Giovanni Vincenti

A Man and His Dreams

Preface

I am fortunate to have had such an interesting life: where I grew up, where I went to school, where I went to University, the jobs I’ve had around the world. Amazing experiences and memories that hopefully find their way into an autobiography one day soon. This document is a first effort at transcribing these experiences. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

PART ONE – FAMILY HISTORY

I’d like to start from my great grandfather: Italian nationality, born in Livorno (Italy), and a very good engineer. I was named Giovanni after him. He worked for an engineering company in Italy, who got the first electric mill in the Middle East. My grandfather had to travel to Haifa (Palestine), to assemble, operate maintain the first electric mill in the Middle East. The mill would satisfy the requirements for Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. This was in 1892.

I would like to start with the Vincenti family, and there are two most important people who most influenced our family.

To begin with, I’m going to talk about my father. Giulio Vincenti had a sister, who died early in her childhood, so he became the only son of Oreste Vincenti (his father). He was born rich, spoiled and actually never worked. When I talk to my older brother Oreste, he says “Our father was very good to be displayed in a framed picture in the living room, with Hitler style moustache”. But the only great thing he did was marrying a young 16-year-old girl from Palestine, Salma Bahou from Haifa, as his wife.

The Vincenti family was made up of my mother, my father, six boys and one girl. I had difficulty to distinguish who was the most influential thing in our family. My mother, Salma, or my oldest brother Giuseppe? Last night I came to the final decision: my mother was like an electric generator and Giuseppe was the motor. One could not work without the other, and together they made the Vincenti family a success story.

Chapter 1. Background.

In 1892, my great grandfather Giovanni Vincenti was responsible for assembling, installing and operating the first electric mill in the Middle East, Haifa (Palestine). He left with his family with all the material loaded in a ship and settled in Haifa. He eventually assembled, installed and operated the electric mill and did a fantastic job. The owners of the mill were a Palestinian man and a Lebanese man. The Lebanese man happened to be the father of the first president of Lebanon, when the country became independent from France.

Giovanni was such a good engineer and operated the mill in such an exceptional way, that the two partners finally offered him a partnership in the business in order for him to not go back to Italy. He accepted, and since then the Vincenti family has lived in Palestine. Business was very good and my grandfather started buying buildings, land and became very well to do.

He had two children. One of them, Oreste Vincenti, who decided to live in Haifa and continue his father’s work. The other child, named Giuseppe Vincenti (called Peppino), decided to go back to Italy. Oreste married a Palestinian woman and had a son and a daughter. The son was Giulio Vincenti (my father); the sister – Adelaide – died at an early age. The mother of Giulio became overprotective. Giulio never really worked, but he did one great thing: to marry a pretty girl (Salma Bahou) who turned out to be of exceptional talent. She was one of the very few women at that time, who had finished school. She knew English very well and Palestine was an English colony thene, so knowing the language was a great asset for her. Marrying an Italian man, she also learned Italian. My father had several children, one after the other, all of which born in Haifa: Giuseppe, Oreste, Elio, Alberto and Giovanni (twins), and Adelaide. And then after the war in 1946, my youngest brother Flavio came to life.

Life was so comfortable and my father was so well to do from his father’s inheritance, that everything looked rosy until 1940. Mussolini – the leader of Italy – decided he would join Germany and Austria and therefore declared war on England. Suddenly, the Vincenti family became the enemy, as we were Italian. In Haifa we used to live in a house of our own, with three shops on ground floor. It was a big and special space. To reach the apartment, we had an outside staircase. Soon after Mussolini had declared the war, we had a policeman at the entrance of the stairs and we were put under house arrest for a couple of weeks. One day, a big bus came in front of our house and we were loaded onto the bus and sent to Bethlehem, above the cave Jesus was born in, in a facility for prisoners of war, a convent.

We could not know how long we were going to stay there, we just had to follow British orders. My mother saw there was an Italian school in Bethlehem (Salesian School) and she made a deal with the captain and his wife. She would take all the children every morning to the Salesian school and bring them back in the evening. Until one day, we were told that the following day we would be leaving the convent to somewhere unknown. The bus came in front of the convent, we were loaded in and we went back to Haifa, but this time we were brought to the seaport. There was a big ship waiting for us, we were transferred to the ship and the ship took a southern-western direction along southern Palestine, then passed over Egypt, crossed Suez Canal, down to the Red Sea, moved to the Indian Ocean, than along the Eastern side of Africa to Mombasa (Kenya).

We got off the ship at the seaport, were loaded on buses and took West direction to Kenya right at the foot of Kilimanjaro mountain, where there used to be a military base for the British. We went into this camp and waited to see what they were planning to do with us.

We felt like being in a zoo: it was not the animals inside, but us. Animals would come and look at us instead. At night, we would hear the screams of all the animals: the elephants, the hyenas, the lions etc.

After a few months, we were loaded again on a group of trains, still not knowing the direction, and we went towards the West, crossed all Kenya and went to Uganda (close to Campala, another military base). We came down the camp and we were given space into military tents. My mom saw that there was a very beautiful little house in a corner. She went to the captain and talked to him and his wife, asking to be given that house instead of a tent, since we were the biggest family in the whole camp. We ended up being the only ones living in these quarters. My mother somehow had a way of always making it happen.

After a few days, my mother talked to the captain’s wife again and decided to make some sort of “school” for the children in the camp, where there were around 25 kids, of which 6 belonged to the Vincenti family. Our mother strongly believed in education. She set up a small school for kids, divided in several, different groups. She found people who spoke little English and she spoke the best English (which the captain’s wife was very happy about) and we stayed there throughout the war, until 1945.

Life was very agreeable, except for malaria which was widely spread by mosquitos’ bites. Every night, our mother would line us up and give us a spoon of quinine oil – which has the most terrible taste ever. Malaria is a horrible disease and even today it is the biggest killer in the world, when half of your body is boiling hot and the other half is cold. It is awful. Everybody in the camp would get sick from Malaria once a week, for sure. To make things worse, there was a little, microscopic bug that would go into your feet and – if not caught in time –would get into the skin and generate puss. My mother would check our feet and picked the bug with a needle – which was an extra headache for us little kids who just enjoyed playing. The only pleasure we had was a little monkey that had become part of the family, it had joined the family and would play with us.

My maternal grandfather would still collect the rent every month from the shops of our home and send us the money every couple of months. So we had little money to buy extra food and little things that we needed. Africans came around the camp to try to sell us things and had a few little products available.

Finally, 1945 arrived and we heard that the war was over. Italy had lost, while England, France and USA had won World War II. So we were loaded back on buses, put on a train going east to Kenya, Mombasa. A ship was waiting for us, we were loaded onto the ship, went North along the ocean to the northern shores of Africa, to the Red Sea, to the Suez Canal, up the Palestinian shores, back to Haifa. We were finally free.

According to international law, the British had confiscated all our properties, except for our home – still belonging to us. So we came back to our apartment, with the three shops below us, still collecting the rent which supported us as much as possible. Flavio Vincenti, in the meantime, was born. We tried to regain our normal life, when suddenly - in 1947 – a big problem was created: the civil war between Palestinian and Jews. UK promised the Jewish community around the world that, for the support of the Jewish people, both financially and morally, UK would have granted the Jewish people a country of their own (called Israel), in Palestine.

Jewish people from all around the world kept coming to Palestine, to help the Jewish community who were about 20% of the total population, and took over half of the country. So we found out that during the civil war it was difficult for us to stay in Haifa and it was summertime. My dad suggested therefore we should spend the summer in Lebanon, thinking everything would have been solved by the end of summer. So we went to Ghazir to spend the summer, and the state of Israel was born by the time summer ended.

It became practically impossible for us to go back to Haifa. We became “immigrants” with very little money, in a foreign country. So finally, my father decided to go back to Haifa, sell our home, take the little money and go back to Lebanon. But my father was not a very capable person, so my mother had to cross via the borders illegally to help him with the deal of selling the house. She did this nicely, and came back through the mountains illegally to Lebanon to start a new life.

Lebanon was very a hospitable country to us: the weather was beautiful, the country itself was gorgeous and we had to hurry up to find a way to support 9 people. We lived all in a very small, tight apartment and Giuseppe (my oldest brother, very close to 20 at that time) decided he wanted to go into imports: anything to make money. So he bought a type writer, registered the company under the name of G. Vincenti & Sons, and started working mainly with Italian companies, importing Italian provolone cheese, salami, mortadella. It was a very small business. The cash flow was very important, so Giuseppe was very strict with the little shops’ owners, who promised payment by a certain day and yet could not pay. Some of them did not appreciate that behavior and practically dropped the Vincenti line. My mother decided to push Oreste into the company, who was on the contrary very kind, gentle and flexible in business. Clients liked Oreste’s behavior much better, and the business slowly continued.

