Long before entrepreneur became a buzzword, Angelo Pallini was one -- and much more as he wrote an indelible chapter in the long, colorful heritage of the Monongahela Valley. That point was emphasized by Laura M. Magone, the featured speaker at the monthly luncheon of the Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce. "Mr. Pallini was an entrepreneur in every sense of the word," Magone, an organizational development consultant and filmmaker in Pittsburgh, told the gathering at the Willow Room in Rostraver Township. "And he was way ahead of his time as an independent businessman." The audience included Pallini's son, John "Lefty" Pallini, and his son, John Jr.; Pallini's brother, Jimmy, and his son, James Jr., and Pallini's granddaughter, Joann Pergola and her husband, Roger. Joann is the daughter of the late Joe Pallini, another of Angelo Pallini's sons. Angelo Pallini, a lifelong resident of Monessen, was an arrotino, a tinkerer, by trade. But he was best known as "The Umbrella Man" for many years as he traveled throughout the region repairing umbrellas and other household items, and sharpening knives, scissors and razors. Pallini is the subject of a documentary, "The Umbrella Man," produced by Magone, a native of Monongahela. Magone's immediate goal is to screen it locally, with hopes for broadcast and entrance into film festivals. "His story, like so many others of people who lived and worked in the Mon Valley, is fascinating," said Magone, who received assistance from Cassandra Vivian, a Monessen author and historian. "The Umbrella Man" is a tale that began in 1913 when Angelo Pallini arrived in the United States from his native Italy. "He didn't know how to read or write English, but he learned quickly and he took up his trade as a scissors grinder," Magone said. "He built the family's home on Chestnut Street in Monessen, and his wife, Palma, and their first two children, Jimmy and Susie, came to join him in America. Angelo and Palma later had two more sons, John and Joe." With a family to raise, Pallini took a job with the Monessen Street Department. He then went to work at the former Monessen Tin Mill, but he left because of a medical problem. "It was at this point that he went back to his original vocation of being an arrotino, and he remained 'The Umbrella Man' until he retired in 1970," Magone said. "Everyone in the area knew him," Magone recalled. "I remember Mr. Pallini because he used to stop at our home in Monongahela. He knew my parents because my dad grew up two doors away from the Pallinis' home on Chestnut Street and my father was a lifelong friend of Joe Pallini." Luncheon attendees recounted similar memories of Pallini, who was a familiar figure at the barbershop of G.F. "Paul The Barber" Paglia, which he operated for more than 50 years in Lock Four (North Charleroi). Like others of his generation, Angelo Pallini "knew hard times," Magone said. "He lived through the Great Depression. He know the value of a dollar. He knew how to grow food. He knew not only how to survive, but he also knew how to live a good life. His life was not geared around materialistic things like ours are today. He lived life to the fullest and he appreciated life." Magone noted that newscaster Tom Brokaw wrote about World War II veterans as "The Greatest Generation" in his best-selling book. "I greatly admire what those brave soldiers did, including my dad, who was a captain in the Army," Magone said. "But Aldo Bartolotta and I were talking recently and Aldo was in the Navy in World War II, so that makes him part of Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation,'" she said in reference to the successful Monongahela businessman. "But he made an excellent observation, one that many people are sure to agree with. Aldo said his generation really isn't the greatest generation. The greatest generation, he said, was his parents' generation -- Angelo Pallini's generation." The documentary will preserve that tale for future generations. "Mr. Pallini's story is extraordinary, but as time goes on people will start to forget it unless we set aside time to honor and remember it," she said. One of the most extraordinary things about Angelo Pallini was that he walked virtually everywhere he traveled on his job. "He owned a car, but he didn't put much mileage on it," John Pallini remembered in the documentary. "The only time he really drove it was when they went for a ride on Sundays." "While he walked six days a week -- and he walked over 230,000 miles in his lifetime -- he was ringing a bell," Magone said. "That bell offered a familiar alert to people in the neighborhoods that 'The Umbrella Man' was in town, but it also set the cadence for poetry that he was writing in his mind. When he went home after a long day, his wife, Palma, had dinner for him. After dinner he would go to the basement of their home and print the poems he wrote in his head on a small printing press he owned. The next time he came to your house he would give you a copy of the poem as a calling card." Pallini gave value, along with the poems. "He had a pricing policy that was rather unique," she said. "He never raised his prices, much to his family's chagrin. His explanation was that the work he did stayed the same, so why should he raise the price. "He continually improved his product, he guaranteed his work, he identified a niche and he filled it. He built community as he traveled; he was a graceful man. Most important, his good name meant something and was behind all of his work." Vivian undertook translating the poems from Italian to English a few years ago. In the documentary Vivian calls Pallini "a genius for the quality of his poems and the fascinating topics he chose." "I hope Cassandra will publish a book on the translations of the poems that she calls 'The Shoebox Poems' because the family kept copies of them in a shoebox," Magone said. Only clips of the documentary were shown at the luncheon, but Vivian is preparing to show the entire piece at the Monessen Heritage Museum in April as part of the exhibit on "Italians in Monessen." To add authenticity to the documentary and re-create Pallini's life, Magone and her colleagues found a man from Allegheny County who was born in Italy. "He is slight of build and speaks broken English," Magone said. "He was a shoemaker for many years in West View, so his hands displayed the signs of a worker. He volunteered his time to come to the Mon Valley more than once to walk around the area carrying Mr. Pallini's original backpack and ringing a bell. The ironic thing is that, as we went out and filmed, not everyone knew that Mr. Pallini was gone; that he had died in 1981. As we were filming in Monessen and the familiar sound of the bell rang down the street, a woman came running out of her house and yelled at the actor, 'Can you sharpen my scissors• I can't find anyone to do it.'" Magone said Pallini's life is one of "so many fascinating stories" of people from the mid-Monongahela Valley. To capture those other stories, she is producing another documentary, "One Extraordinary Street," which spotlights the life of people who grew up on Park Avenue in Monongahela. In doing research for that film, Magone discovered a book published by St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church in the 1940s. "The book is full of ads taken out by local independent merchants," she said. "There were dozens and dozens of independent businesses, not just in Monongahela but throughout the Mon Valley. People found a way to make a living and survive after experiencing the Depression. And they flourished. We need more people today like those early entrepreneurs; we need more people like Angelo Pallini. He was a self-made, self-reliant man. "He was a man for the ages and for all ages to emulate."

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