Not only in honor of the children and grandchildren of the Basconi family but ALL OUR ANCESTOR'S who migrated to this great country
The Flag of the United States of America

A Melting Pot for all nationalities since July 4, 1776.

Symbolizing the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave!

• Elo married Enis Sensi (Click to view honeymoon photo) - lived at Thornhill
• Mario married Helen Burnopp - he worked as an electrician and lived at Bluefield, VA
• Juanita married Joseph Silvester - she taught school and lived at Pinnacle
• Janice married Joseph Lanzi - she was a housewife and lived at Pinnacle
• Benedetta married James Fife - she worked at Martin Furniture and lived at Thornhill
• Edith who married Rudolph Massaroni - she was a housewife and lived at Montcalm

My grandfather Amedeo was from Norcia, Perugia. A verbal agreement was made with his relatives in Italy to build Amedeo a house/casa with money he periodically sent back to Italy.  He made a trip back to Italy when he was 32 years of age and continued to send money toward the house he would one day return to and retire at.  At age 47, on another return visit to Italy, Amedeo was bitten by a black spider either on the ship, or a day after his arrival in Italy while visiting with my grandmother Amadea's family in Rome. He died soon afterwards from an infection before he had a chance to visit his new home and brothers and sister in Norcia.
 
Stories which were told by my mom and dad and those I personally experienced during my years at Thornhill will always be fondly remembered. I tell my Northern friends how Italian's were segregated in WV. We could only live on Tally Hill (being Italian) however we eventually integrated into Thornhill, which then became known as Little Italy. The families living there were the Basconi's, Massaroni's, Brugnoli's, Pietrantozzi's, DeMarchi's, Silvertri's and Stochi's. The only other family living in Thornhill at at the peak time were the Martins' who owned the furniture and clothing store. Some Italian families would have live-in boarders to supplement family income. During the years we were growing up attending Mora Elementary and McComas High Schools our family had three boarders who lived in our basement. They were Spanish, Hungarian, and an African American.

The years of 1945 through 1948 while attending Thornhill Elementary School were very memorable years. Ms. Harless was our teacher who would keep everyone in order with a switch. The one room school consisted of 20 to 25 students in grades 1st through 4th. My cousin Reno Silvestri and I would stop by his grandparent's home, Agnese and Adelino Brugnoli's to have hot bread with butter. The bread was baked Italian style - at low heat for hours in an outdoor oven. It just didn't get any better. Sometimes we took crawfish which we had caught to Reno's grandmother to be fry and put on the homemade bread. On weekends it was always exciting to watch the Italian men as they slaughtered pigs and processed their different meats. That great Italian sausage was and still is one of my favorites. I fondly recall the Italian game of Bocce which was played by the Italian men. Reno and Ricki Silvestri, Sonnny Pietrantozzi and myself were allowed to play sometimes. The game is played with 4 wooden balls about 6" in diameter and a small ball about 3" in diameter. The winners, two on a team were called the boss and under boss. The boss and under boss determined who would get a beer to drink and who went dry or had no beer at all.

Basconi's Place was one jumping place on a Saturday night during the Thornhill heydays. Basconi's Place was the only place in the McComas area to watch TV and in color. (color TV was a piece of green, red and yellow plastic taped on the front of the screen). Those were the days. In order to get TV reception down into Thornhill my father designed a telescope type of construction with an antenna mounted at the top. We ran the line from atop a hill at Thornhill - down to Basconi's Place and TV arrived at Thornhill in 1949. I remember it like it was yesterday. On the nights which featured championship boxing the place would be packed with mostly men and a few women being the Gilmore girls. You could watch a great fight, listen to music and if no one got out of hand you could get a shot of bootleg booze.

I'll always remember hearing sound of the sirens blaring as the ambulance went by our house (first house on the right in this photo). This was normally the sign that someone was injured in the mines or a slate fall had occurred. We would always pray when this happened and wondered if dad was involved. On two different occasions he was injured. Once when he had bones crushed in his skull, which required surgery, and the second time was when he was taking lamps into the mines. The person who filled the lamps with acid had forgotten to tighten the lamps securely. My father taking them into the mines thought water was dripping from the ceiling, but instead it acid leaking from the batteries. This caused major burns down his back again requiring surgery.

My father, like so many other West Virginia coal miners worked very hard. One of the reasons, he like to tell, was so his children could receive an education and hopefully have a better life than he had as a coal miner. An education was always stressed in our family and as such I am proud to say that all three of us Basconi children received college degrees. If my father were alive today he would be so proud to know that 7 of his 8 grandchildren have college degrees with the 8th starting college within two years.