Giuseppe had a different view, though. He wrote letters to Canada, to the USA and he found out that someone in the USA had huge amounts of flowers to sell at a good price. He looked for the biggest importer in Lebanon and he collected a 10.000 dollars commission, which was a tremendous amount of money at that time. We were therefore able to live in a bigger apartment, rent a bigger office and future looked desirably well in Lebanon.

Chapter 2. Family business

With the 10.000 dollars commission, the business finally had enough money to start registering a company called G. Vincenti & Sons. To start the company officially with money in the bank, we rented a new office (a three-room office) and moved to a much bigger apartment and things looked quite promising.

One day, a man came to our office. His name was Mr. Khalil and he said he wanted to talk to Giuseppe Vincenti, who was actually in there. He had come from West Africa, after closing his former companies in there, to come back to Lebanon and to start some new business. He had seen some Italian movies, in West Africa, which he’d liked very much. He wanted to establish an Italian film company in Lebanon. So he got Giuseppe’s name from the Italian consulate, and he wanted to start importing Italian films to Lebanon. So they made the company and finally came to an agreement: Mr. Khalil would put the capital, and Giuseppe would do the work.

The first thing they did was registering a company called Italia film, and Giuseppe immediately planned a trip to Italy. He was on the ship to Italy and started looking at all the film distributors. He found out that the biggest Italian film company was Lux Films, who happened to be over extended and needed cash immediately, so they were happy to make a deal with Giuseppe. They sold him 5 big films and gave him the distribution for Lebanon. The first one was Ulisse, with Kurt Douglas; the second film was Marcellino, pane e vino; the third one was Riso Amaro with Silvana Mangano; the fourth one was a movie with Sofia Loren. All of them were a big success, but the biggest success of all was Marcellino pane e vino. It had to be played in so many cinemas throughout Lebanon, Beirut. I would say 80% of the kids watched the movie. It was by far the biggest movie of the year. Till today, Italia films became the biggest independent distributor of movies in the Middle East, including Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and of course Lebanon.

The name of G. Vincenti & Sons in the food distribution was becoming bigger and bigger and Oreste Vincenti made a deal with Romanian governments, to buy all the kashkaval cheese (a very famous cheese). The business between G. Vincenti distribution systems and Romania grew to such an extent that Romania gave the Vincenti Distribution system exclusivity for all their cheese, butter and in particular ghie (clarified butter) which is very commonly used for sweets and pastries in the M.E.

Another great success was Barilla pasta (spaghetti), G. Vincenti & Sons’ success was such that the share of spaghetti market in Lebanon was the highest in the world for Barilla. The future looked very rosy and promising for both Vincenti & Sons and Italia Films.

Nevertheless, the political situation was getting extremely bad; to make it worse there was also the sectarian problem between Christians and Muslims and this inflamed the situation. In addition, the Palestinian refugees living in camps increased the tension to a point where a civil war broke out in Beirut.

Due to the fighting between the Christian and Muslim (Sunni and Shia) with the Palestinian, the tension grew to such a point where the country’s civil order completely collapsed. The security in the country broke down and imports of food stopped coming to Lebanon because of safety purposes.

Oreste – the second of all the brothers – went to Holland and bought a cargo ship whose weight was around 3 thousand tons. So, our food imports to Lebanon continued, yet still being extremely cautious throughout the procedures. Beirut and Lebanon became divided into sectarian influence and the seaport was closed. The airline was reduced to a bare minimum. The Vincenti ships, called S.S. Carolina, would load 50-60 containers of food from Romania and go to Cyprus. As it would get dark, the ship would go to the Christian side of Beirut, in the North of June (Biblos, an old seaport), unload their merchandise for a couple of days, and sneak out at night. It would often to go Southern Turkey and load oranges and lemons to Romania.

The business had to support a big family, made of nine people of which Elio (the third in line) went to law school in Saint Joseph University. The twin brothers Alberto and Giovanni (me) finished high school and went to AUB (American University of Beirut). Soon afterwards, our sister went to university too, so the expenses to maintain such a big family and provide education in Lebanon was very heavy and the political situation was very unstable.

On my last year of high school, my twin Alberto and I changed education system from Italian to American, by enrolling in an international college which is part of AUB. In one summer, we studied privately English to be able to enroll for the last year of high school, so our teacher – a friend of Oreste’s – suggested that we had to watch American movies regularly so that our ears would get used to English language. One Saturday, after the movies, walking back home – in a hot and humid summer day – we stopped at a very famous gelateria and we have two cones of ice cream, as per usual. I was shocked to see the shop selling ice cream was so cool inside and I asked the owner what had happened; very proudly the man replied they had installed air conditioning and he showed me rectangular units in the wall producing cold air. I was astounded, I could not believe such a little machine in a wall could produce so much cool air. So that day I had so much trouble thinking, that I finally decided I wanted to become air conditioning engineer. Unfortunately, AUB did not have a mechanical engineering department at that time, so I did two years at the general engineering program university and had to go somewhere, either Europe or USA to continue my studies. I chose the USA: it was very costly at that time and I started preparing myself for the long trip.

PART TWO – EDUCATION IN THE USA

Chapter 3. USA here I come!

In September 1956, I boarded the Italian ship Esperia from Beirut to Napoli. The first stop was in Egypt (Alexandria) and we were supposed to stay ten hours in Alexandria, unload and visit the city. Because of the political situation in Egypt, the ship could not linger more than one hour and we could not get off. Soon afterwards, the ship left to Athens and we were leaving Egypt. I saw about 6-7 war ships both French and British waiting to attack Egypt and take over the Suez Canal and bring down Abdel Nasser. Finally, I arrived in Napoli (Naples) to spend the night there. I was starving, so I asked for a nice restaurant. The receptionist gave me some instructions on where I could find several restaurants. I found a nice one, where I could see a guy from the show window handling the dough, throwing it in the air until it would become as big as a dish, then putting red tomato and white cheese, placing it into the oven and I asked him “Ma cosa fai?” and he replied “Pizza!” I asked him. “E’ buona?” and he answered “Buonisssssima”. I saw everybody eating, talking, drinking and being so happy. So I went in, ordered the pizza and the waiter asked me what pizza I wanted. I asked for the cheapest one, Margherita, and a glass of red wine. It was really buonissima and I immediately fell in love with pizza. Up through today, several decades later, I’ve had pizza once a week ever since then.

The following day, early in the morning, I took my suitcase and there was a big ship named S.S. Constitution from Naples to NY. I had my ticket, my passport, my visa, and I boarded the ship. The ship first stopped in Barcelona for a few hours, and then proceeded through Gibraltar. The speaker informed us we were having Africa on the left and Europe on the right: it was incredible, everybody was surprised to see both Africa and Europe just next to each other.

The ship made a very short stop in Tenerife and then departed for NY. After a few days, the Captain woke up in the morning and asked us all to get on top of the ship because we were about to see the most incredible statue in the world: and there we saw it, The statue of Liberty – a gift from France to symbolize USA getting independence and freedom. The statue was the sign of the birth of the USA, a sign of freedom worldwide.

Customs in NY were easy and quick, especially since everything was regular with me. I took the bus to Manhattan, I had a reservation at the YMCA which was close by. An old, bearded man, saw me carrying my suitcases sweating and he asked me “where are you going?” .I told him I was going to South Dakota University, but he was so surprised. He told me “cowboys and Indians are still fighting there!” I had always loved cowboys through movies, so I couldn’t sleep at night because I just wanted to see real cowboys and Indians with my eyes!

Chapter 4. South Dakota here I come!

Early the following day, I went back to the bus station, took a greyhound bus to Chicago, changed the bus to S. Dakota and in the afternoon I arrived to Brooklyn in South Dakota, a very small and desolate town. The trip all the way on the left and on the right side was just displaying nothing but corn fields. I thought to myself: what a big country!

I went to school’s registration office, registered and asked for information about where I could rent a room and there were lots of stickers advertising rooms for rent. I got one close to the university and rented the room for a whole semester.

Life at university was nice, but the weather was the worst I had ever seen. The cold winter can go down to -30 degrees, with winds over a 100 km/h and I didn’t have the right clothing for such a weather, especially as I came from Beirut where temperature would rarely reach +10 degrees. My owner would complain because I would fill in the bathtub with hot water to defrost as soon as I walked home.

