On June 19, 1953, Mario DiCrocco, four years transported to America from Italy began a career at The Advance, Staten Island’s longstanding daily newspaper. It’s been fifty-five years, a span that saw his work evolve from lead and ink, to paste-up and film, and then to keystrokes via computer pagination.
The composing room where he worked most of his years is long gone. Technology has rendered the Advance environment quiet, sterile, and correct. In its heyday, the composing room was a physical environment—linotype machines chugging out slugs, compositors getting their hands full of ink while laying out lead in green metal galley trays. Large sheets of film. The smell of glue. Workers yelled and joked with each other. Radios played. There was iron-horse John Bruno, the dedicated boss who never quit. Vacation days were noted if someone remembered. The annual summer picnic that my father ran was an annual treat—softball, egg-tosses, and raw clams! People were on the move. Getting things done meant walking around to different departments and chatting. The place was alive.
I don’t blame my father for deciding to end it. The fifty-five years are irrelevant: The Advance is his second family—what does time mean? I can never see him separated from The Advance—that’s a big part of his identity. But with the spirit gone, and most of his co-workers also leaving—some never caring to look back—the time to exit is clear. The new generation of homogenized workflow will create their own history, their own importance and new memories.
But my father, I suppose like me, doesn’t easily break ties. He’s got a new gig now to keep him connected. At first it struck me oddly; I expected that he’d go in once a week and tend to a little desk work. Space, though, is valuable. Instead they gave him a camera—a nifty Canon Rebel—to shoot some assignments.
I think it’s a good transition. I get to help my father if he lets me. It’s not really about the photography…at least not for me. I see it as a chance for him to look at things deeper, to use his camera as the metaphor for seeing life past retirement and discovering new things. Can a son impart this sentiment and his love of photography to a father? He’s had the journey. I can only attempt to be the gadfly.
Freud wrote an essay to champion the idea that impermanence does not nullify the beauty of things which inevitably pass. It’s called On Transience.
Mario DiCrocco leaves the Advance for the last time as a full-time employee on June 27, 2008.
Mario DiCrocco walks through the computer room that controls the newly-installed press in 2003.
Computers led to the demise of the composing room at The Advance. Mario DiCrocco settles in at his
newsroom desk on October 29, 2003.
