Joe finally gets his day in the sun
91-year-old historian makes most of his situation at Green Tree’s Marian Manor
Joe D’Andrea made a break for it Tuesday afternoon.
As much of a break as you can make when you’re 91 and use a walker, you understand.
He’d told me on the phone from Marian Manor in Green Tree — which he praised for keeping him and his fellow residents safe — that he’d had enough of being indoors. It had been 89 days since he’d been outside, and he didn’t care if the temperature was hovering around that number.
“I want to touch the leaves and some flowers,” he said.
Nobody needs a scientific study to know that getting outside is good for the soul, though such treatises can be found. It has been shown that loneliness and social isolation can be more harmful to a body and mind than booze, cigarettes or obesity, and that fresh air and sunshine can ease a number of maladies among the elderly.
Beyond that, though, Mr. D’Andrea has work to do. This retired Spanish teacher remains a scholar and a historian. An Italian immigrant, he moved to the hills of Appalachia at 18 and has done monumental work since to honor those who preceded him. He has spent decades researching the worst mining disaster in American history, the Monongah, W.Va., explosion of Dec. 6, 1907, that killed at least 361 men and boys, 171 of them Italian immigrants.
That research, inspired by Mr. D’Andrea’s visit in 1985 to the poorly maintained cemetery for the miners outside the little village less than 100 miles south of Pittsburgh, was key in convincing Italian government officials to come to Monongah in 2007 for the 100th anniversary of that terrible day. Mr. D’Andrea’s native region, Molise, lost 87 men in the disaster.
His original research was published in Italian and was integral to a 2007 documentary, “Monongah Remembered,” by his old friend Peter Argentine, of Mt. Lebanon. He has spent the years since researching the 85 Americans, black and white, the 52 Hungarians, the 31 from across the Russian Empire, the 15 Austrians and five Turks who also died in the mine that day. He intends to share the story of each miner.
He’d just rather do that outside when he can. After his 40-minute Tuesday foray onto the beautiful grounds in back of Marian Manor with his “homework,” he called me back.
“I touched my plants and my herbs,” he said. “They’re coming out good. There’s nothing like being there among the flowers and the trees. The leaves talk to you.”
He said he’d told a nurse on his way out that she could report him if she liked. Around noon the next day, I drove to Marian Manor and called him from the parking lot. A sign on a gated walkway — “This is NOT a polling place for the election on June 2nd” — was a reminder of the pandemic restrictions, but Mr. D’Andrea was soon out the front door, masked and gloved behind his walker. I, also masked, chatted with him in the shade of a portico from more than 20 feet away.
A woman in scrubs came outside and kindly tried to persuade him to come back inside, and when I said who I was, she went back in to fetch a higher authority. A second woman in scrubs came out to gently tell Mr. D’Andrea he needed to get back in the building. Not wanting to cause trouble, I suggested he do that, and he reluctantly walked back in.
Marian Manor’s record in protecting its residents is exemplary. The virus causing COVID-19 has infected more than 16,000 residents of long-term care facilities in Pennsylvania, killing more than 4,000 people, nearly 70% of the virus’s statewide death toll. But no resident of Marian Manor or its sister facilities has contracted the disease.
“They’re doing a heckuva good job,” Mr. D’Andrea said. But he’s smart enough to know that the freedom he seeks would put no one in danger, and that bureaucracy has gotten in the way of common sense.
Nick Vizzoca, president and CEO of Vincentian Collaborative System, which coordinates Marian Manor and three other senior care facilities in greater Pittsburgh, said he has known Mr. D’Andrea a long time. “My parents came from Italy in the late ’60s, and Joe helped them a lot.”
But when he told me Joe was allowed to go outside, I told him that wasn’t his understanding, nor did it appear to be that of the health care workers who shooed him back in.
“Maybe not everyone’s on the same page at all times,” Mr. Vizzoca said. During the height of the pandemic, residents couldn’t even leave their rooms. State Department of Health also mandates no visitors until July 3, 28 days after Allegheny County entered its green phase.
Not all nursing home residents are as able as Mr. D’Andrea. Last fall, he sold his Moon condo, where he and his wife, Gloria, had lived for 40 years, so he could join her in Marian Manor. She’d entered earlier in the year when she began suffering from dementia. She lives in another part of the facility, and Mr. D’Andrea visits her twice a week.
For the past couple of weeks, residents have been able to go outside one-onone with a member of the activities staff, said J. Jude Hazard, executive director of marketing and communications for Vincentian. About five residents a day have done this.
Mr. D’Andrea pushed the envelope and has been rewarded. Thursday afternoon, after his third consecutive day enjoying God’s great Earth, he made me wonder why I hadn’t taken my laptop out to my yard. Why are any of us in when we can be out?
“I look at the birds and the bees and do my homework,” he said, with enough gratitude to make it sound like a passage from a prayer.