The school main division was the school of agriculture and had a small engineering department, a couple of buildings. The total number of students was about 3.000 and the total number of foreign students as about 20. The rest of the students were mainly from S. Dakota.

I had a small experience when Christmas came, and I was invited by a student to spend the holidays at his farm with his family in South Dakota. I accepted because everything else at the university was closed for ten days, and I was amazed at how well educated and trained the farmers in the USA were.

Finally, the semester finished and summer was around the corner and we had to start thinking about where to go in order to find jobs and make some money for the following year of school.

Chapter five. Chicago here I come!

Summer arrived and we had to plan where to spend the summer working. Some of the foreign students told me the best place to go to, to find a job was Chicago, so we all jumped into a greyhound bus to Chicago. We finally found a room for rent in a very old building and settled down looking at the newspapers for the job advertisements. It was a very bad year for part-time jobs and the only available jobs were garbage collectors, dishwashers, street cleaners and a few waiter jobs: nothing else.

Then I saw a big advertisement, stating I could make up to 100 $ a week as a door to door salesman. I said to myself I was a natural born salesman as I came from a business family. I went to see this company the next day, they trained me selling female underwear. I would get 20% commission on each selling. But it wasn’t that easy actually, because land ladies would not even open their doors that easily.

Finally, a young lady looked at me and probably thought I was cute and good looking. She opened the door and I showed her all the goods. She offered me a sandwich, she made me a peanut butter sandwich and she also offered me something to drink (a coke). Everything was so American! She turned around to ask for my suggestions about which colors to buy, so she bought several items. She held my hand and brought me to the bed. My first experience with a woman was horrible, at least. After walking a little bit, I found another woman that was just a copy of the first one. I realized that was not the business for me. I went back to my room, disgusted.

Next day, I found nothing useful in the newspaper ads because there were only bare minimum paying jobs. On the third day, one of the students who came with us to Chicago, came back upset, mad. We asked him what was wrong, he said he’d found a job but he didn’t know how to type. The company needed somebody who was capable of typing, so he lost the chance. I asked for the name of the company and I decided to make a pitch at it. There was a hook shop very close by, I went in and asked for a typewriter – which they had (a portable typewriter). I didn’t have 25 dollars, but I gave him my passport and I “rented” the typewriter for 2 dollars a day. I read the instructions carefully, started putting my fingers onto the keyboard and started practicing until 2 in the morning. Next day, at 8.15 at was at the door of Nachmann and Associates, they hadn’t opened yet. I waited at the door: suddenly, a man came in and asked if he could help me. I introduced myself and said I was looking for Mr. Nachmann. We shook hands, the meeting was very smooth and eventually he asked me if I could type. I told him “All students from university know how to type”, but he said he’d had three students who were not capable. So he asked for a proof, I sat down making sure my fingers were placed onto the right keys. I typed my name and surname: G.I.O.V.A.N.N.I. V.I.N.C.E.N.T.I. I’m pretty sure he thought to himself “He doesn’t know how to type, but he needs this job so much that I’m going to give him a chance”.

Everybody started coming to the office and I started working. It was a very nice job, people were so good and at the end of the day everybody left so I was alone with Mr. Nachmann. I asked him to give me some money in advance, so he opened his wallet and asked me to sign for it. I didn’t look at it, but it was suspicious because I had noticed two “zeros” on the bill. I looked at the bill that he had given - a 100 dollar bill, it was the first time for me to see such money.

There was a big supermarket just close to our home, I went in and bought few packages of pasta, salad, tomato sauce, apples and bananas and one gallon of red wine. I was carrying these two big brown bags and I walked back home. The roommates came towards me to help me carry the shopping bags and I told them “We have to celebrate, I got a job! We’re having spaghetti tonight!” Everybody was happy for that, we put water into many pots and started eating salad leaves. Everybody was happy for me finally getting a good job.

The guy who gave me the tip came in and asked for what was going on: he brought a glass and asked me what job I had gotten. He was very mad at me and accused me of lying because I could not type. I replied “Yesterday, I did not know how to type, but today I’ve learned how to type”. Anyway I gave him 20 dollars to thank him. We would say “Mabrouk” (i.e. Cheers in Arabic).

So, the summer was a good one. I was so happy with my job, every morning looking at the sky and thanking God for being so nice to me. By the end of the month, the secretary prepared the checks; Mr. Nachmann signed them all and enveloped them. I hadn’t received any check and I asked for explanation. Mr. Nachmann said he was not used to discussing salaries with new employees, but I reminded him I was a student and I needed money. I gave him a Vincenti smile and he promised me 387 dollars a month, which was the salary of a starting engineer. That was an incredible salary! I stood up and shook hands with him, thanking him. He put his hand on my shoulders saying I was a good man, and then left.

At the bottom of the building, I opened a bank account and put my check in it. The end of summer came, and it was time to go back to school, so I said goodbye to everyone and thanked Mr. Nachmann again and went back to South Dakota.

Chapter six – South Dakota here I come again

Back to South Dakota University, my last year of university. The end of summer came and it was time for me to go back to finish my senior year and become officially an engineer. The year in South Dakota was just about a photocopy of the previous year, except that I had to work much harder to take credits in order to graduate on time. So, it went fine and my grades improved from first semester in South Dakota C average, to second semester C+, third semester B, last semester B+.

A couple of weeks before graduation, I started to organize where to go, how to go and what to do. So, looking at the advertisements in the paper, there was an old farmer who had a T-model Ford, probably around 40 years old. He asked for 70 dollars. I talked to him and explained I didn’t have that much money; we finally agreed I would buy the car for 50 dollars. I had 50 dollars in five dollar bills, gave it to him and he signed the car in my name. I asked him to teach me how to drive as I had never driven a car before. He showed me how to shift from first, second, third and fourth and never drove over 30 miles per hour. I drove around the block and I found it easy. We shook hands and had to go to the police to get my driving license; it was very easy. They asked if I was color blind, but I was luckily not. I could see from far away, also. They took a picture of me and they printed the driving license. I decided I had to practice every day around the block, especially to better understand the gears.

Finally, graduation day came (it was on a Saturday). My grades were very good and I was very happy, I took my certificate, shook hands. Another student who had just graduated asked me where I was going from University and I had planned to go to Minnesota. He asked for a ride, but I asked him to pay me as he would have payed for the bus ride. We left the day after at 7.00 in the morning, we loaded the car and went straight to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Chapter 7 – Minneapolis here I come!

The drive to Minneapolis was easy, despite taking me several hours. Lots of people driving around me were greeting us, probably because our car was so old. In Minneapolis, the passenger came down at the greyhound bus station, and I continued to downtown. I found a little coffee place, stopped and started looking at the ads on the newspaper, looking for a job. I only find very few jobs, mostly waiters, dishwashers, garbage collectors and so on.

As I was trying to figure out what to do, possibly trying to work in a pizzeria as I was Italian, a young lady came and sat next to my table. She asked the waiter for instructions about streets and places and eventually asked me if she could help me. I replied I was looking for a job, and I sat next to her starting to ask her questions. She suggested me to wait a couple of days to rest before looking for a job, because she thought I was tired after celebrating my graduation. Unfortunately, there had been no celebration because I only had 12 dollars in my pocket. She started laughing and she looked like to be such a gentle, soft-spoken person and she started asking me several questions. She loved stories! So I told her so many stories, and she enjoyed each story more than the previous one.

Finally, she invited me for dinner to celebrate my graduation in her “special” restaurant, which I did appreciate very much. In my mind, I always thought Americans are so nice and trustworthy, and most probably the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. We jumped into my car and went to the restaurant, which was a pizzeria. She asked me if I liked pizza, and I said I do love pizza. I had pizza and coca cola: what a dinner for a graduation celebration!

She was so interested about everything I did, from the War, to the problems between Arabs and Jews, to the trip from Italy to USA…she would always ask me to tell more stories.

Finally, at 10.30 the restaurant was closing down and we had to leave. We went back to my car and asked me to drop her home as she lived close by. I dropped her, but I told her I was going to sleep in my car as I had no money to rent a room. She looked so puzzled and finally told me she had a two-room apartment, one of which was empty because her daughter was not there.

