and totally restored it, witnessed an accident where a car ran off the highway and plowed into a 36 foot sailboat - he went inside and bought it for the salvage value after the insurance payout and rebuilt the hull and interior for a total of $2000. Countless times he was there with countless skills providing practical solutions and creative fixes for any problem that arose in the community.
Quite an amazing man. I'll miss him.
