Retired Muse nurse looks back fondly on long career
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a daily monthlong series about the people who live in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, in recognition of America’s 250th anniversary.
One of the best days of Argia Iannarelli’s life was a wedding.
Not her own wedding – Iannarelli never married – but the day her brother, Dominic Iannarelli, tied the knot stands out in her long memory.
“All the relatives were young and they came from all around,” said Iannarelli, 85, of Muse. “We had a big wedding at the club. You had an afternoon reception, you had a night, the night reception. It was a lot of fun.”
Dominic Iannarelli was like a father to Argia, Iannarelli said. He was “very, very handsome,” Iannarelli smiled, 11 years her senior, and born in Italy before their parents, Conchetta and Joseph, immigrated to the United States from the Abruzzi region and settled in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Iannarelli’s mother was a homemaker whose pizzelles Iannarelli still remembers fondly. Her father was a miner (his brother, her uncle, was killed in the mines) who enjoyed playing cards at the Muse Italian Club.
When Iannarelli was 14, her father was killed on his way home from that club.
“He went to the club to play cards with my godfather. They were walking home. He was killed by a drunk driver,” said Iannarelli, who spent an early afternoon cleaning and decorating her parents’ grave at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Canonsburg ahead of Memorial Day weekend.
After her father’s death, Iannarelli’s brother, Dominic, the one whose wedding was quite the event, became her father figure.
“I can’t say that he treated me like a daughter, but he treated me so good,” she said. “He was always there for me.”
Iannarelli was a member of the last class to graduate from Cecil High School before it became part of the Canon-McMillan School District.
“There were only 60 or 70 people in our class, and we knew each other. We grew up together,” she said. “And everybody in the neighborhood at that time knew each other, and everybody watched out for each other.”
Following high school graduation, Iannarelli studied nursing at Braddock General Hospital. She began and ended her 40-year nursing career at St. Clair Hospital.
“When I went to school, it was really nurses, teachers,” Iannarelli laughed. “I became a head nurse … about a year or so after I started nursing.”
Iannarelli worked on the ground floor (which no longer exists) for many years, where she said she and her staff – she used the word “wonderful” to describe her colleagues – got to know their patients.
“All my staff was great. They were just great to the patients, and people asked to come there when they came back to the hospital, so that was very gratifying,” she said.
Iannarelli was married to her work. During her career, she said, there was no time for hobbies; when she fell into bed at night, she was exhausted. But as she climbed up the ladder – she eventually was promoted to Director of Emergency Critical Care – she incorporated travel, her favorite pastime, into her lifestyle. Together with friends and family (she has 10 nieces), Iannarelli has been everywhere from Las Vegas to the Canary Islands to Italy, and joyfully recalls the places she’s seen.
“We had a great time in Italy with my relatives,” said Iannarelli.
While Italy was a pilgrimage, a trip to South America was a nightmare, of sorts.
“We came into Buenos Aires and there were, the streets were lined with soldiers with guns. They were going through a revolution. We were riding into it,” Iannarelli laughed.
Always, Iannarelli was glad to return to the small corner of the world she has always called “home.”
“It’s still a small town,” she said, though it’s grown and changed drastically in her lifetime. Iannarelli’s noticed other changes in the world – this isn’t, she said, the United States in which she grew up – but she’s hopeful today’s youth will look back on this place and feel the goodness of a life well lived and know the bond of strong family ties, like she does. There’s something to consider in planning for that type of reflection decades down the road, and it begins with career.
“Kids are making decisions based on salary, I think,” said Iannerelli. “They have to be happy in their work rather than just worry about the salary.”