And so tomorrow will be the day she and her husband will mark their 75th wedding anniversary.
A party to celebrate the two centenarians’ birthdays and their diamond anniversary will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, April 28, and the Elks Club #51 at 1536 Villa Road. Those who plan to attend are asked to RSVP to the Vecchio’s great-nephew, Chad Bennett, at (937) 244-5180.
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In a country rallied by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s remark that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor would “live in infamy,” young men and women flocked to USO dances.
Young Gladys Neff and Sgt. Vecchio marched separately down to the old Springfield YMCA on Fountain Avenue to dance to the music of the Eddie Kadel Band.
“I picked her out,” he said. “I’ll tell you why: She was good lookin’ and she could dance.”
After recognizing her husband’s compliment earlier this month with a “thank you” across their kitchen table, Mrs. Vecchio said “We danced and danced and danced and danced.”
Her future husband grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Hays, Pa., from which he rode the trolley line during the Depression to scratch out a little spending money at Pirates games played at Forbes Field.
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“I hustled food and scorecards and stuff,” he said. “It was the only job I could find back then. A hot dog was a dime. Everything was a dime, and I made a penny on each sale.”
On a good day, Mr. Vecchio could make 35 to 40 cents, but only if he hustled.
“You had to be regular to sell scorecards before the game started. Then you’d be off to a good start. Sometimes I didn’t make enough for car fare, and I’d have to walk home,” a distance of about 10 miles.
In high school, the Forbes Field entrepreneur took commercial or business courses “so I wouldn’t have to do math.”
Practical skills as a typist and taker of shorthand led to his being made a supply sergeant shortly after enlistment in December of 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor.
“I still try to remember the (typing) keyboard,” he said, and now and then silently types out the sentence “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.”
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“I think that’s the way you hit all of the letters.”
The Pittsburgh man who didn’t like math wound up with a Plattsburg High School girl who did, at least in the time she spent in the halls there.
“I was sick,” Mrs. Vecchio explained. “I went two years (and) played basketball and softball.”
Before she could graduate, “I got restless and wanted to go to work,” she said — a restlessness of the sort that manifested itself when she was a child and her father, Alex Neff, went to town for groceries.
Before leaving, he would announce the standard order: “Stay off that horse!”
“I watched for him to turn up there on that Lisbon Road, then I’d go out and get on this horse,” named Alice.
Apparently able to understand her master, Alice, “turned around and bit me on the back.”
The future Mrs. Vecchio was working at Hart’s Jewelry in Springfield, rooming with her married cousin on Warder Street, when she started attending USO dances.
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Contrary to her girlfriends’ advice, after dancing with Vecchio, “I wouldn’t even let him take me home,” she said. “Then he asked me to marry him and I said no.”
At this point in the story, their stories diverge.
She claims her rejected suitor said that was fine because he was already married to a girl back home. In a tone as confident as his wife’s, Mr. Vecchio denies the accusation.
Whatever the truth of the matter, both agree on a more salient point: that she said yes to his second proposal.
“He was such a nice guy,” she said, though perhaps she also received a nudge from fate.
“I was engaged at the time to someone else, and I broke the date and told him I had to baby sit, which was a lie,” she confessed.
The truth was that she was going to the USO dance with Vecchio.
The next day, tires squealed in front of her house and her ex-fiancé made a comment to her about the size of the baby she was pictured with in the morning newspaper’s coverage of the dance.
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Their wedding was at St. John’s Evangelical and Reformed Church, which had been decorated with palms just as the bride’s brown suit had been decorated with brown and gold accessories. (The corsage was of talisman roses.)
By the time the notice was published, the couple had relocated to Lubbock Field in Texas.
When he was scheduled for another reassignment to Salt Lake City, “He sent me home because he was supposed to go overseas,” Mrs. Vecchio said. “But he had all those points for five years of service, and they let him out, and the two moved into an apartment she found on Woodlawn Avenue.
At first, Mrs. Vecchio wound armatures at Robbins & Myers’ Lagonda Avenue plant but soon parlayed her skill with numbers into a 34-year career as a bookkeeper at the local Eagles aerie. Her first office was the size of a kitchen, but her quarter grew larger as the Eagles grew, relocated and eventually erected the building on West Main Street that now houses United Senior Services.
Mr. Vecchio landed a civilian job farther west at what would become Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As an aircraft distribution officer, he routed planes entering service to the appropriate commands.
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When no children came, she occasionally picked up additional work at Carmen’s shoes downtown, and they found a shared interest in golf, both eventually being inducted to the Springfield men’s and women’s golf halls of fame.
They also became particularly close to their grandnephews Chad and John Bennett in Fairborn.
Mrs. Vecchio made it a point to volunteer to drive so the boys both could attend D.A.R.E. classes.
“People always assume I’m their grandson,” Chad Bennett said, and for years he has acted the part. Although he now calls the Vecchios twice weekly, he says, “It’s amazing how much they can do for themselves.”
This far into a satisfactory life, the no longer newlyweds both enjoy good health. Mrs. Vecchio did begin using oxygen about a year ago, but says she only runs out of breath when trying to speak loudly enough so that her husband hears her.
Free of that strain, she offered one piece of advice for those who aspire to a long, loving marriage: "I just think couples lose respect for each other. I've always thought that. You've got to think about their rights and your rights."
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In the brief pause that came after her husband was asked the same question, she managed to sneak in, "This ought to be good."
And it was, by and large.
The most important thing is “being a good listener,” he husband said, “no matter what she says.”
A diamond anniversary anecdote
Reminded by their grand nephew Chad Bennett, Frank and Gladys Vecchio smiled about the years when Mrs. Vecchio set aside bail money for her husband.
At the time, he bowled on a team with friends who observed the highly honored tradition of the beer frame – a tradition Mrs. Vecchio associated with the equally lengthy tradition of the DUI arrest.
“I was afraid he’d get picked up coming home,” she said, “so I kept a fund to get him out of jail,” although it involved more than that.
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Her routine on bowling nights was to go to her sister’s home when Mr. Vecchio left for bowling, then drive to a tavern on Belmont Avenue where the bowling team re-enacted the beer frame.
“Then I would follow him home.”
One night, he and others got robbed at the bar, she said, and her affable husband, after surrendering some of his money, reached into his pocket then extended the robbers the courtesy of saying “Here, there’s some more.”
His friendly deed went unpunished when the robbers were caught at the edge of town and all the money was recovered and returned.
As for the Frank Vecchio bail fund?
Never tapped, it was finally retired … although later in life than may have been justified.
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