Editor's Note: The following is the second in a series of oral histories supported by a grant from the Medford Arts Council. It is part 2 featuring the DePasquale family.

Long before there was any Medford Canteen or any DePasquale Restaurant, Joseph DePasquale went to fight in World War ll. He enlisted so that Uncle Phil, who was married with two children, didn't have to go. But Uncle Phil decided he had to make another kind of contribution. So he went about finding as many men as he could who lived in Medford and were going to the war. When he knew of 50 such men, he went to visit each one.

"Here," he said, handing each of the men a silver dollar. "You probably have not ever owed anyone anything in your life, but now you owe me this. You have to bring me back this silver dollar." He took a photo of them in their uniforms, holding their silver dollars. And the quite remarkable result was that all 50 men and all 50 silver dollars came back home to Medford.

Lucy (Irene) DePasquale told me that her Uncle Phil was a great storyteller and could mesmerize a crowd. It would seem that he also had a gift for psychology and a natural understanding of how people think and react.

When Joseph came home from the war in 1946, his family knew he had taken part in five invasions, but like many other men of his era, he never talked about it. However, a few years later, someone told him about a reunion in Pennsylvania of a company of 36 engineers, which he had been a part of during one stage of his service. He went to the reunion and he met men he had fought with. When the next Labor Day rolled around, Joseph decided to have a party for eight couples from this group.

For many years thereafter, there was always a reunion on Labor Day weekend in Medford and the eight couples were all housed at different DePasquale houses. On Friday night, they would have a dinner at the Allegro Room at Phil's restaurant. On Saturday, JoJo would hire a company to set up a clambake by the pool in his yard and he would also cook steaks. On Sunday night JoJo would cook a traditional Italian dinner.

Lucy DePasquale remembers working in the kitchen cabana outdoors setting things up for the clambake by the pool and overhearing the men talking about the war.

"They didn't know I was so close by and I was amazed to hear things my father had never told us. They talked about getting off the duck boats during invasions and the water was totally red with blood. They talked about pushing through the dead bodies to get to the beach. Over the years, I heard many other stories too. The men would talk about individual instances of American ingenuity. One man said when they were trying to get the tanks up over the hills in Europe, they kept flipping over. An American farmer said, 'Let's put cleats on the bottoms of the tanks like a tractor has and let it dig into the sand.' It worked and that's how they got them up.

"The men said the Germans had great guns and advanced technology, but the German soldiers just followed orders. The Americans, even though of course they had a chain of command, would still think of their own solutions and would solve problems in innovative and creative ways. They were critical thinkers."

Paula and Lucy DePasquale credit their parents with much knowledge and great integrity.

"Imagine," Lucy says, "they only had high school educations and yet they taught us so much. We learned to treasure family and extended family, we learned to share everything we had with each other, and we learned all the skills we needed to live in the world.

"My mother was a great combination of very loving and very strong-willed. All of us girls learned from her how to assess any situation that might come up and how to research anything you needed to find out. And her values! When she was sick and dying of cancer in the hospital, she would tell us she was doing OK and we should go around to the other people who were worse off. 'Go around and visit the others,' she said, and we did."

Lucy DePasquale (the mother) was very community minded. She sat on the board of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, she offered $100 a plate dinners to raise money for Gov. King, and she and Eleanor D'Antonio spearheaded the push for a new elementary school in the neighborhood. The old Lincoln School was considered to be a potential "firebox" and these two women not only led the community's demand for a new school, they also met with the contractors and supervised every detail.

Lucy and Joseph were interested in their four girls' education beyond grammar and high school. Paula explains the way her parents saw things:

"I think for my parents and for most Italians, the idea was to always move forward, to do better, to make a good life for yourself and your family. Never stay stagnant."

