Piano Joe

By David Maurer

Published: May 11, 2008

After being blinded in battle, the World War II veteran was savaged by feelings of despair and worthlessness.

To escape the seemingly endless darkness that enveloped him, his thoughts turned to suicide. As he groped about for an exit from life, he found a person who would help lead him toward an inner light of meaning and self-worth.

Blind since birth, Joe Giovanelli offered his hand and encouragement to the troubled GI. Although he was only a teenager at the time, his words and support provided the immeasurable gift of hope.

Giovanelli met the despondent GI at a boarding school for the blind he attended in the Bronx, N.Y. His life was also in turmoil, largely because of other blind boys who took out their frustrations by bullying him.

“With the bullies and all kinds of problems at school I didn’t feel like studying and I didn’t,” the 79-year-old man said as he relaxed in his apartment at Our Lady of Peace in Albemarle County. “Then the school started taking in veterans who were blinded during the war.

“Some of us were assigned to teach them certain skills, and I was involved with teaching piano tuning. There was one blind vet who thought his world was shot. One day I was guiding him to where the piano tuning class was and he said, ‘I can’t stand it. What’s the point of all this? What am I going to do with myself?

“‘I’m totally useless, and as soon as I can manage I’m going to jump out a window, because I want to end all this.’ I told him, ‘Look, do me a favor. I was a terrible student, and I’ve come close to being thrown out of this school many times. I can’t have your suicide on my watch. Please, don’t do it now.’”

Turning things around

Giovanelli said the veteran never brought the subject up again. And with his help, the sightless man came to realize he could be a productive member of society.

“I was able to show him a few tricks with the piano tuning, and he saw he could do something,” Giovanelli said. “I told him, ‘You can’t look at it, but you can feel it. There’s patterns you can memorize.

“I think I probably saved his life. I still feel a certain sense of accomplishment, because he didn’t step out a window. That’s something I had certainly thought about, too.”

It hasn’t been tuning pianos but playing them that has given Giovanelli joy and a sense of self-worth for much of his life. But it wasn’t love at first touch when he bellied up to the 88 keys.

“I couldn’t memorize the classical stuff very well, and Braille music is difficult,” Giovanelli said. “So they threw me out of music class, because they said I didn’t have any talent. What got me going again was this kid I met at summer camp.

“He had put a singing quartet together and arranged an old song called ‘Dream.’ As I listened to him play, I wished I could play like that.

“I memorized each of the four piano parts as he taught them to the group. When I went home I worked forever to be able to play them, and finally I was able to say, ‘Ooh, that’s some of the sounds I want,’ and one thing led to another.”

Giovanelli calls himself a “cocktail pianist,” and focuses on hymns and the golden oldies of his generation. On Thursday evenings he and his close friend Vail Belyea perform for their neighbors in the retirement community.

“Joe and I have been performing together for about two years,” said Belyea who loves to sing the old songs her friend plays. “It allows us to give something to the people here.

“I just had my 88th birthday, and performing with Joe has given my life meaning. I feel that I’m doing something worthwhile now.”

The duo also performs for the people in the Alzheimer’s unit at Our Lady of Peace. Giovanelli said even though many of the people on that ward have lost much of their memory they still retain a love for music.

“Music can be so therapeutic,” Giovanelli said. “There are people who have lost their ability to speak, but they can still sing.

“I can’t walk around and cheer up the people, but Vail can. She can make them feel like they’re the most important people in the world.”

At 2 p.m. on Saturdays, Giovanelli slips his legs under the grand piano in the lobby of the University of Virginia Hospital and performs for the folks there.

“I can play for about an hour, then I’m done,” Giovanelli said one recent afternoon. “I’m usually kind of tired when I get finished playing, but I feel like I’ve done something good.

‘Music can make a difference’

“Music can make a difference, and that’s why I volunteer to play at the hospital. There was one poor woman there who was waiting to find out if her husband was going to die of cancer on the operating table.

“That was very sad, but she told me my music made her feel so much better.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, Giovanelli quickly learned he would have to use every ability he had to make it in the world. He feels being born blind was a plus, because he didn’t have to adjust to it.

“If I had lost my sight, the world would be upside down,” Giovanelli said. “The world of the sighted is a world I don’t know, and can’t know. We have to work with the world we have.

“To a very large extent my world is as far as I can reach. Let’s face it, blindness brings with it a great number of frustrations. Vail has been a tremendous help to me. She has a car and I’m able to get to places that I couldn’t otherwise. We walk 2 1/2 miles a day together, and if it wasn’t for her I couldn’t do it.”

Giovanelli made the transition from failing student to dean’s-list achiever because someone befriended him, and gave him hope for a future. He determined he was going to be the best at something in the school, and he chose electronics as the field he was going to excel in.

When the youngster applied himself he did exceptionally well. He earned a state scholarship to Syracuse University where he studied radio production and psychology. It was during his first day at the university that he had a heart-to-heart conversation with himself.

“My family had helped me set up my dormitory room and then they left,” Giovanelli said. “I was sitting there all alone, and didn’t know anybody.

Sink or swim

“I told myself that I had to sink or swim, and if I made a mistake there wouldn’t be anybody but myself to blame it on. It was then that I learned something about what it means to be grown up. To really be grown up, and not just a kid trying to put on an act and be cocky.

“I did some of that stuff to cover up the fact I didn’t think I really knew a damn thing. I thought, ‘I don’t know everything, and I better not act like I do.’”

Giovanelli graduated cum laude, and started his own recording business. Customers would send him tapes of them singing or reading poetry and he would transfer it onto vinyl records.

He also wrote a column for 40 years for Audio magazine in which he answered questions sent in by subscribers. When he retired he and his late wife, June, moved to the area.

“When I was young we’d come down here to Virginia in the summer,” Giovanelli said. “I liked it so much, and the people were so nice and kind.

“I remember being on a tour of Luray Caverns and they let me touch the stalagmites and stalactites. They didn’t want people to do that, but they allowed me to, and it meant a lot to me.

“When I recall a memory of something like visiting a park, what I remember are the slats on the bench. I remember the breeze, the rustling of the leaves, the sound of the songbirds and the people around.

“And when I play music or create a piece of orchestration on my computer it lifts me up. My closing song when I play here is always ‘Goodnight My Love.’ People seem to like it, and that makes me feel good.”

Those interested in hiring Giovanelli to perform at an event can call him at 973-9502.