Lucy Gellman Photo
Severini.
Egidio Severini has never turned down an opportunity for honest work. Born during the second World War in Cheli, Italy, he had his first informal job ferrying wine from an Osteria to his family’s home, where his mother would mix it with water for him and his brother’s dinner. When the family decided to come to the U.S. in 1954, he found that part of being a young immigrant in total “culture shock” was getting a job — first a newspaper route, and then as a cobbler. By high school, he was on his way to becoming a mechanic.
When a colleague insisted that Severini try barbering, instead of the career as a mechanic he had planned for himself, he put down his working gloves and car parts, and tried it out immediately. He hasn’t looked back since.
On a recent episode of WNHH radio’s “Open for Business,” the Independent had a chance to sit down with Severini, who owns Egidio’s Hair Styles on Orange Street, and chat about his journey to U.S. citizenship, and business history in New Haven. Excerpts of that interview are below.
Tell me a little about your childhood, before coming to the U.S.
I was born in Italy in a medieval town, and our family goes back to 1132 [A.D.]. The name of the town is Cheli. It’s in the Marche region, north of Rome about three hours, three and a half hours, near the Adriatic Coast. I was born during the second World War, and I do not remember the war, but I remember after the war. Things were real tough. Rough, I should say.
What was it like after the war? You said it was a medieval town — was everything still intact?
Yes, but the countryside was devastated. We’re right in the eastern slopes of the Apennines — it’s a lot of mountains and valleys and rivers. What happened is that they blew all the bridges. The town’s connection to the outside world was almost … the railroad tracks were all blown up, so we couldn’t use them. The economy of the area just died. The only people that did fairly well was the farmers, because they grew their own stuff. We had to leave because of economic reasons.
Do you remember the journey to the United States?
Yes … my only cruise! We came over on the Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956 off of Nantucket in a maritime accident. It was the first time that I bought a beer! I was 11 years old … and the bartender gave me a little beer!
So we landed in New York in May, on the west side around pier 59. One of the greatest memories is that when we went by the Statue of Liberty and you see the Empire State Building and all of that … but what impressed me the most was the west side highway, the cars on it. I’ve never seen so many cars. The town [where I grew up] was a walled city, pretty much everything inside the walls — stores, ostiaries, restaurants.
Inside the studio.
Were you in New York, or did you come to Connecticut?
Came directly to Connecticut. That’s where my uncle and aunt were living. Winchester Avenue. They both worked at Winchester Firearms.
And is that where your dad ended up working?
No. He ended up working at Cott Beverages. It was a firm that produced soda pop in Fair Haven. It was all manual work, and after a few years he got promoted from loading food boxes to loading empty boxes! But it was a living. Everybody worked together.
My mother worked in a dress shop, in the garment industry … which no longer exists in New Haven. Alba Dress Company.
Did you find a community here?
No. I was placed at Winchester and Bassett street, and I went to Bassett Junior High for three years. It was not very good memories there.
Were the kids mean?
Yes, and disrespectful towards the teachers. In Italy, the teacher was like an emperor. If you stepped out of line, he made you know it. If you went back and told your parents, you got spanked. So the teacher was very important.
As a kid in middle school and high school, did you work as well?
Yes. I used to have a paper route first, a morning paper route. Then it became a hassle … we stopped that and my dad came home, he said “you’re starting to work tomorrow at the shoemaker,” which was also Italian. So I worked in the afternoons between 3 and 5 p.m. I was like 13, 14 years old, and my pay was two dollars a week. My brother … took over my paper route for a while. Basically, everybody had to work to get started. My mother was the treasurer of the family: She paid all the bills. The two dollars I made a week … I gave it to her.
So how did you make the jump, then, from being a student apprenticing with a shoemaker and going to Hillhouse [for High School] to cutting hair?
When we moved to West Haven [in 1960], I didn’t work for the shoemaker anymore. He was in New Haven. I was graduating from high school, and I liked to work with mechanical things. We had a close friend, his name was Joseph Tabano, he was a barber. One day he said to me: “Egidio, why do you want to become a mechanic? Your hands are always going to be dirty. Why don’t you go to barber school?” That’s how I made the jump. It’s been fun. He gave me my first job in North Haven — he had a place on Route 5.
After he moved from there, I was offered a job in West Haven, and I worked in West Haven for six years.
Inside the studio.
And when you were learning, were you cutting men’s hair, women’s hair?
Men’s hair. The school was in Hartford, and we had to commute by train five days a week. It was fun. We were 18 years old, 19 years old, and it’s right behind where the Civic Center is. Was on Ann Street, Ann and Trumbull. I spent more time in the pool room than I did [in class], but it was fun. We learned. The school was pretty big. It had … about 40 or 50 students in two different classes.
Obviously, it’s a skill. It’s difficult cutting hair — it’s not as easy as it looks. Especially in those days, where everything was scissors, very little machine work like you do now. It took about a year or so before you really felt comfortable.
And now that technology has changed …
The business changed dramatically in the ‘60s with the Beatles revolution. Long hair, and then … men started doing perms. For a long time, we were doing all these crazy, frizzy perms. Then it started becoming more normal. We got into colors. As time progressed, we started doing more and more women’s work.
When did you buy the New Haven shop?
1967. It was an established shop, cost me $8,000. I overpaid at the time, but I wasn’t happy over there where I was. And then this building [his current location] became available in ‘95. The building was repossessed by People’s Bank, and it became available.
And what has it been like working here since?
Good! Fun. I enjoy my clientele, the ones I have left. It’s not so much the money anymore, it’s the social aspect of the business for me … I still have some [clientele] from high school. Old friends. Mostly in New Haven … attorneys, people from the SNET, the phone company, FBI agents who are retired. The mayor of New Haven, Ben DiLieto, came to us before he was mayor. A U.S. representative like [Robert] Giaimo. A nice group.
You mentioned having culture shock when you were young. Do you still feel that way sometimes?
No. Actually, I had a culture shock when I went back in ’93 in Italy — how things had changed. Even the idioms and the language were changed, the Italian. After a few weeks you start feeling comfortable again.
Are you happy that your family came over?
Oh yes. Great place. I could never have done there, at that time, the opportunity that our family had here. We had to work for it, you know. It wasn’t handed to us.
The conversation now around immigration is very different. What advice would you give people if they’re starting a business?
The opportunity to be able to find some kind of work, an opportunity where … places where they come from, they don’t have the opportunity. I’m not against immigration at all. They say about illegall immigration … I can’t make an opinion on it. If we had the opportunity to be illegals, and the opportunity to come here, I’m sure we would have done it. If you’re desperate … they don’t want to travel 1,000 miles on foot. It’s like what’s going on in Syria. They have to.
This interview is part of WNHH radio’s “Open For Business” series on immigrant business owners and leaders in the nonprofit community. “Open for Business” is sponsored by Frontier Communications. Frontier is proud to be Connecticut’s hometown provider of TV and internet for your home and business. Their phone number is 1.888.Frontier and their website is Frontier.com. To listen to the entire interview, click on or download the audio above, or check out WNHH’s new podcast “Elm City Lowdown” on iTunes or Soundcloud.
This man is no ordinary barber. He is the barber to all the New Haven lawyers, his office is down the street from the Courthouse and next door to what used to be Jacobs, Grudberg, Belt and Dow, not sure what they call themselves these days, Ira Grudburg moved down the street. He was also the barber for the Jacobs bail bond guys, before they got busted by the Feds. He knows the dirt on everyone in town, everyone confided in this man. I used to be a loyal customer before the Feds put me out of business. He is a perfectionist. Ciao Edgidio
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