I was embarrassed, but I had little choice and thanked her. I took my suitcases, she showed me the room and I went to sleep. Next day, early in the morning, smell of coffee woke me up and she finally introduced herself to me as Mary Lou, and I introduced myself in return as Gino. She offered me coffee and breakfast and gave me the keys of the house, because she needed to go to work. We arranged a meeting at 6.00 pm in the same coffee place we’d met in. I spent the day looking for job advertisements (pizzerias, Italian restaurants etc.) but there was no opening. At 6.00 I was waiting for her, and she showed up and she looked at me and said “with a shirt like the one you’re wearing, you’ll never find a job as an engineer”. She gave me a package, containing a cream color shirt, half-sleeve. I looked at the name of the shirt: Arrow, a very famous brand name in the USA. I thanked her and we started talking repeating the stories of the day before, making them more detailed and colored and she loved every minute of them. I told her: “I’d like to invite you for dinner”, but she said “not now: when you get a job you’ll invite me for dinner:” So we went back to pizzeria an had another pizza and coca cola. Mary Lou loved pizza and Italian food. We talked stories until 10.30 at night. Same old story, more glorified and detailed. After dinner, we went back home. I went in my bed and she went to sleep in her room.

May Lou was such an exceptionally trusting person, so soft and gentle…I just couldn’t figure out how she could possibly have a person whom she’d just met from a foreign country at her place. But I have to be honest, she loved the stories I told

On the fourth day, I opened the newspaper and found a big ad: Wanted engineer to develop a new line of air conditioning equipment. I couldn’t believe! I read the ad probably ten times and when Mary Lou came home, I showed her the ad and she was so happy! She gave me the map on how to get there and next morning I took my “limousine” to the address and arrived in front of the building at 8.10. I waited for the company to open. Finally, a woman came to me and asked me if I was waiting for anyone; I replied I was looking for the chief engineer. She walked me in and offered me a cup of coffee. She had a rectangular box from which she offered me a donut: I accepted, even if I didn’t know what a donut was. It was delicious! Ten minutes later, the people in the office started coming in.

I shook hands with them and introduced myself as an engineer. He interviewed me about my university, my grades, my graduation and my experience. I must have made a big impression! He went talking to the chief engineer (the boss) and we went together to the manager’s office, where I was asked kind of the same questions. They were in a big hurry to develop this air conditioning system line. They were looking for air handling units: “Do you think you can develop a line?” they asked me. I looked at him showing my confidence and I firmly replied “Yes!” They needed a man urgently, and I could start the same day. They called the chief accountant in (a woman), to start preparing the papers to employ me and I started working immediately. I had my passport and my portfolio with me, including my resume and my degree, which she made copies of. She showed me a desk in the corner, that was meant to be my office. There were a few catalogs behind me (Hitashi, York, Carrier, etc.). I started opening them to see what an air handling unit was: it was a big box with a motor, a fan, a cooling coil, a heating coil, a filter section and filters. It was such an easy job for me! I started working, looking at Carrier catalog of AHU line. I saw how many units they had in each size, and I did the same with York and the other brands. I made a comparison between the brand names and started choosing where to start, where to end, the amount of units in between.

At 5.30, the bell rang and everybody stood up to go home. I went to the chief accountant and told her I needed money because by the end of the year students are normally broke. I needed an advance in my salary! She opened the drawer and gave me 50 dollars asking me to sign a piece of paper. I thought to myself, everything seems to be so easy in the USA! I jumped in my car and went to the coffee place; while I was waiting for Mary Lou, a man was looking at me. He asked me if I was Gino, and he introduced himself as Jaime: he had graduated just six months before me in South Dakota! I offered him a cup of coffee. I was still looking for a place at that time and luckily Jaime had a roommate who had just left. He described me his apartment and it sounded like a very nice place. We would share 50/50 all the costs.

Mary Lou came in and sat with us. Jaime invited me to visit the apartment and the three of us went to the apartment. It was actually very nice! It would cost 40 dollars each and I decided to move in the same day. I asked Mary Lou to get my suitcase from her place and I placed them in my new room. I then told Mary Lou about my new job an invited her out for dinner. We went to an Italian restaurant, had spaghetti with Bolognese sauce and sprinkle of cheese on top of it and a glass of red wine. What a life, I thought to myself! Mary Lou suddenly told me: “Gino, I have a problem”. Her daughter had a boyfriend in high school and she was about to graduate. After a fight, they had broken up. On Saturday night, they were planning to go the prom (the biggest night of the year for these girls), but now she had nobody to go with and so she would spend the whole day crying. Mary Lou asked me to go to school and accompany her daughter to the prom, as a favor. She asked me very softly if I was capable of dancing, and I replied “I was born a ballerina!” She was so enthusiastic and started jumping up and down. That was just the least I could do! On Saturday morning early I jumped into my T-model Ford, drove 60 miles and arrived at the college. I asked for her daughter and she looked at me saying “you’re such a good looking man! And are you an engineer?” She couldn’t believe. “Do you mind if I tell them you’re my boyfriend?” So we walked hand in hand and she introduced me to her girlfriends as her boyfriend and as an engineer. Everyone was extremely impressed.

The prom was amazing: lots of food, fruits…we danced until 11.00 at night. On Sunday morning, I loaded Mary Lou’s daughter in my car and drove to Minneapolis. The girl told her mother “What a good dancer! He’s just so full of life! Everybody was amazed”.

May Lou worked at a very important clothing company and there were sales at that time. Plus, she also had an extra discount and she suggested me to buy several new shirts. The next day we went to the shop and I could finally start my life in Minneapolis.

Jaime, my roommate, worked for a company producing glue and tape. One day he told me they had just developed an innovative new tape that could be applied and removed without ripping the paper. This reminded me about my job in Chicago, where we had to scratch off the tape in order to not tear the drawing. I thought it was really an incredible invention, so I decided to buy stocks from this company – instead of putting money into my bank account every month. That company was named 3M….

At work, my colleagues were very happy with my work. I decided not to produce the whole line the first time, but rather to go half the sizes and go over the other sizes of the AHU in the other two years. The boss was very happy with the idea and approved to go forward and start with producing one unit. He wanted me to manufacture the whole unit. They called in the head of the testing of the laboratory, a man in his fifties, and they introduced me to him. The man was the head of the department of testing and research and he was meant to work with me to produce the unit. We thanked the boss and went to my desk and started discussing the project. I told him I only had the designs in my mind, but I was not able to build things with my hands. He reassured me as he was ready to do whatever he was told to. It was a marvelous combination and soon after the unit was designed and built. The boss was impressed and we got a raise of 50 dollars.

One day, big news in the newspaper: the company that I had bought stocks and shares from, 3M, officially announced the new discovery of tape that doesn’t rip papers. The stock shot up to 30% in two days. I started feeling a little richer.

One day, as life looked beautiful, I received a letter from the Immigration office. The letter was like:

“Dear Mr. Vincenti, congratulations for graduating and becoming an engineer. You’ve been working as an engineer in the past 10 months. We’d like to remind you that, in two months’ time, your visa expires and you have to plan to go back home. We hope you enjoyed this country and the opportunities. Regards”.

I was at a loss, I did not know what to do and of course I didn’t feel ready to go back to Lebanon or any other country, as I needed more experience. That evening, I talked to Mary Lou to see what alternatives I had. She suggested me to go back to school and get a master degree, in order to gain 2-3 years’ time. I liked the idea. We needed to start considering which university to attend and she suggested a University in North West USA, such as Washington, Oregon, Idaho, etc. Mary Lou prepared the letters for me and sent them to 6 different universities in that area. The first one that answered was the University of Washington, in Seattle. Since my grades showed an improvement semester after semester, they gave me a scholarship of 300 dollars. I accepted immediately and said I was going to go in September for the mechanical engineering department.

Soon after, I sold my car to Jaime for 45 dollars, bought a Chevrolet (newer and in better conditions), sold my shares in the glue & tape company, making a total profit of 50%,. I was ready to go to the West.

Note: the relationship between Mary Lou and me became very close, but she never shared anything about her past or about her ex-husband (her daughter’s father). Once I left to Washington, she would send me a letter every couple of weeks. She said she would dream about my stories (the middle east, the ship trips, the, life in Chicago etc.).

Until one day, I received a letter from her thanking me for the wonderful time we had together and that she finally opened up and told me her story. She had met her husband in college and had a very good relationship, she got pregnant and they married. But he was very antagonistic towards the child, as he thought they were too young to take on such a responsibility and a baby would have ruined their freedom. He started drinking and being abusive to her and slapping her on her face. Life became miserable for both of them. One day, he beat her up so bad that she had to call for a divorce; her daughter was only four years old at that time. He took his suitcases, disappeared and never came back again into her life.

