A 14-year-old boy grabs his accordion and heads outside to play for a while. He heads for the backyard of his house where his younger sister Ida and his father join him. The boy’s younger brother, Bill, comes up to the window overlooking the backyard to see the musical trio forming. The young boy plays a fast pace and lively tune on the accordion while his father plays along on the madrilène; his sister sits by smiling with the young boy, enjoying the music together with her family.
The young boy grew up to be a music teacher for nearly 50 years, a member of the Southwest Community Concert Band, a husband, a father, a grandfather (Poppie as he is known to his grandchildren), and soon to be great-grandfather. This young boy grew up to be Gino Pacetti.
For Gino Pacetti, now 80-years-old and a resident of Oak Lawn, Ill., music has played a predominate role throughout his life, and still plays a role today.
At the age of seven, Gino Pacetti picked up the accordion. It was the first of several instruments he would pick up. He would practice and play as often as he could as the memory of his younger brother by eight years, Bill Pacetti, recalls. However the backyard was not his only spot for musical performances.
“He would play at all of the Italian parties and family events,” said Bill Pacetti. “I remember one party when my dad picked up a broom and dragged the handle of it across the floor to make a brrrt-brrt-brrt sound. Then Gino would begin to play the accordion to the beat of the broom and everyone would sing along.”
Gino Pacetti’s interest in music continued during his time at St. Rita High School. He was a part of marching band and concert band until his graduation in 1953. In the marching band he played a contraption of bells that would sit around his waist. Bill Pacetti nicknamed it a transportable xylophone but with bells. He also mastered the flute, the instrument he played for years even after retirement.
St. Rita High School also holds a special place for Gino Pacetti because it’s where he met his wife Patricia (Pat) Pacetti.
“My brother was the manager of St. Rita’s band and so I was around with him quite often. One day I was out with a friend and Gino asked me out. I thought at the time ‘Oh…not too bad,’ so I went out with him and that was it,” said Pat Pacetti.
While Gino Pacetti was working on his master’s degree in music education at VanderCook College of Music, he and Pat continued to date. He waited for three years until he proposed to her. They eventually married on June 22, 1957. To this day they have been married for nearly 58 years.
Gino Pacetti cares so deeply for his wife that on each monthly anniversary he gives her a red rose to mark another month they get to spend together as husband and wife.
Following graduate school, Gino Pacetti began his career as a music teacher: 14 years at Mendel Catholic High School and 37 years at North Palos School District 117.
Gino Pacetti is known amongst his friends and family as a very caring, passionate and driven man who never backs down from any challenge or task handed to him.
For example, when he began student teaching at Mendel High School, there was no music program in existence. While he was student teaching, he created an entirely new music program. Eventually he became the full-time director of Mendel’s band program.
Gino Pacetti also pushed students to be the best that they can be and was always aiming for perfection. Bill Pacetti remembers a time when he went to visit his older brother during a marching band rehearsal at Mendel.
“I went in to watch them (the marching band) practice and it was perfect. He could have been a drill sergeant. It was so perfect that I just saw the students as a college or military marching band. The students respected and listened to his every word and executed every move he told them. He had a snappy group. I remember walking out of there and said ‘Oh yeah…they are good,’” said Bill Pacetti.
Gino Pacetti has taught so many students that some even went on to bigger things. Some of his former students included John and Chuck Panozzo from the band Styx and the sergeant of arms of U.S. Congress’, Terry Gainer, wife Irena.
Gino Pacetti’s educational background did not stay inside school walls but seeped into his family life as well. All four of his children played a musical instrument. Looking back on it as adults his children enjoyed the music experience, but as a child growing up with a music teacher as a father was a tad rough.
“It stunk as a kid because he forced us to go to summer band camp,” said Jim Pacetti, the youngest of Gino Pacetti’s children, who grew up playing the trombone. “He used to ask us at camp ‘Did you practice?’ My response was ‘You were at the house with me, what do you think?’ The answer was usually no. So that was rough.”
Jim Pacetti also recalls when he and his siblings would have days off from St. Germaine Catholic School, they spent them in the classroom where their father taught. And whatever lesson or homework Gino Pacetti assigned to his students that day in class, his children had to work on it as well.
He could have been a drill sergeant. It was so perfect that I just saw the students as a college or military marching band. The students respected and listened to his every word and executed every move he told them. He has a snappy group. -Bill Pacetti, 72
“He was strict in a lot of things,” said Pat Pacetti. “But he was there to love them (his children) and he always was there for them and supported them through everything.”
Despite never really having a day off from school and being forced to attend band camp, Jim Pacetti does recall some fun, yet educational trips his father would plan.
It was a yearly tradition for the family to pile into a small car with three in the front and three in the back and a pop up camper and travel from coast to coast. Each family vacation would be planned to a T, for Gino was the master organizer. However there was a particular reason for Gino to break his timed schedule, forts.
“I think we saw every fort on the east side of the United States, so now we goof around with the forts. So when I took my family on vacation to Jamestown, Virginia I called my dad to let him know that I was following his footsteps and going into a fort,” said Jim Pacetti. “The trips were educational sure, but they were fun as kids.”
After retiring in 1993, Gino Pacetti did not let his music background fade away.
“Aaron, our son, recruited Gino to join the Southwest Community Concert Band,” said Barb Nykasa who has known Gino Pacetti for 45 years. “It gave him a chance to continue his music even after retirement.”
For 17 years, Gino Pacetti was an active member of the Southwest Band, playing in numerous concerts with them and even putting on a Santa outfit during every Christmas concert and recruiting 25 audience members to come up and help play the hand bells and conduct a sing-along with everyone else to classic Christmas songs.
Due to shoulder issues and arthritic hands, Gino Pacetti had to retire from the Southwest Band in 2014.
“When his hands got worse he figured it was time to quit,” said Pat Pacetti. “He misses it but he hopes to return.”
Despite his retirement from the Southwest Band, music continues to play a dominant role in Gino Pacetti’s life. For example there is an old dark wooden piano in his basement. It may be covered on the top with numerous family photos, but Gino still returns to it to play a tune that can be heard across the house.
No arthritic hands can stop his musical instincts. Sheet music can be found in various drawers and desktops around his home, even sometimes in unexpected places like the laundry room. He attends the Southwest Band rehearsals and concerts in support of his former group and attends his granddaughter’s choir performances. He even hums or taps out a tune every possible moment he can get. He is a man that can never sit still.
Gino Pacetti is more than a husband, a father, and a Poppie. He is the Southside Music Man.
