Dad Lied; Mother Not Dead

Chuck Volanti remembers his mother sitting on his bed and teaching him to whistle. He remembers how safe he felt in her arms one day when a playground swing cut his finger and she carried him to the doctor.

Then the screen goes blank.

When Chuck was 6, his mother went away. His father told him she had taken sick and died, and for 48 years he had no reason to doubt it.

On Jan. 17, he got a call from a nursing home in Ohio. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” the woman said, “but we have your mother here.”

“Sure, you do,” Chuck replied.

Four months later, Chuck still finds it hard to believe. He has a real live mother, a newfound clan of relatives - and a stack of documents exposing a dark secret his father carried to the grave.

In October 1946, Sam Volanti had his 25-yearold wife, Mary, committed to a mental hospital; the next year, he married another woman. Despite evidence she didn’t belong there, Mary remained institutionalized until 1974, when she was transferred to a nursing home.

This past week, just in time for Mother’s Day, Chuck flew his 74-year-old mom from Ohio to a nursing home near his home in Olympia.

He’s angry at his father, who died in 1991. He’s sad about the lost years. But above all, Chuck Volanti is determined to make the rest of his mother’s life as full of love as the last half-century was empty.

“I had a life,” he says. “She had none.”

Chances tough from start

The deck was stacked against Mary Volanti from the beginning.

She was the third of four children in a poor, abusive family in Cleveland. Her mother died when she was 9; her father drank heavily and beat the kids, says Mary’s sister, Irene Skrdla.

Perhaps, Mary thought, she had found an escape when she moved in, at 17, with Sam Volanti, a 25-year-old barber. She gave birth to Chuck the next year.

Sam would hit Mary, and Mary would fight back, Irene says. In 1945, Sam filed for divorce, accusing Mary of cruelty and being overprotective of 5-year-old Chuck. Mary filed her own papers, accusing Sam of womanizing and leaving home for extended periods.

The divorce was not granted, and the next year, Sam filed new papers asking that Mary be committed. Two doctors signed an affidavit saying Mary showed signs of schizophrenia; court records suggest the doctors based their diagnosis largely on Sam’s description of Mary’s behavior.

In his ruling, the judge said he had reservations about the doctors’ testimony but nonetheless ordered Mary committed to the Cleveland State Hospital.

Chuck recalls sitting in his mother’s lap for a long time one day, then watching as she was driven away.

“That was the last time I ever saw her,” he says. “Some time later, my Dad said she was dead, she died in the hospital - and that was it.”

Irene was living in Florida at the time. When she returned to Ohio a few years later, she was appalled to learn what had happened to her sister.

Visiting once a month or so, Irene watched Mary’s condition deteriorate.

“If you were sent there and stayed there two days, you’d be nuts, too,” she says. “She wasn’t crazy. But after a while, I think she just gave up.”

When Irene moved back to Florida, Mary had no visitors for years.

In 1974, the mental hospital closed and Mary was transferred to a nursing home in Sandusky, Ohio. The document authorizing her transfer said simply “Condition: Improved.”

By then, Irene was back in Ohio and would take her sister on weekly outings. They were bright spots in an otherwise bleak existence.

“We went into a Howard Johnson’s one time,” Irene recalls. “I got her a banana split. She looked at me and said, ‘This is the best place there is, isn’t it?”’

In 1993 Mary was moved again, to the Edison Health Care Center in Milan, a small town 50 miles west of Cleveland. By then, she’d had a stroke. Her right side was paralyzed, and she could barely speak.

Irene, with health problems of her own, lost contact with Mary.

That’s when Carolyn Walton, the nursing home’s activities director, noticed Mary and wondered why she never had visitors. Walton liked Mary - sad and lonely, yet feisty, too.

“She was a tough bird,” Walton says. “She had stamina. I love the ones who are like that. They let us know, ‘I’m still alive and I’m still worth listening to.’ That was the case with Mary. There was something in her eyes that let you know there’s a lot more inside than met the eye.”

In Mary’s records, Walton noticed a reference to a son. When she asked about him, Mary said his name was Charles. She even knew his birthday.

With the help of a co-worker who researches genealogy, Walton located a computer disk with nationwide phone listings. They found three Charles Volantis. None was the right one, but the third happened to be Chuck’s cousin, also named Charles.

He told Walton that Chuck lived in Olympia. When Walton tried directory assistance and was told the number was unlisted, she persuaded the operator to leave a message for Chuck to call her.

A few hours later, he did.

A few days later, he was still in a daze, walking around the house and saying, “I have a mommy. I have a mommy.”

Family secret

In 1946, after his mother was committed, Chuck went to live with his grandparents. They were poor, in their 70s, spoke only Italian, and had already raised seven children.

He saw his father once or twice a month, when Sam came by to pay for Chuck’s keep. He’d often slip Chuck a quarter while he was there. It is Chuck’s fondest memory of his father, which isn’t saying much.”When I’d see my Dad, I’d say ‘Here comes two bits,’ ” Chuck recalls. “We really didn’t have a lot of a relationship.”As he got older, Chuck would occasionally ask his father where his mother was buried. The answer was always the same: It happened a long time ago, and the hospital took care of it. End of discussion.

Other relatives who knew the family secret kept silent in deference to Sam. Mary’s side of the family lost contact with Chuck after his mother was committed.

“Sam was in control,” Irene said. “We were told to keep away.”

After high school, he joined the Air Force and went to Alaska, where he married. He and his wife had two boys of their own, returning to Ohio for six years before moving to western Washington in 1970. They divorced, and Chuck married his current wife, Judy, in 1986.

They live in a two-story home on an acre and a half outside Olympia. Chuck, silver-haired at 55, is a midlevel manager with the state Department of Employment Security. Judy is a seamstress.

Carolyn Walton calls them “two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet” and believes there’s more to this mother-son reunion than luck.

“I still contend God would not have brought us so far not to have it turn out the way it did,” she says.