Well here's a family that was into marrying late. I doubt I'll be driving past the Venetucci farm on my way to work every day in a few years. I hope the Catholic church that they dedicated their land to makes it a nice place. I wonder if they are waiting until Bambi passes away? Apparently none of the other sons had children or at least not boys to carry on the family name?
Venetucci family ties still bind
By BILL VOGRIN - THE GAZETTE
When the bronze statue of Nick Venetucci is dedicated Saturday morning amid speeches and song, missing will be Mary Ann Feiring — the last Venetucci.
The ceremony Saturday will honor five decades of generosity by Venetucci, who became legendary for giving pumpkins to area children who visited his Security farm. He died Sept. 7 at age 93 of a massive stroke.
His death leaves only Feiring, 81, the youngest child and sole survivor of Nicolo and Marguarite Venetucci, a pioneering Italian immigrant farming couple who both died in 1961.
Besides Nick, Feiring had a sister, Nina, and four other brothers, Rocco, Mike, Joe and Tony. All are dead.
Feiring wants to attend the ceremony and represent the family. But she said her health is too frail to travel from her home in San Marcos, Calif.
“I’ll be thinking about the ceremony,” Feiring said. “Definitely.”
Truth is, even if she could travel, Feiring isn’t sure her presence would be appropriate after years of strained relationships within her family.
The cause of the rift?
In 1957, at age 34, she ran off with her boyfriend, got married and moved to Texas.
She said her family couldn’t accept her husband, Duane Feiring, because he was a non-Italian, non-Catholic, divorced man.
Strike one. Strike two. Strike three.
“They never would have approved ” Feiring said. “They had a feeling that I deserted them. But I wanted my own little girls so bad I could scream.”
She said it was expected within the family that she’d stay and work on the farm alongside her brothers, cooking, cleaning and taking care of them and her parents.
Feiring wanted more. She said she realized that, at her age, her chances of getting married and having a family were dwindling.
Then, like a fairy tale, Duane Feiring entered her life.
The memory is vivid in her mind.
In fact, decades seem to melt away, and she is instantly back in the 10-room farmhouse along U.S. 85-87 where the family moved in 1936 after farming for years in Papeton, an enclave of Italian coal miners. The area now is the Venetian Village neighborhood near Fillmore Street and Nevada Avenue.
Feiring recalled that her Singer sewing machine had broken as she patched a pair of her brother’s overalls.
So she went to town to the Singer Co. store, on Tejon Street at Colorado Avenue, on a Saturday evening to buy a belt for the machine.
“Duane came out of the back room and asked: ‘Have you seen our new sewing machine and vacuum sweeper?’” she said. “He was quite a salesman.”
Feiring wasn’t interested, though, and left with her new belt.
“On Monday, I’m doing the family wash . . . and he showed up with that new sewing machine and vacuum sweeper,” she said. “Duane said it gave him an excuse to come back and see me.”
A year later, in June 1957, Singer promoted him to district manager. But the district was in Texas.
“It was either I join him or forget I ever knew him,” she said.
So she married him and went with him to Texas.
Eventually, they bought a restaurant in Seattle in 1974 and retired to California in 1982. They have two daughters and five grandchildren.
Before she married and moved to Texas, Mary Ann introduced Nick to her friend, Bambi Marcantonio, who was teaching at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind.
After a 27-year courtship, Nick and Bambi were married in 1984.
Feiring is uncomfortable talking about family issues. Despite the rift, she stayed in close touch with her parents, sister and brothers. She said they even reconciled as the years passed.
“I saw them when I came back and talked to them on the phone,” she said. “I saw Tony at the retirement home before he died, and there were no hard feelings. I was still his little sister.”
She last saw Nick in 1997 when she came for a long visit. She said her memories of the family are happy.
“I have fond remembrances,” she said. “We had lots of family gatherings. I think of those good old days. I live with those memories.”
Feiring takes pride in the way the Venetucci family is honored across the city with an elementary school and a boulevard, and now with a statue of Nick.
There is comfort knowing the farmhouse where she cooked over a wood and coal stove, its walls lined with family photos, still remains — hardly changed from when she packed her bags and left to follow her heart.
Even the sewing machine — which led her to the love of her life — still sits where she left it 47 years ago, kind of like a statue of its own, honoring the struggles of a farm family.
Which brings her back to Saturday’s ceremony and her pride at the honors being bestowed on Nick.
“I’d be there if I could,” she said, her voice trailing off. “I sure hope you have a nice day for it.”
THE DETAILS
The bronze statue of pumpkin farmer Nick Venetucci will be unveiled and dedicated at 11 a.m. Saturday on the north lawn of the Pioneers Museum, 215 S. Tejon St.
The public is invited.
There will be a flag presentation, singing, and speeches by Vice Mayor Richard Skorman, Widefield School District 3 Superintendent Mark Hatchell and Bambi Venetucci.
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