During the 1970s the Rev. Salvatore E. Polizzi had become a national figure for his work in The Hill neighborhood of ºüÀêÊÓƵ. Residents were shocked when news came that he was being reassigned. Here is our coverage from March 1, 1980.
A friend of his calls it the mustache incident.
In telling about it, there is a bit of soft laughter. It is so like him, said the other priest.
Years ago, the Rev. Salvatore E. Polizzi grew a fine mustache. He was proud of it, as most new mustache-growers are. Time went by, and he learned, through the labyrinthian ways of the archdiocese, that Cardinal John Joseph Carberry, then the archbishop, was not at all pleased.
The word was that his eminence would very much like to see Father Sal clean shaven once again. So Father Polizzi shaved the mustache, but he couldn't resist a final gesture. He took his shaved whiskers, dropped them in an envelope, and attached a note. "To be opened by the archbishop only," it said, and he delivered it to the chancery office on Lindell Boulevard.
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"There's more to the story," said the priest, "but I won't tell you."
The rest of the story, rumor has it, is that Father Polizzi requested that his whiskers be made part of his personnel file.
And they were.
It is sometime after the 6:30 a.m. ' Mass, and Father Polizzi has finished breakfast with the parish pastor, Monsignor Adrian I. Dwyer.
It is, more or less, a typical day at St. Ambrose Catholic Church. The church, of splendid Lombard design, is the focal point of ºüÀêÊÓƵ' Hill section, the city's Italian enclave and its last fully-in-place ethnic community.
The 52-square-block neighborhood is 95 percent Catholic and more than 90 percent Italian-American, mostly the descendants of immigrants om northern Italy.
Salvatore Polizzi whose own parents were from Sicily and who grew up in the old Italian section at Eighth and Carr streets has been assigned to the Hill's very unusual parish as associate pastor for more than two decades, although with him it has been much more than just being there. He has, to a great extent, been the spirit of the place.
Now, his time there is running out.
He will leave soon for a new parish, St. Roch's in the city's West End, where he will be pastor. His reassignment was a shock to him and to most of those in t his tight little neighborhood.
He refers to the reassignment notice he received from Archbishop John L. May as "4-0-3." That was the exact time of the archbishop's telephone call.
The church bell has fallen silent now. It had tolled that morning the mournful bong, long pause, bong, long pause, bong, the tell-tale cadence that precedes a funeral. It was the second funeral Mass of the week.
Father Polizzi, his Roman collar in place (he is rarely seen in public without it), is standing on the sidewalk near the statute called "The Italian Immigrants," which sits on the edge of St. Ambrose Catholic Church in the Hill neighborhood.
The Rev. Salvatore Polizzi waves to friends. In the background is Rudolph Torrini's statue of Italian immigrants. It is the work of a local sculptor, Rudolph Torrini, and it depicts a man, woman and child, arrived in a new land. Father Polizzi took a prototype of the sculpture to the taverns of the Hill, asking the old men about its authenticity. They suggested that an Ellis Island immigrant's tag be added and that there be straps on the suitcase, because that's the way it was.
Salvatore Polizzi (his name is pronounced at least two ways, either Poe-lizzie, an Americanized pronunciation, or Po-leet-zee, the Italian way) now stands by the statue at the corner of Wilson and Marconi avenues like a man controlling the flow at a narrows.
A university urbanologist once said this of him: "Sal runs what amounts to a guerrilla government on the Hill. It's a kind of human cooperative."
In 1974, because of his community work and the fights he led to preserve the neighborhood, Father Polizzi was chosen by Time magazine as one of America's 100 most promising leaders. It was not that the neighborhood had been in trouble, he said now, making a broad gesture. It was just that it had begun to get dowdy. And then there were the crises that arose, the threat of Interstate 44, the drive-in theater and so on.
