Lebanon
Even while hospitalized during a seven-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, DePalo, who died Sept. 20, 2016, at age 94, never stopped giving.
“I’d go in to see him, and the first thing he’d do was offer me his food,” said Joe DePalo, the youngest of his two living sons. “Even when he couldn’t talk, those were his gestures. He was just that kind of guy.”
DePalo was perhaps most munificent with his singing voice, enjoying a professional lounge-style career in the 1950s and ‘60s before volunteering to sing at prisons, nursing homes and elsewhere later in life.
A World War II veteran, DePalo eventually supported his family as a skilled carpenter and electrician.
He was never happier than while singing classics by artists such as Frank Sinatra and Perry Como — or the two songs New York-based Cobal Records released as a two-sided single in 1960, Time and Time Again and Oh Rosa Mia.
While raising several young boys, DePalo and his wife, Rachel, lived in New York City for 16 years while Frank pursued his singing career.
“People said he was better than Sinatra,” said Rachel DePalo, Frank’s wife of nearly 70 years. “He had a naturally beautiful voice that poured out of him. It was like his heart was pouring out of him.”
The son of an Italian-immigrant father, Frank DePalo grew up in a small apartment in downtown White River Junction. He played basketball at Hartford High School, graduating in 1940, all the while sharpening his vocal skills in his own.
Drafted into World War II, DePalo joined the U.S. Coast Guard and was deployed to Japan, where he was part of a team escorting battle ships. When home for the holiday season, DePalo sang at concerts staged at Hartford High, then earned weekly gigs at Lake Morey Resort when he came home for good.
He courted Rachel Lessard, then a senior at West Lebanon High School, in classic fashion during a school dance in 1946.
“He was really skinny and his clothes were too big for him, but I thought he looked familiar,” Rachel recalled. “Only later did I realize I’d seen him sing (at Hartford High). He asked me to dance, but I didn’t know how to dance. I said, ‘Please find somebody else’ and went into the bathroom. I told my friends to come knock on the door after he’d found someone else. Well, some time went by, and finally there was a knock on the door. It was Frank with a hot dog and a Coke. He ended up driving me home that night, which my father wasn’t too happy about.”
The two were married that same year and — at Rachel’s insistence that he take advantage of the G.I. Bill’s education benefits — he enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
Hitching a ride on a fruit truck to visit on weekends, DePalo eventually tired of being alone during his studies. “One night I woke up to pebbles at my window. It was Frank and he said, ‘I’m not going back unless you come with me,’ ” Rachel said. “He convinced me to move to Boston with him.”
The couple’s first son, Francis, was born in 1947. After one more year at the conservatory, the family moved to New York in pursuit of his singing career, venturing to Brooklyn in an old Plymouth they’d gotten from DePalo’s father.
“We sold it for the first month’s rent,” Rachel recalled.
DePalo worked as an usher at Paramount Theater and as a singing waiter at restaurants, eventually getting regular work as a singer at 802 Club, named for its address on Brooklyn’s 64th Street.
Money remained tight, but DePalo’s generous spirit never wavered.
“He came home one night and I said, ‘How much did you make? We need to go grocery shopping.’ He said, ‘Sorry, honey, there was a black man at work who lost everything in a house fire. I gave him all that I had,’ ” Rachel said.
Harder times hit in 1954, two years after the couple’s second son, Peter, was born. Francis came home sick from school one day and died at a hospital the next morning, paralyzed by a sudden case of bulbar polio.
“Frank was so devastated, it was as though I’d lost him, too,” Rachel said. “He blamed himself for not being there the night Francis was sick. I told him over and over again that it wasn’t his fault, but he got so bad that I almost took Peter and left. After that he started to become himself again.”
DePalo’s contacts in the performance industry eventually led him to a deal with small label Cobal Records, with which he cut a seven-inch, double-sided single in 1960. It featured DePalo singing two songs written by his friend, Tony Parisi.
The “A” side, Time and Time Again, highlights DePalo’s wistful croon over light orchestral arrangements, while the record’s “B” side, Oh Rosa Mia is an emotionally charged ballad flexing DePalo’s range over violin and trumbone.
While proud of the work, the DePalos never benefitted financially from its release.
“(The management firm) got all the records and $7,000 of our own money, and we were supposed to get all but a percentage of the sales returns,” Rachel recalled. “We never saw any of the returns, never even saw the record again for 40 years when one of our relatives tracked it down.”
With Peter about to enter high school, the DePalos returned to the Upper Valley, leaving the limelight of New York’s entertainment scene and turning to religion for guidance.
“One day he said, ‘From now on, I’m only singing for the Lord’ and I helped him throw his (recording) tape into the garbage,” Rachel said.
They moved into a home on Seminary Hill, stationed in front of small rental cabins then owned by Rachel’s family. An ardent handy man, DePalo renovated the cabins on his own and went on to make a living as a general contractor.
Joining the worship team at Grace Outreach (now Wellsping Worship) in West Lebanon, DePalo performed at numerous church functions as well as weddings, funerals, nursing homes and prisons throughout his later life, performing with the same smile and charm he exuded in his younger days.
“There were times when we went through a lot together — 70 years is a long time,” Rachel said. “But Frank always had his voice. It was the way he gave back to people.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.