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Louis John Cicotello Born: November 11, 1913 Married: June 8, 1939 Died: June 28, 1986 (Obituary) Spouse: Katherine Martsolf Children: Louis Martsolf PHOTOS
When Louis was a kid he was called Lou, Louie or Luigi (Italian for Louis) by my parents and other Italian immigrants. He was the best swimmer among his group of friends when he was a kid. He graduated from high school, a bright student who wanted to be a writer. Brother Guy wanted to help him enter college, but Louis, who always did his own thing, never followed through. After graduation from Portage Borough High School in 1932, he was on the road looking for work, since there were no jobs in Portage, common for a lot of men during those Great Depression years of the early Thirties. He traveled up and down the east coast of the USA and out west to Montana, picking up jobs and supporting himself. He worked in Washington, DC for a while, and finally in New York City where he was hired as a "gofer" in a bookstore before returning home to Portage in the mid-thirties. While at home he worked a while for the steel mills in Johnstown and then as a clerk in a State of Pennsylvania liquor retail store in Portage, until he enrolled at Cambria Rowe Business College in Johnstown, where he met his future wife, Katherine. He we a veteran of World War II who served as an enlisted man with the US Army Signal Corps. White stationed in Paris, France, as a teletype operator at a command communication center, he was visited by Brother Pat on a 4-day pass, traveling from Germany right after the war ended. While in Paris together, they sat at a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees having a drink, talking and people watching. Louis was the first child to marry. He and Katherine made their home in Windber, Pennsylvania, where they raised their kids: Louis M., Carl, David and Timothy. Louis was a jack-of-all-trades, and a darn good one, too. He took pride in his work. For years he worked for himself as a floorcraft specialist, one of the best in the area. He told Brother Pat, while vacationing in Hawaii with Katherine, that the motto in the floorcraft business is "no one appreciates his work, they walk all over it". For a while he owned and operated his business in Windber and, with the help of Katherine, sold floorcraft products that he also installed for customers. Louis was an avid reader all his life. He was also a moneypoor, honest businessman who worked until the end, seldom missing work for poor health. He died of heart failure in 1986 at home after showering. He and wife Katherine had been out picking strawberries that day. After an extended period of poor health that included diabetic and heart problems, Katherine died peacefully of heart failure in 1992, after a few days in Windber Hospital, following surgery to repair a broken hip.
-taken from "A Family Legacy" by Patrick A. Ciccotello |
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