The day before the first Hill Day festival in 1965, word came about the possibility of a drive-in theater being built at the far end of Wilson Avenue. "It came as an absolute bomb," Polizzi said. "Do you know what a drive-in brings, all the evil things? I went to the university and asked them how do we go about this?" (Polizzi earned a master's degree in urban affairs at ºüÀêÊÓƵ University, graduating in 1969.)
"We have a policy here when the neighborhood organizes to protest. We eave from the church, but first everyone is fully informed about what we're doing. If a reporter comes up to someone and asks, 'What are you ' people doing?' no one's going to say, 'Father asked me to come.' That's not our bag. And we don't wear those goofy , buttons or carry placards; elected officials are more fearful of people who are quiet.
"What we have here is what I call the triangle the church, the elected officials and the people of the neighborhood, all working together."
The neighborhood, under Polizzi's organization, got the state to build an overpass linking sections of the Hill that had been divided by Interstate 44. That took a trip to Washington and the intercession of an Italian-American, former Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe. The community offered to give the federal government $50,000 to build the overpass, and although the offer wasn't accepted, it got front-page publicity in the Washington Post.
Polizzi was also the driving force, behind Hill Day, one of the city's first big ethnic neighborhood festivals. It is an event that still finances many of the neighborhood services. Proceeds from Hill Day were invested by its sponsoring organization, Hill 2000, Inc., and the interest from that money pays for activities. Father Polizzi does not like federal funds.
Because of his role in organizing the community, Polizzi is no stranger to the limelight. Yet the attention bothers ; him. "I find it very unhealthy; I've really done nothing," he says. "All this attention has just baffled me."
For this reason, he was quite reluctant to be interviewed by the Post-Dispatch. In addition, he has had sharp differences with the newspaper over the years. He is not one to keep silent in the face of what he sees as a wrong, and he is an impassioned letter-writer who knows how to apply pressure. Mostly, his criticism has to do with the use of Italian words to describe organized crime. These words are demeaning to all Italians and are unfair, he says. Ethnic harassment, he calls it.
Now, standing on the street outside the church, Father Polizzi waves and shouts to passers-by.
Occasionally, someone will stop, roll down the car window and ask him about a house that might be for sale. He has all the information. It seems that nothing in the neighborhood escapes his attention. He can name the residents of every household up and down the streets, save for the apartment at the far of Wilson. They are newcomers, and he has not yet met them.
The aroma from Amighetti's bakery grows stronger. Amighetti's is famous for its sandwiches, so famous, in fact, that the doors to St. Ambrose have to be locked at noon time. The church had become a sandwich-eaters' haven.
The bright sunlight of the day accentuates the clean streets and alleys, the neat, compact houses of the Hill and the priest with the dark hair and even darker eyes. There is an Old World atmosphere.
The time and place of the announcement that he would be leaving this neighborhood is forever etched in Polizzi's memory. "It came at 4:03 p.m. exactly, two weeks ago Tuesday, the night the ice came," he said, "I had an inkling that something was coming; it was that sort of night. Like a heart attack, it comes so suddenly. "I absolutely never told the man I wouldn't go I was shocked, though. But I'll go."
"I haven't seen too many people," said Polizzi, a man who seems to thrive on personal contact. "When I see old friends, I wave and try to leave immediately. There would be too much mental anguish."
That evening in Rose's Tavern, at Edwards Street and Daggett Avenue, the place of the grape arbor bocce courts, there is the usual after-work talk. The Chippewa Bank has been robbed, the second bank robbery of the day. Southern Commercial Bank had been hit earlier.
"It's bad times; you're going to have a lot more of that," said a customer, requesting quarters for the video game. The bartender is talking to a liquor salesman about the shocking price increases in wine; others at the bar discuss a newspaper story about the international growth of Budweiser.
Finally, a beefy man in a plaid shirt walks in, orders the special frosted mug and says, "Whaddya think of the Father Polizzi thing? Terrible, huh? We're gonna miss him."
Others at the bar nod in agreement. "But I tell you what," the man said. "he's gonna miss us more."