“Now I have met a man working in the same company as you, and he was the only man besides you I’ve known since the divorce. Thank you for being so patient and nice, and giving me trust in men and in the future. This letter will be my last letter to you. I will always see you in my dreams. Mary Lou.”

She was probably the nicest person I’ve ever met in my life.

Chapter 8. Seattle, here I come!

The trip from Minneapolis to Seattle, Washington took several days, driving 8 hours a day, and I kept being marveled at how big the country was. Slowly, I crossed the state of Washington and everything looked so green, so full of forests: a country of just about the size of Italy was a population of 4.50 million inhabitants. I had never seen so much green, so much water…it was absolutely a beautiful state!

University of Washington at Seatle was a very big facility, with about 28.000 students enrolled. Many more than South Dakota University! They had a huge engineering Department and each department had its own building. On arrival, I went to the registration office, registered and got the names of different potential places for rental. I found a very nice room, in the basement of a villa and pretty close to the university. I had the bedroom, a separate entrance, a personal bathroom.

Since I was obsessed that students need to have at least one good meal a day, I went to the main dormitory, applied for a job and I got it immediately. My job was the best job in the cafeteria: preparing the brown bag, for lunches for students who couldn’t come to the cafeteria because of school itinerary or very busy studying or any other reasons. The students would write name and room number and I knew how many bags I should prepare. Every bag contained a peanut butter sandwich, a cheese or Bologna sandwich (a martadella type), an apple, and a small package of cookies.

Always, I had 3-4 bags left. I was supposed to throw the brown bags away, but most times I would just collect the sandwiches, go to the students’ lounge, meet my friends and offer them sandwiches (I would always keep cookies and apples for myself).

I had to work and earn money to pay for the school tuition, so I started looking for other jobs. The sports dept. needed tutors to teach math to football players, who came from very poor schools and were very poorly skilled at math. This was the most difficult thing in the work. But they needed to pass 101 in order to not lose the scholarship! We were paid $1-2 dollars per hour and we could have as many students as we wanted. It was very difficult to teach them, because they had extremely low knowledge of math. At weekends, I would work in the library in order to correctly file books. I started to also ask for a 50% bonus in case the students passed the exam, in addition to the $1-1.25 per student per hour. I was given 5 students and four of them passed the semester. So I kept on with this job, making a lot of money!

One day, there was a lot of commotion because at the far end of university there was a huge field and it was rented out to the international agriculture fair, which was a very big event for Seattle. I thought it was a good time to make money. Different companies were putting up stands for the fair. I went there to talk to them and introduced myself as a fresh graduated engineer, capable of speaking 4 languages. I was immediately accepted and they offered me $1.50 per hour, I pushed until they offered me $3 per hour. I was supposed to work three days full time and I was given a badge. I used the same technique for a different stand, I negotiated and asked for more until I got $4 an hour. The last stand was the biggest one and I tried to use the same technique, this time reaching $5 per hour. So I had three jobs scheduled in the same area, at the same time, in the agriculture machinery fair.

On Friday morning, I went to the fair. I talked to a foreigner who was passing by, who was sure he’d seen me earlier at another stand, and I got away with it! When I arrived to the final stand and this time he knew he had seen me at the previous stand, I lied to him and said “you met my twin brother”. I spent those days making money like a thief.

Life in Seattle (Washington) was beautiful. The climate was mild and the people were excellent. Coming towards the end of the school year, and at the end, I had to start thinking about my thesis. I went to see my advisor, who mentioned several projects, none of which actually impressed me. So, this thing started bothering me a lot as I wanted to do something “original”, which is my character. One day, I came up with the idea to do my thesis on solar energy, because I am such an environmentalist and I believe that contamination of environment and air pollution is destroying the world. So, I went to my advisor and told him I had found a subject I wanted to write my thesis on: solar energy. My advisor was surprised at such an interesting subject and he encouraged me.

I went to the library to see if I could find textbooks or anything written on solar energy, but the University library had no material. I went back to my advisor asking for help, as I couldn’t find any piece of information. He asked me some time to check with other universities, as he had graduated in Stanford and had a lot of connections. The dean of engineering, the head of the mechanical, civil, electronic, aerospace, thought it was a great idea and wanted to meet me. So, he invited me for a light lunch at the main cafeteria and asked me why I was so interested in such a complicated, difficult subject, with little to no information in the library. I told him that I was an environmentalist, and believed that before the end of the Century we would have run out of fuels, so I was wondering what was going to happen. Politicians were not smart enough to think ahead. He became an enthusiastic supporter of this project. They gave me a very big room at the top of the mechanical engineering building and the terrace to set up my solar cells. They made a special budget to buy material, equipment, etc.

Since I am a good engineer-thinking, but very poor manually, I needed a partner who could compliment our advantages and disadvantages on this project. I found a colleague, who was excellent at manual jobs, but not that good theoretically. So we made an agreement: I would do the part of writing and presentation, and he would do the construction and installation of the project. My advisor started getting me a lot of papers, documents, textbooks about solar energy he had borrowed from different universities. Slowly, the project started taking shape just the way I wanted it to be.

We started thinking about the project and the presentation of it. One cell or two cells? Movable or stationary? What is the aim and what is the result we want to use? So I got completely immersed in reading different books and documents written about solar energy. Luckily, the school load was becoming lighter and wherever I went people asked me whether it was true I was going to write my thesis on solar energy. I became so proud of the idea.

Finally, I decided that we would have two cells of solar energy, rotating and following the sun, from morning to evening, and sensors of temperature of water going in and out to check how much energy we were getting out of the two cells. So we started designing sketches about what we wanted, how long it was going to take, which budget it was going to require. When things were clear in my mind, we went to our advisor, presented the project and he was as excited about the project as we were, which really surprised us.

The top floor of the mechanical engineering building had one big room and a terrace, which both became part of our project. We designed the project and started ordering all the different parts that we needed to assemble and surprisingly, it was getting faster and many teachers from different departments came over giving us new ideas and inputs. Some of them even offered their help.

The school year finally ended and now we were 100% busy with the thesis project. The whole university was talking about solar energy and every place I went to, people would ask me if I was actually working on that. There was somewhat excitement about this, and this put tremendous amounts of enthusiasm on us. We thought it could have been used from other students in the future.

Slowly but surely, we built up the solar cell structure and started collecting information about energy saving from the solar cells. Six months later, the thesis was finished and it was time for us to start working on the presentation. At the university, presentations by graduated students are normally put on the board so that any interested person can come to the presentation to learn or to get ideas for themselves in the future.

The day of the presentation, the big auditorium, of the engineering school, was packed with students, teachers and even secretaries of the university. I did the presentation.

The opening sentence was: by the end of the 20th century we will be probably out of fuel, and we’re not taking care of the future. What type of energy do we require?

The presentation was so well received that even the dean of engineering and the head of the mechanical engineering department came over, shook hands and said that the thesis was very informative.

The time for graduation came and just before graduating, companies from around the countries would come to different universities to interview graduating students for potential employment. The personnel from Boeing came to interview me and was impressed with my presentation and vision of looking in the future. I was offered a job at the end of the interview. At that time, the company was busy building model 727, to be followed by 737 and Jumbo 747. One week after graduation, I started my job at Boeing in the staff group (the élite group of engineers in the company). I worked on the three projects.

PART THREE – PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Chapter 9. Boeing

My first professional job was with Boeing and I was lucky to join the staff engineering group of the company, in the pressurization and air conditioning of the airplane. The staff group of engineers are the think tank of Boeing. Our group was made of about 15 engineers, with only another foreigner born colleague from England apart from myself – Italian. The group was very harmonious, working very well together. We became very close friends, all of us working together. It was an incredible experience for me! They even sponsored my citizenship.

But soon I realized that the risk in working for companies like Boeing, extremely highly specialized, is that you become expert of a minute little thing of the plane. So, as time passed I realized more and more than Boeing was probably not my future, because my character is to know more of everything.

I just had a couple of experiences at Boeing, which I would like to share with all of you. The first one is that we used to go deep sea fishing for salmon, in the ocean, every year. Every person was allowed to get two salmon a year. So, we got our two salmon and went to a special type of oven where they made smoked salmon out of it and they had smoked salmon as an appetizer all year long.

