Phil Faini's passion for African drumming started at a performance he attended in the mid-1960s.
This led to Faini teaching the instrument at West Virginia University, performing overseas, starting the World Music Center at WVU, and helping high school bands set up drum programs.
"WVU was involved in an aid program to East Africa then so I submitted a proposal to study African drumming. It was approved and I went over there, studied it, brought back instruments, and taught students how to play them," he said. "In 1969, we sent a tape of our group to a cultural exchange commission in Washington and were selected for a nine-nation tour of Latin America. We went to Trinidad on that trip, where I was first exposed to steel drums."
But the retired WVU professor's interest in music was first nurtured growing up in Masontown.
"My mother was a musician. She sang well and played the piano. I used to play with the Italian-American Band every Sunday. We'd often visit our Uncle August in Salem, Ohio. When I was 10, his son, Vito, bought Slingerland Drums, which got me excited," he said.
Faini's interest in music was nurtured at All Saints Elementary School under the tutelage of band director Joe McArdle.
"Joe was a good musician and he taught the band for nothing. He worked in the mines and then came out of a shift in the mines to give us band lessons. I remember one time I was taking a lesson on the drum and he was smoking a cigarette. He was so tired the cigarette almost burned his fingers as I drummed," he added.
Phil's mother also gave him piano lessons and made him sing at parties. "Evidently I had a good voice and when she made me sing, I hated that," Faini recalled.
Faini's wife, the former, Jeanne Netchi, also grew up in Masontown in the 1940s.
"I realize now we were deprived. We had no place to swim. In our public school there was no gym and we didn't have a library in town," she said. "In our school, we would go to a little room, a closet they converted into a library, to get a book."
Recreation in those days was simple. "Back then we just didn't have anything. Everybody played in the street. I'd skate or ride my bike on the sidewalk. I sat on the porch a lot, watching people go by," she added.
The two knew each other growing up, but weren't close at first.
"We never hung around much because he went to All Saints and I went to the public school," Jeanne said.
That all changed after Phil Faini came home one weekend after playing with a band on the road in Cleveland. He saw Jeanne after Mass one Sunday.
"I was supposed to go to the VFW in Uniontown that night and I had invited another girl, but when I saw her I said I want to invite her so I called her up and we went to the VFW together," he said.
The trolley car to Uniontown played a major role in everyone's life.
"I went on that trolley every morning to go to the office training school," said Jeanne.
Phil recalls taking the trolley every day during the summer of 1941 and 1942 to help his father at his service station, Phil's Garage, in Uniontown.
"I ran the station for him and there was gas rationing. People would try to take advantage of me and say 'Hey, I'll give you $5 for some more gas.'"
During his service in the 4th Army Band at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, he met singer Vic Damone, who was in Faini's unit.
He and Jeanne were married Christmas Eve 1953. Upon his discharge, he returned to visit the family before a planned start at the University of Texas, but his grandmother convinced him to stay closer to home.
"She had raised me because my mother died when I was 6," said Faini. He switched to West Virginia University. "I'm glad I did because she (his grandmother) died two years later. When I graduated, my mentor got me a job at Potomac State College, where we stayed for two years."
Faini brought Elie Mannette, inventor of the 55-gallon steel drum and to Morgantown, where the two founded the World Music Center, where instruments from around the world are collected and students are taught how to play them.
In 1992, Associate Dean Faini toured the world collecting musical instruments for the center. In 1993, he was appointed dean of the Creative Arts Center at West Virginia University and he served in that post until his retirement in 2000.
Although they live in Morgantown now, Masontown remains very much a part of the couple.
"We go to Dolfi's restaurant once a month to meet with friends," said Jeanne. "My mother is 94 and we still take her back to see her friends."
Books have been an integral part of Jeanne's life just as music was for Phil. Later in life, Jeanne would major in library science and become a school librarian.
The Fainis are going to visit Las Vegas soon to see some special performers.
"I have three former students playing there. They e-mailed me and told me how much they appreciated their training at WVU," he said.
With three children and 10 grandchildren, Phil and Jeanne consider themselves blessed. "I think our generation was a lucky generation even though we came up during World War II and I was a Depression baby," said Phil Faini.
