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Lou Caniglia's Family: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 Memory of My Parents, Louis Caniglia and Pearl Carlson as told by Joyce Caniglia Bazis The parents of the Caniglia restaurant family were Giovanna Franco and Cirino Caniglia. They were both from Carlentini, Sicily but did not marry until after they arrived in America in the early 1900s. Cirino was a baker by profession and that is what he continued to do when he came to the new country. The young family lived in Little Italy at 7th and Pierce. They were to have six children, one daughter Grace, and five sons, Ross, Louis, Eli, Yano, and Alfred. The five sons joined their father in the bakery business on 7th Street. Louis Charles was the third child of Giovanna and Cirino, born on January 19, 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska. He went to elementary school at Train School. Unable to speak English until he was five and in school, he was instrumental in teaching his father and mother to speak the language of the country they had come to love. (Cirino was so proud of America that he did not want his grandchildren to speak Italian because they were Americans and should speak American. Something, as a child, I often heard him say.) Lou graduated from Technical High School in 1935 with the dreams of becoming a doctor when he enrolled at Creighton University. He had the stunning good looks and coloring that is so prevalent in Italians — dark hair and large dark eyes. It was those gorgeous eyes that first attracted Pearl Carlson to this young man when they first met at the Charemont Ballroom. Lawrence Welk and his band were playing that particular night. Lou was with his best buddy, Santo Buda (who would die in World War II), and Pearl was with her best friend, Florence Johnson. Pearl was born and raised on a farm in Oakland, Nebraska and had moved to Omaha after high school graduation. Her father Anton Carlson was born in Sweden and migrated to the United States in 1898 and her mother Almeda Peterson was born in a soddy on the Nebraska prairie. They had nine children, seven daughters and two sons. Pearl was their seventh child and seventh daughter, born March 23, 1918. She and Florence worked as waitresses in a tearoom and often went to dances together. Florence had previously met Santo and introduced Pearl to his friend, Lou. There was an immediate attraction and friendship led to marriage on April 15, 1938. Lou maintained a rigorous schedule during their first years of marriage. He would rise very early to help bake and deliver his father's famous Italian twist bread and then go to school. When the schedule became frenetic and the cost of education too high, he left school to work for an insurance company. |