Here is another experience. One day the whole group decided we would go far away in the forest (actually the mountains, full of forest) on a lake to fish for trout. We parked the car, got our tents and sleeping bags with us and walked for about 3-4 hours, till we saw a beautiful lake, made a big fire and had lots of fish. At night, we had an open tent, one next to the other. I was sleeping in the very last one, next to the door – which was left open. We had few beers, barbecue, fish on fire…what a beautiful life! In the middle of the night I dreamt that somebody was dragging me from my legs and I finally woke up and I saw my head down and my legs up and a hairy animal was actually dragging me out of the tent: it was a brown bear! I screamed of course, two of my colleagues had guns and they started shooting in the air so that the bear would drop me and run away. It was an incredible scare. Finally, I slept in the middle of the group and not at the end anymore.

Chapter 10. Bengazi here I come!

My dream was to become a first class air conditioning engineer for civil buildings, rather than planes. I found that my job – though well rewarding financially – would not fulfill me. So I wrote Carrier, York and several other companies for a job overseas. Since my experience was not in civil construction, but rather in airplanes, they were not interested in me.

Until one day I received a letter from Beirut, in Lebanon: the area manager of a company called Dunham Bush told me his distributor in Bengazi got a very big job, a tower, and needed an engineer to design, supervise and install air conditioning for the whole building. The salary was good and, if I had been able to complete the job in 12 months, I would have gotten an extra 50% bonus. I immediately accepted!

By then, I was married to Nancy and had a little boy named Joey. We left to Beirut, left my wife and son with my parents and went to Bengasi to start my one-year assignment. It was a tough year, because I had to bring several big books with me, to calculate the cooling load, size the piping, design the ducting, figure out which system would have been the best and so on. After several months of reading and studying, I designed the air conditioning system: a fan goes on the perimeter of the building and small Air Handing Unit is installed in the inner section of the building. The building was entirely made of glass, and it was extremely high. It was by far the tallest building in Bengasi. The building was the British Bank of the Middle East. I ordered the required equipment, started installing it and by ten months of work I finished my job. The consultant of England came over, checked the design, the operation and was very satisfied so we handed the whole job over and my job was finished.

In Libya, you need a visa to get in and if you stay more than two weeks, you also need a visa to get out and your employer only can give it to you. The owner of the company was the cousin of the King Sanu Si. When I went to him and requested the total balance of my salary plus the bonus, as agreed in my contract, he refused and wanted me to extend my stay by another year, since he had gotten another big job and he wanted to make the air conditioning for it. He refused to release me! I started trying to figure out how to leave the country; I went to the consulate and his office was on the sea (Bengazi was a very small village at that time). He told me that the owner of the company was one of the biggest crooks in the country and the cousin of the king and there was nothing he could do about it. He asked me if I could swim and I said I was able. He suggested me to swim to the North until reaching Crete! I started looking around for a way out; to make things worse, my wife called me and the phone call quality was surprisingly clear. She was in Bengazi airport! She had come because she had understood I was having issues and wanted to help me but she ended up making my issues even bigger.

Somebody told me there was someone who could “copy” the visa and provide me with a fake one for 100$. I gave him my passport and he gave me my visa, but I didn’t know much about visas to realize whether if it was real. He gave me advice, to take the very last plane at night and arrive at the very end, which I did. I took an 11.00 plane with my wife, gave my passport but immediately acknowledged the visa was fake. But I had left another 100$ in a page of my visa and the guard said “Promise me you won’t do it again!” I promised and he let me take the flight to Cairo. From Cairo, we finally landed in Beirut. Our son Joey spent ten days and we went back to the USA to look for a job.

Chapter 11. Carrier

Back in America, I arrived at YMCA. I was half broke! So I started working at night, for a hamburger fast food restaurant and started looking around for an engineering job in air conditioning. The rest of my family went to Seattle to stay with her parents.

To my surprise, the headquarters of Carrier International was only few blocks from the YMCA. So I dressed up, went straight to Carrier International, saw the secretary and told her I was there to see the boss. The first thing she asked me was if I had an appointment, which I didn’t have, so she refused. I started arguing and becoming upset at her and noisy. Finally, the door opened and somebody came out to enquire what was going on. “I came to see the boss from all the way from Beirut, and your secretary is not letting me come in to meet you!” He started laughing and agreed to see me. I told him my experience, my education, my knowledge of M.E. and he was luckily looking for an engineer for a job in Beirut! He called the personnel manager and told him I was going to start working for them the same day. I started working that morning. Carrier Training School in Syracuse (NY) had the most advanced air conditioning training in the world, once a year. I was sent there for training, ten days later my start, for almost a month, then came back to NY and started working in Madison Avenue. Carrier had a very nice engineering office and we got along beautifully with everyone. All the small/medium size jobs were sent to me for design and one day a hotel job came to my attention, in British Ghiana. I designed the job and received the order, but they wanted me to go to Georgetown to oversee their engineers. What impressed the most is that I gave them the simplest type of air conditioning system, which would require a minimum amount of maintenance and service. I went to Georgetown for a week, got a job, opened a letter of credit and came back – very proud of myself!

The boss, for some reason, never liked me despite being always very polite to him. He started looking around to see if I could get a job away from the head office. One day, a distributor of Carrier came to visit the head office and happened to be the owner and manager of Carrier Tunisia: he was looking for an engineer for a two-year contract and I started talking to him; he was shocked I could speak Arab so well and asked me to go to Tunisia, which I accepted. He went to my boss (Mr. Silvera) and told him he wanted me as an engineer, he gave in because he just wanted to get rid of me! We all signed the contract and he wanted me to start as soon as possible. The Tunisian manager asked me vous parlez le Francçais? I replied oui, and I signed the contract. That evening, I went down to the ground floor of the building and bought a textbook called Learn French in 30 days and started reading a chapter a day while sitting on the bus on my way home. By the end of the month, my wife, my son and I were on the plane to Tunisia.

The distributor in Tunis was very small (28 people in total), the office itself was very small. There was a house of a two doors garage. I was the manager of the air conditioning department. In three years’ time, I changed the company to become the biggest mechanical contractor in Tunisia. We moved to a very big office and warehouse and by the time I left the company, they had 3,082 employees in the department. We were the only company which was specialized in air conditioning.

After three years, I returned to Syracuse (NY) and Carrier head office, for six months. They were looking for an engineer in Beirut and I applied for the job and went there for a year. It was great because I was close to my family!

Carrier had a shakeup, a new president with brilliant ideas was appointed. He decided to develop air conditioning in Africa and opened three offices: in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. I quickly applied for the Nairobi position and I got the job (because I was the only one who had applied!). I started Carrier East Africa branch. My responsibility was from Sudan to South Africa (18 different countries). I had my office, my secretary and freedom to develop the business the way I liked it. Business was booming at that time! One day, after a couple of years of operation, the president of Career decided to visit Africa and see how the new offices were doing. The president and his wife boarded a plane to Nigeria, but it broke down halfway so they were 24 hours late. The journalist who was supposed to interview him got drunk while waiting.

Next stop, he went to South Africa and the plane was 4 hours late. The journalist waiting for the president got drunk as well and couldn’t interview him. The visit didn’t go too well!

The last stop was in my branch, in Nairobi. He was luckily on time and the journalist was fully capable to interview the president and I figured out that he and his wife must have been very tired from such a long journey with such little results.

I found a safari lodge (a touristic facility) at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro (close to the military camp I had been to in my childhood). Thanks to a VIP treatment, the accommodation was in a luxurious tent. They complained about spending night in a tent, but they loved it once in. During the first night, early in the morning, the wife said “Walter, wake up! There is somebody in the room! Somebody is touching me”. The president screamed as there was an elephant in, eating their fruit. He ran out of the tent wearing his pajamas and the guard started laughing and took the baby elephant out.

We met for breakfast and his wife was like “Guess who woke up this morning” and she told me about the episode. I couldn’t believe it and I thought people would’ve thought she was drunk. They could rest for two days, that’s what he needed most. Walter wanted to see one of my jobs. We were working on the new ex telecommunication building, the most beautiful building in Nairobi at that time. I took them to see the job and he was very impressed and wanted to know I could get such a big job.

The minister of ex telecommunication invited Carrier and another company (Whole Thermo Tank) and informed us about the job. They wanted the most advanced air conditioning system, so he gave us 30 days to design the job and submit our project. A month later, the minister came in with two engineers and told the gentlemen from Whole Thermo Tank to present their system, but what he recommended was too simple, there was nothing new in it, just like the job I’d designed in Bengazi years ago . When it came to my turn, a month before I had been on training for a new Carrier system, a truly brand new system: variable air system. So I presented and explained it to the minister: there are two ways to control temperature in a room or building; the old system is to supply cool air at a temperature according to what is required. The brand new system is to vary the quantity of air supplied according to your need, but always at a constant temperature. It has more flexibility.

