Teaching from the Heart and Soul: The Robert F. Panara Story

The Silent Hours Steal On

The Silent Hours Steal On During the months after Bob became deaf—on his mother’s birthday, January 19, 1931—his father tried many things to restore his son’s hearing. Some attempts were painful. All proved futile. For several weeks, a doctor gave Bob injections that caused his body to become alternately too hot or too cold. He would throw off the bedcovers and then pile on the blankets as the heat and chills came. Another Manhattan specialist placed Bob in a chair with a device strapped to his head that sent electric shocks into his ear. He could do nothing except grip the arms of the chair and tough it out. Bob’s father persisted in trying these and other questionable remedies. “After four or five failures with such cures,” Bob recalled, “Dad came to his senses—no doubt his shrinking bank account played a role in that decision, too.”1 Many deaf people who are over the age of fifty recall cures their own parents tried in order to help them hear again. Some were indeed extreme, including voodoo doctors and airplane dives. Even the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh would charge families fifty dollars for “Deaf Flights.” But Bob Panara is likely the only deaf person in history whose father attempted to shock him into hearing with what we might call the “Bambino 4 The Silent Hours Steal On 5 Method.” All it left him with was a feeling of euphoria over having met Babe Ruth. Indeed, it was a difficult time financially as well. The Panaras sought strength and reassurance from each other as the Great Depression took its toll. A Deaf Flight was a luxury that the Maria and John Panara with Bob at age five. 6 Teaching from the Heart and Soul family could not afford. When Bob’s sister, Eleanor, was born on August 20, 1929, the little girl brought joy to the family, but within a few months, the stock market had crashed. Chaos erupted in the banking system, and many immigrants accepted what work they could find. John Panara and his brother Ed remained with the small garment business they had started. Like other immigrants, some of the Panara family’s Italian friends returned to Europe, giving up on the American dream. Bob Panara’s adventurous spirit can be traced back to his grandfather, Federico Panara, who was born in Sulmona, Abruzzi, Italy, a region known for its many beautiful churches dating back to Roman times. As a young man, Federico was a fierce patriot. In the early 1860s, he left the University of Rome, where he was studying medicine, to join the Red Shirts of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the army formed to liberate Italy from Austria. Seriously wounded by cannon shrapnel during a battle, he was hospitalized with an infected leg, which doctors decided to amputate. When Federico heard this, he took a pistol from under his pillow and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to amputate his leg. He ordered them to call his brother, Marco, who was the country’s assistant surgeon general. Marco Panara saved his brother’s leg, but Federico was left with a permanent limp. Feeling that he would not qualify for medical school, the impetuous young man became disillusioned and turned to drink and gambling. After returning to Abruzzi, Federico took various clerical jobs related to medicine and the library. He married Concetta D’Ottavio, and they had five children . Bob Panara’s father, Giovanni (John) Panara, was born in 1889 in Castelvecchio, a province of Aquila, Abruzzi. Federico looked to America for a new lease on life. He and his family arrived in New York City in 1901 and settled on The Silent Hours Steal On 7 Mulberry Street in the region now known as Little Italy. There Federico, who had previously learned some English in Italy, not only straightened out his own life, but was able to offer advice and translation services to other Italian immigrants arriving in New York. Bob’s father, John, only twelve years old at the time the Panaras arrived in New York, took part-time jobs to support his family. Through the next few years, he attended night school while working in the garment industry. He also became proficient in English and earned his naturalization papers in 1917 to become an American citizen. After that, he followed in his father’s footsteps and helped many Italian...