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Liberty couple celebrates 70th anniversary
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Louis Pizzuto, 89, and his wife, Dorothy, 88, of Liberty share a laugh as they reminisce over their past 70 years together. Married July 21, 1945, the couple say the foundation on which they’ve built their long-lasting marriage starts with good common sense. Crystal Belersdorfer | The Vindicator
By JoAnn Jones
As they sat side by side on their sofa, Dorothy and Louis Pizzuto of Liberty smiled and chuckled about the way they met while attending Woodrow Wilson High School in the early 1940s.
“We really can’t pinpoint the exact day,” Louis said, “but when I saw her, I liked her.”
“You saw me playing ball outside during gym class,” Dorothy said to her husband.
“Yes, the girls were wearing those rompers,” he said of the old-fashioned gym outfits many high schools required girls to wear. “I saw Dorothy, and I liked what I saw.”
Dorothy lamented that those rompers and the high tennis shoes girls had to wear got dirty and dusty, and the girls had only a few minutes to take a shower and change in order not to be late for their next class. Yet, she must not have looked too bad.
The former Dorothy Turchan, a 16-year-old sophomore, had caught the eye of her 17-year-old neighbor, who can’t recall meeting her before high school, and they recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.
“I grew up on the South Side of Youngstown on Cameron Avenue,” Dorothy said. “I went to Woodrow Wilson through the 11th grade. That’s when I got married.”
“And we didn’t have to,” she said with a grin.
Louis, who graduated from Wilson in 1944, lived two streets over, on Parnell, he said, but he doesn’t believe he knew her before they went to high school.
“If I saw her before, I didn’t really know her,” he said.
The two went on their first date to a basketball game when Woodrow Wilson played at South High School. Another date they recalled involved two other couples who went with them to a football game between Wilson and Campbell Memorial.
One of their favorite photos shows them on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when they were dating in 1943.
“Riding a motorcycle then isn’t like what it is now,” Louis said. “It was good transportation for work, and gas was rationed because of the war.”
On one of their dates Dorothy recalls saying to Louis, “By the time I’m 18, I’ll probably be married,” and then she asked him if she had scared him.
“I was wishfully thinking she liked me,” Louis said. “I said to her, ‘If we’re going to go together, we might as well get married.’ I gave her a ring on her 17th birthday, and we got married on her 18th birthday.”
“I didn’t really ask her before I bought the engagement ring,” Louis said. “I talked to her mother and asked her if it was OK. I was being really conservative and didn’t want to buy the ring if we weren’t going to be married.”
Dorothy was quite put out that Louis didn’t ask her first before talking to her mother.
“I said to him, ‘What do you mean, not asking me first?”
Dorothy said her father was concerned that Louis had held so many jobs during the time she had known him.
“He said to me, ‘Dorothy, you’re never going to make a living with someone who changes jobs constantly,’” she said. Ironically, Louis retired from Commercial Intertech in Youngstown in 1986 after spending 40 years there. Louis also was a Vindicator carrier when he was 10.
Louis said when he finished high school, the number of jobs available because of the war made it easy for anyone to get a good job.
“If you could walk into a place, you got a job – men, women, it didn’t matter.”
Although Louis wanted to enlist in the service during World War II, he said he was rejected because he had a punctured eardrum.
“Frank Sinatra was the same way,” he said with a chuckle. “They wouldn’t take him, either.”
Dorothy’s 18th birthday and wedding day was July 21, 1945. The couple, who married at St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic Church in Campbell, said they were blessed to have Dorothy’s sisters Helen and Mary as well as Louis’ sister Ange in the wedding. Louis’ best friend, Mike Girardi, on leave from the Navy, and another friend, Jerry Bevilacqua, were groomsmen.
Dorothy, a homemaker, and Louis have lived in Liberty for 60 years, raising three children, all of whom graduated from Liberty High School. The eldest of the three, Jerry, is deceased while their daughter Josephine Dyer, a nurse, lives with her husband, John, in Newton Falls, and their youngest daughter, Janet Slovasky, a dietician, lives in Liberty with her husband, Frank. Their two granddaughters, Melissa Marx and Sara Belle, live in Arizona and Columbus, respectively.
The foundation on which they’ve built a 70-year marriage consists of good common sense.
“We love one another and keep no secrets from each other,” Louis said. “We’ve had our misunderstandings, but I have never laid a finger on her. We’re partners. She has her responsibilities and I have mine.”
“We might slam some doors,” Dorothy added, “but we never go to bed angry.”
“I do everything I can to make him happy,” Dorothy continued, to which her husband replied, “sometimes she overdoes it.”
Throughout their lives, the two have been active at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Basilica in Youngstown, where they are members of the Senior Citizens Club. In addition, Dorothy is a member of the St. Monica Guild, and Louis was active with the senior altar servers for more than 28 years.
The two also belong to the Commercial Intertech Retirees organization, where Louis has served as president since it was founded in 1993.
“I said I’d take president for a year,” Louis said. “Now it’s been more than 20. About 30 of us meet at St. Mark’s in Liberty once a month for lunch. They’re such nice people. After you retire, you miss people.”
The couple said they had a big party on their 25th anniversary, but their 50th arrived when their son Jerry died.
“We really didn’t celebrate that year because of Jerry,” Dorothy said. “But for our 60th we went to Sanibel Island in Florida with our granddaughters and our daughters and their husbands.”
“We’ve been to Sanibel six or seven times,” Louis added, “and we would have liked to go back for our 70th, but we’re not traveling.”
Instead, they renewed their vows June 14 at St. Columba Cathedral with Bishop George Murry officiating and were treated to dinner July 25 by their daughters’ families at the Fifth Floor Restaurant in downtown Youngstown.
Dorothy, 88, is the last living sibling in her family, while Louis, who will be 90 in December, still has five of seven siblings. Although the couple remain active, they have had to slow down on some of their hobbies.
“I rarely do woodworking anymore because I have trouble standing,” Louis said as he pointed to a corner cabinet in his living room. “But I made a lot of things for our daughters. I liked to work with pine and do Shaker-style furniture.” He also made desks and dollhouses for his granddaughters.
“I used to sew a lot,” Dorothy said. “I sewed all my daughter Janet’s clothes. She was a cheerleader for four years and loved it.”
The Pizzutos, who use a computer and have a cellphone for emergencies if they are traveling, said they have always been “very compatible” and attribute the longevity of their lives and marriage to several things.
“We visit doctors regularly, we laugh a lot and, of course, we’re very, very blessed,” Louis said.