So, the Thermo Tank spoke first as the representative was much older than me. Instead of criticizing my design, he attacked me personally telling I was a salesman rather than an engineer – I was very upset but I kept my cool. When my turn came in I told the minister that – 5-6 years before – I had designed a system identical to the one this gentleman was suggesting and that it was a very old system. I had come up with it myself, with little experience. He felt offended and pointed out he had 30 years of experience! I insisted he had one year of experience, 30 times over. With that, I killed him. The minister tried to keep it all under control and took some time to make his final decision.

A week later, he called me to say they had chosen my system. I decided to take the president to Campala (the capital of Uganda), where there was a very big stadium being built for the meeting of African states that year. Dada Amin was a blood thirsty and foolish dictator and while we were there he came with about 50 soldiers as bodyguards and I introduced the president of Carrier to him. The main contractor was Energo Project, a Jugoslav Company. He told the president, anybody late on this job will get his throat cut. When we left, Walter looked at me scared at how foolish he was. Two days later, the president of Carrier and his charming wife were on their way back to Beirut (the head office for Middle East). Walter spoke well about me because I had been the only pleasant thing about his visit to Africa.

Two year later I was transferred to Beirut and I was in charge of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Both countries were booming with business, due to the increasing prices of fuel and were working very good. At that time Iraq was going through a turmoil and finally Saddam Hussein took the power. Business in Iraq was going up the sky. Beirut too was going through a civil war, where Muslims and Christians were fighting against each other for the control over the country. Unfortunately, the Palestinians got involved in the problem on the Muslim side. Half of Beirut was destroyed and thousands of people moved from one area to the other. Unfortunately a huge amount of Palestinians were in camps called talezatal (the main line going to the Christina Mountains). There was a camp close to June, close to the seaport. A third place was the camp Chatila in front of the airport. So the gunmen would control any movement of the Christian minorities.

Something had to be done. As usual, Israel got involved in the battle against the Palestinian stronghold camps. They massacred the Palestinians camps in front of the airport and the rest two camps were eliminated by the Christian militia. During that time, I was in Baghdad and the airport was closed, so I got stuck there and couldn’t go back to Beirut where my family was. I couldn’t even phone them as there was a communication breakdown.

Finally the situation cooled off and I was able to come back to Beirut. My home was closed, I went to the head office of Carrier and found it empty: I later learned the office had moved out of Beirut to Athens, so I took a flight to Athens. There was no communication and nobody could inform me. The head office of Beirut had officially moved to Athens.

Athens business was good, very comfortable, and we were informed to find accommodations for our families and buy cars because we were going to stay there for a long time. Carrier had about ten expatriates at that time and we started running around, to look for an apartment (just like thousands of other people). One day, we found a new beautiful building and the roof apartment was for rent. The owner wanted to rent it to a foreign family because they would pay more than Greeks. He invited me out for dinner and we both brought our wives. Their home was a beautiful villa, in a chalet-style. My wife fell in love with that house. The Greeks are very late eaters, so the dinner took place at 11.00; by 1.00 in the morning we agreed I would move into his villa and he would take the roof apartment to provide with the right furniture for his son when he would get married.

I had the most beautiful home, with a garden and a swimming pool. Two days later, looking for a car, I ran into a man who had a Mercedes 240 and his boss had a heart-attack and died so he was obliged to sell everything and go back urgently. Greeks could not own Diesel cars, so it had to be sold to a foreigner. I needed a car very badly, and bought this one-month old Diesel Mercedes at a price I could have paid for a FIAT. I had the best home and the best car, within Carrier guidelines.

Carrier’s new president believed in expansion, so they bought an air conditioning company in France, in Italy, in Brazil etc. Some of these countries were a very poor choice, so they needed somebody to quickly go to Italy and help organize the company. The job fell on me since I was Italian as well! At that time, my new boss was Mr. Silvera, the man who had employed me and yet never liked me. Silvera was very happy to get rid of me, because I had a better house and a better car than his. He was very happy to get rid of me and suggested I would be the right man to fix the issues in the new Italian factory.

Chapter 12. Uniman, PAL and the Italian Experience

Finally, I moved to Italy and my wife and children went to Seattle, Washington, to her parents. I started my new life in Milan (Italy). I was excited to go, because this was the first time to go there for a living! In one year’s time I had to organize the Marlo Factory and I realized that I had enough experience to start my own business. So I started looking around and luckily there was a big international fair of air conditioning in Milan, where I went. I was surprised at how advanced Italians were in terms of air conditioning. So much mew technology I had never heard about, even if the USA were supposed to be the most advanced country in that sector.

As I was going from one stand to another, I saw a very big elbow in the air and kept looking at it not figuring out what it was. It was a duct! I talked to the owner of the company, called Ferraro, asked him what the elbow was doing. “Nuova teconologia”, he replied: instead of being made of sheet metal, it was made of a special foam faced on both sides with heavy aluminum facing. It was incredible, beautiful: clean air, easy to make, very light. I asked several questions to Mr. Ferraro, he had been working for 6 years but he couldn’t give me any catalog because he was afraid people would copy his work if he had printed catalogs.

Late that night I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, this had simply blown my mind. Next day I went back to him and we started getting along beautifully. I told him I was planning to quit Carrier and run my own business, so he offered me a job as a representative for the M.E. Eventually, he offered partnership including 5% in the present time and 25% would be commission, bonuses, salaries. In a year I would have reached 30% shareholder of the company. I accepted and told my wife, but she was not happy I was about to leave a brilliant position and start my own business at my age – but I was too determined.

I resigned from Career and started my company called Uniman, meaning United Manufacturers. It sounded like a conglomerate company, all tied together. I concentrated my effort, mainly in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iraq had just come out from a blood bath, led by two initially communist leaders who believed more in fascism than in communism. The two of them started fighting and eventually Saddam Hussein won and became the strong man of Iraq. The fascist government was called Bathi system – which was created by a Lebanese orthodox political science man, because of all the different sects in the M.E. who had zero power were the orthodox. By creating this type of policy, religion should not be involved in politics. Iraq and Syria immediately adopted the Bathi fascist system, because both leaders were minority Muslims (Saddam Hussein was a Sunni in a Shia majority; Assad was a Shia in a Sunni majority). Both leaders were not strong religious believers and this new policy was very convenient.

At the beginning, it was difficult to operate in Iraq, but soon after it started living in the biggest financial boom ever, especially because starting from zero prices started rocketing. Suddenly there was money to spend, all over the place. To compete against the big manufacturers in air conditioning (such as Carrier, Daikon etc.), I had to offer a complete system, which included not only the air conditioning, but also pumps, valves, controls, cooling towers; things that the major manufacturers could not offer. Since Baghdad had very few hotels there was a big boom for small-medium sized hotels (1-2-3 stars) to be built urgently and Uniman was the only company who could offer a complete system. Therefore, orders started coming from all different parts of the area and, having tremendous amount of experience with Carrier in air conditioning, it was easy for me to price a job by number of rooms and square meters of the job. I started getting one job after the other. The major manufacturers of air conditioning got the 5 stars hotel jobs, mostly government-owned; I took all the privately owned hotels.

To live peacefully in Iraq, there are things you have to watch out: never talk about religion, never talk about politics in the M.E. (especially mentioning the word Israel) and corruption, which was very severely punished. Iraqis can get up to death penalty and foreigners can get up to 10 years in prison, but there was an easy way to go around by inviting the owners of the engineers responsible to come to Italy, all paid as they strongly believed in presents, with the excuse of training. Presents could also be not very expensive (e.g. buying clothes for family members). On top of that, it was easy to bring presents into the country especially before Christmas-New Year. I remember finding a place in Como where a company had a carton full of old fashioned silk ties, in all possible shapes, for 1$ a piece; I bought all of them. One year, before Christmas, I stuffed my suitcase with all those ties and this made guard at the airport very suspicious. I told him it was just Christmas gifts, and offered him and his friends to take some ties. I therefore went easily. Iraqis go crazy for ties! Ties came in different shapes and colors, and my clients just went crazy trying to get all sort of different ties. Over 1000 ties went completely out of stock in a three days’ time.

I have enjoyed Iraq very much, especially knowing how the system works.