And Lucy says, "We were given the education and we were encouraged to think big. We were taken to opera and theater, and traveled all over Europe. Paula became a teacher of French because she had the opportunity to live in France for a year. We were shown the good things in life. "

One time Lucy (the daughter) and her sister Susan were traveling in Italy with their extended family. The waiter brought a large steak to the table. It was what Phil had ordered, but it was so raw! His reaction to the steak shows his way with words and his storytelling style. He looked at the steak in alarm and turned to his wife and said, "Eleanor, hold the horns while I try to cut the steak, so it doesn't run away from me."

Lucy's life seems to be an example of the values of the DePasquale family: very hard work; going into business with family; trying a new adventure. So, she worked with her father in the business for 22 years and then she and her two other sisters and one of their husbands took over the business when Joseph died in 1990. They ran the business until 1998, working seven days a week. They employed about 40 people and they produced 2,500 sandwiches a day. Then, in 1998, she and her sister, Susan, went back to school, took 31 classes in banking, and... had brand new careers.

"We loved banking" she says. "We both became bank managers."

But 50 years ago in South Medford not everyone was educating girls. A neighborhood gas station attendant, who knew the girls' father very well, said to him, "Joe, why are you sending these girls to college? They'll just get married and have kids. You're wasting your money."

After a while, Joseph got tired of hearing the man say the same thing every time he saw him. Finally he said, "Look, as soon as I ask you for the money to pay for their college you can start complaining. Until that happens, I don't want to hear this from you anymore. Education is never wasted."

And their mother said, "My girls will be independent. If they decide to marry that's great, but they will never need a man to take care of them. That they can do for themselves."

When Lucy (the daughter) went into banking as a career, she worked at Cambridge Savings Bank. One day, an executive vice president came over to where she was meeting with several other bankers.

"I want to tell you who this young lady's father was," he said. "I was the manager of the bank where Joseph DePasquale did his business for years and years. Her father was the salt of the earth. He cared about all the people who worked for him and he had the utmost integrity and honesty. If you are lucky enough to meet one person in your life like that, you are blessed."

Since that is a loving daughter's memory of what someone said about her father, I decided to see what someone else might tell me about Joseph DePasquale.

I asked Domenic Camarra, who taught at Medford High School for many years. He had Lucy in his French class and then Paula became his colleague in the Language Department. Within a short period of time, Paula took him and his wife Maryann home to meet her parents. It was the first of many visits.

"You want to know about Lucy and Joe DePasquale?" said Domenic. "To say that they were the salt of the earth (he didn't know that expression had also been used by the bank VP) would be a huge understatement. In my whole life, I have never met two human beings as loving and generous as Lucy and Joe. And they helped so many people from every walk of life, the fortunate and the unfortunate."

Of course food and family were always front and center for all of the DePasquales. Sometimes the three brothers would cook together, and it sounds like a well-orchestrated demonstration of their love for each other. They enjoyed each other's company so much, and as one brother sliced and diced, the second sauteed with one hand, turning to open the oven with his other hand for the third brother just at the right moment.

When Tony got cancer, he couldn't run his restaurant so Phil and JoJo switched off weeks to help him, despite running their own restaurants as well. On the weekends, they both came over to help. Uncle Tony's restaurant was so famous that people were lined up down the street and around the corner.

Each brother had his own style of cooking. For example, none of them cooked Shrimp Scampi the same way. But at Tony's restaurant, Phil and JoJo cooked in Uncle Tony's style since that's what the customers expected. At the end of one night, Uncle Phil shut the door as the last customer left. He poured himself a shot of Scotch. ' Oh, my God,' he said, 'I thought Friday nights at my restaurant were bad!'"

So this is the story of "another son, another restaurant", or in one case, a hugely successful canteen. Rocco, the 13-year-old from Avelino, Italy, certainly created a dynasty in the Boston area. It's a rags- to- riches story starring family, food, and love. A fairy tale from Medford that happens to be true.

This is the third story in the Medford- Italian American oral history project. Sharon Kennedy will be bringing you other stories from Medford's Italian-American families. She wants to paint a picture of life in South Medford between about 1920- 1970.