A special company that was part of Uniman is PAL (Polyurethane ALLuminium). It was love at first sight, I couldn’t believe the potential business of this product. The agreement between Ferraro and I was that he would take care of 100% of the Italian business, administration of the company, banks etc.; I would take charge of everything outside Italy. We worked very well together! He told me that I was the only person who got along with him.

Business was great and we started selling PAL ducting, except I needed a catalog to sell products! It was a continuous fight with him because he was afraid people would copy him. We just made one page catalog, Pre-insolated Ducting compared to sheet metal. Lots of people were very interested in our products. Business grew more and more. The only problem was Ferraro kept going to the bank: I asked for an explanation and I found out all the Italian clients were not paying! It was during Mani Pulite days. I suggested that anybody who wanted materials, they had to pay for their debts to save the cash flow. He said “Wait a minute, Italy is my responsibility”. He didn’t want me to interfere in his business, but the company was sinking in debt because the cash flow was not enough to expand. After two years of work, just before Christmas, I tried to have showdown with him and we decided to have our final discussion after the vacation. I wanted him to get back his money, otherwise we would’ve gone bankrupt. But he wouldn’t listen, so I decided to quit the partnership, asked for the money he owed me and of course he didn’t have money to pay me.

I still worked for the company and was in the process of seeking out a new panel for Pal that had improved smoke performance when subjected to fire. Some countries like the United States and the UK had very strict fire and smoke codes that would not allow the current PAL offering to be installed in commercial buildings. One day, in England, I discovered a company advertising a new foam called Phenolic that in case of fire would generate very limited smoke. I went immediately to England and made an agreement to develop a special panel for PAL. When I returned to Italy, the office was closed and the lights were off: I was advised by the secretary to visit Mr. Ferraro. He hugged me and started crying. The company had closed and declared bankruptcy. I felt so bad: sales were high, a new panel had been discovered and now the company was closing. Why was God making me suffer so much after giving everything for this company? For two weeks I didn’t’ go out of the house, hardly ate, didn’t shave or take a shower. Did not know what to do…

One day I woke up, shaved and got a shower, I got dressed and said to myself I was not going to give up. I wanted to launch a new company and yet didn’t have money and had some debts. I called Ferraro and informed him I was about to launch a new company. He wanted to be a partner in it, but this time it was split 70-30%. He accepted, put 30% of the money. I took a loan from Banco di Roma (corresponds to 200.000 euros). Che tipo di garanzia hai? My apartment would be around 60.000 euro, my car 5.000 euros and I had nothing else. I offered my wife as I had nothing to give, but they refused. I was able to get 50.000 euros and started a new company: PAL INTERNATIONAL (Polyurethane ALuminum), PI (just like π) to show that this company was an engineering company and make people think differently.

The new company I called KoolDuct, with a K because the manufacturing partner of the panel was a company called KoolTherm, to show my gratitude to them so I decided to keep the K. I started going around the M.E. to get a feeling if they were willing to pay a little extra for a better and safer panel, just about no smoke in case of fire. As I came back from the first trip, trying to promote Kool Duct panel, Ferraro came to Monza and asked me if I was interested in buying his 30% share; I accepted and asked him how much money he wanted to get me that share. I accepted to pay the whole capital, and now the company was 100% mine. What Ferraro did not know, is that Aramco – the biggest company in Saudi Arabia – just changed the laws and smoke emission became part of the requirement. The old style panel PIR was no longer acceptable, so I immediately went so Saudi Arabia and submitted my new panel, which was readily accepted. Within a week, I received my first big order of 1.4 million dollars, material, tools, training. That immediately brought enough capital for KoolDuct to operate.

I came back to Monza and the first thing I did was to look around for an office and a storage place (capannone) and the company started operating, being financially healthy.

One day I received a call from Baghdad, saying “Gino, come quickly to Baghdad. We have the perfect job for your ducting!” Few days later, I went to Baghdad and the project was Baghdad Ajad Railways Stations and Housing, 27 stations and 1.200 apartments, to install the ducting and connect the desert cooler. A desert cooler is a system where spray of water evaporating gives cooler and in a desert climate would be good enough instead of air conditioning. I had never worked in ducting until then, never quoted a job and the all of a sudden I found myself trying to get the biggest job ever. I started working day and night because I only had 72 hours to submit my quotations for the job. In those days, no company could have typewriters in their office, but only special shops had secretaries who could do typing, for security reasons. So, I worked 24-hours a day and finally went to one of the typing offices, a girl typed all of my quotations with several typing errors. I submitted my quotations. Once they open the envelopment, the winner was actually KoolDuct.

The job should been completed in two years’ time and I could bring 25 foreign workers. I rented an office in Baghdad and got a residence Visa for myself, which was very important to allow me get in and out of Iraq with no issue. The time was middle of December. By the time I organized myself, I went to the minister of transport and told him I needed an advance, in order to buy materials, bring labor from foreign countries, buy cars so I needed an advance payment to start operating. The minister enquired about the amount of money I actually needed, and I had amused to ask for 100 so that I could get 60; now I asked for $200,000 dolars. He was going to write a letter of credit to get PAL International the right advance.

24 hours later, the letter of credit was opened and I was ready to start planning the business. I rented a big villa, whose ground floor was made of offices and the upper floor was a living quarter. I bought a ticket, from Baghdad to Singapore and flew to Singapore and then to Manila; I found a company that organized labor workers, charged them to employ 23 people to live and start working in Baghdad by the end of January. I then flew from Manila to Tokyo, and finally to Seattle (Washington), where my wife and children were living. I spent Christmas holidays with them for 10 days. I placed several orders for panels, tools, accessories, to start operating by the end of January and I was back to Baghdad by Jan 10th to start working on the project.

The Filipino workers arrived in Baghdad, by the end of January. I also received three containers of materials from UK and Italy, bought a big truck and three cars to start working. Once we had trained the people in PAL Technology of duct manufacturing, I started having problems with the supervisors who were all Indians, working for an Indian company. They were happy to be in Iraq, making a good salary and getting a good house, and a nice car…but they were not very eagle to push the job and finish on time. But to get them payed I needed to approve the amount of work they had carried out. After a big fight with the supervisors, I went to the minister of transport and told him about my issues, as supervisors “Don’t let me work; they want to delay my work more and more so that they can stay in Iraq!”

At that time, the most important thing in Iraq was to complete the job on time: time was of great importance. The minister agreed with me and I used a very colloquial expression. I told him that if you want to improve your knowledge, you have to bring people who know more. Ahmar minnak (more donkey than you are): I immediately bit my tongue, because it could be misinterpreted. With the minister, he had a colleague of his who looked familiar to me, as I had seen him somewhere. He recognized me and asked me: nehna ham ir? (we are donkeys?) I had to apologize and tell him I didn’t mean that, I blamed it on my poor Arabic and said I only knew these very colloquial expressions. The two ministers started laughing and realized the gaffe I’d made and everything passed. Two days later, watching the TV news, I realized that the second man present was the Minister of Interior.

Finally, the minister of transport informed me that he would come to bring the supervisors and give them a lecture. He actually arrived, very upset and gathered the supervisors and told them “Anyone who delays this project for whatever reason, will be immediately fired and sent home within 48 hours. I don’t want ever to have Mr. Vincenti come to me and say that you are delaying the job”. He stopped there and left. The job started going at a high speed.

I designed different forms and doing the cutting in mass production. It became very efficient on the job.

The KoolDuct phenolic panel was little bit different from the PIR panel, in that the thickness of the panel could not be maintained as close as the previous one, which was around two millimeters, while the phenolic one was around five millimeters. All the aluminum accessories had to be changed. A new design of duct connections was required for the phenolic panel and finally, to make the ducting cheaper and faster to manufacture, I came up with the new line of accessories which I called tigers: tiger closures, tiger connections, tiger supports etc. They were all invented and patented by KoolDuct and are still presently used worldwide.

The manufacturer of the panel was a British company, which – with my support – developed a panel strong and flexible enough to become a very successful panel used worldwide today. Kingspan, the new owner of phenolic technology, looked at PAL International with envy, because the market for insulation was up and down, but sales of Kool Duct were always on the rise, every single year. They were convinced that, with their big organization, they could even triple the sells of our relatively small company.

Finally, Kinsgpan acquired PAL International and I worked for them for two years as a marketing sales manager. I eventually decided to resign and retire.

One incredible thing that a small idea from Ferraro, who was an iron-minded vision, went bankrupt with a brilliant idea. I realized how brilliant that idea was, and used it and developed it into the most modern and advanced technology of ducting in the world.

Authored by Eng. Giovanni Vincenti

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