Memories of Being Maltese in San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s by Charles J. Vella, PhD
I was born in Naxxar, Malta and was baptized Carmel Joseph Aloysius Vella on December 28, 1944, at the Church of the Nativity of Mary in that town. Mom told the story that, I was such a beautiful baby, a woman gave her a flower for people to look at instead of me, because being looked at so much was not good for a baby. She also related that they used to pad my head with cotton because I was always running into things. I spoke fluent Maltese until I came to the United States but managed not to hold on to it as an adult. My family emigrated from Malta on the liner SS Brasil, which left on June 4, 1950 from Valletta, Malta. My brother Lou and I were carried up the gang plank of the ship by two sailors. Our ship stopped at Halifax, Canada on June 14th to unload passengers and then continued on to New York, where we got off on June 16th. We travelled by train to San Francisco a few days later. Our emigration was sponsored by my uncle Frank Vella with whom we lived in the flat on Mendel Street for our first few months in the US. I grew up having my father?s brothers--Frank, Joe, and Manual--and their families nearby. There were lots of cousins around. We grew up as kids in the Bayview district or neighborhood of San Francisco, which in the 1950s, was the Maltese-Italian area of San Francisco. There were occasional ethnic tensions; being called a "Mali" was the equivalent of insulting Italians as "Wops". I attended Burnett Elementary School in Bayview from kindergarten (September 1950) through the third grade (June 1954). The school district changed my first name from Carmello to Charles. With many other Maltese children, I then attended St. Boniface Catholic School in Downtown San Francisco from the third through the seventh grade, after which I went to high school. I had to repeat the third grade for three months, because of previously having had too few religious classes. Ironically I ended up in a Franciscan seminary for high school. Life in Bayview centered around St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church, at 1515 Oakdale Avenue, with its daily mass, marriages, baptisms and funerals. Built in 1874 and remodeled in 1922-23 as a combined church and social hall by members of the area?s Maltese population, the church building is still used as a church, although in the late 1950s the Maltese congregation sold their old church and built a new St. Paul of the Shipwreck in the Bret Harte neighborhood near the old Candlestick Baseball Park. St. Paul was the Maltese National Catholic church in Bayview, where Father Theophilus Cachia OFM and, then Father Benny Bavaro OFM, were the pastors. The fact that they were both Franciscan priests influenced my later vocation to the Catholic Franciscan religious order. Catholic boys at that time were expected to be altar boys, serving the priest at Mass. For years, I attended Saturday morning catechism class and then the altar boy meeting, followed by the regular baseball game across the street at Burnett Elementary School. Dad would give my two brothers, Lou and Tony, and I our 5 cents weekly allowance before Saturday classes and we would spend it immediately at the corner store on candy. My family regularly attended Sunday Mass, as well as Easter and Christmas celebrations at St. Paul. I was a regular altar boy from age eight through my seminary days. I once calculated that I attended daily Mass from the time I was 10 to the age of 24 (1953 to 1968), including doing occasional marriages on weekends and funeral Masses during the week (which gave me several hours out of school, but being occasionally stressful as, more than once, an emotionally distraught wife tried to open her husband?s coffin and had to be restrained). We altar boys obviously would occasionally finish off the altar wine in the cruets used at Mass. Fr. Theophilus would sometimes have us in the rectory breakfast nook for coffee (served in bowls) and cookies. My friend Mona Vella reminisced: ?Regarding our attending Mass, I remember attending daily Mass every summer morning, as a lot of us Maltese kids did. After Mass, we all met in the little garden outside of the sacristy and first Fr. Theophilus and later Fr. Benny would give all of us hot chocolate and donuts. I, for one, really looked forward to that treat.? Her brother Eligio Vella clarified some details for me about Mass at St. Paul's on Saturdays in the summer. Like me, he was also an altar boy. He said that it was not coffee which was served to the altar boys after Mass, but hot cocoa, made and served by Cookie, Fr. Theophilus' brother, who was also the priests' housekeeper and the church organist. Fr. Benny would give Eligio money to go down to Ruby Bakery at the corner and buy donuts for the altar boys after Mass to go along with the hot cocoa, because after they ate there would be an altar boy meeting. Eligio would save some donuts for his sisters Lorna and Mona when they walked home. Eligio also remembered that Fr. Benvenute Calleja was in charge of the bingo and the soccer club at the church. Bingo was a weekly event in the church hall and Eligio?s father Abraham Vella was the caller. It was always well-attended by the parish families and helped to raise money for the parish, money which was eventually used to help purchase the property on 3rd and Jamestown, upon which the new St. Paul?s parish church was built. There was also a soccer team, of which Eligio was a member for the boys of the par-ish. They would play against teams from other parishes or Catholic schools. The parents of the players, as well as other parishioners, would attend the games to see the St. Paul's team play. Every summer Fr. Benny would take all the altar boys for a day at the Marin swimming pool resort. Fr. Benny eventually had St. Paul of the Shipwreck Catholic Elementary School built (with teaching nuns from Malta) and would often drive the school bus. They originally started with only the first few grades and kept adding grades for several years. I was always one grade ahead and so never attended it; but my brothers did. The Maltese nuns were as tough as the Dominican nuns at St. Boniface. In this latter group, Sister Theodora drilled holes in her yard stick so that it went faster. If you misbehaved, they sent you to the first-grade class and whacked your lower calves for punishment. Family events included watching the Maltese soccer group play in Golden Gate Park, picnics at beaches down the peninsula from San Francisco, movies at the Bayview movie theater (which still gave out dinner plates as prizes), ice cream at Garret?s on Alemany Boulevard by Balboa High School & Mitchell?s, fishing on the piers, playing sports at various playgrounds, and buying used comic books on Mission Street. Halloween always involved trick or treating for hours in the neighborhood. One night a 1000 lb. bull escaped from the nearby butcher town section and brazenly walked down our street, to be killed by policemen in front of our home and trucked back to the slaughterhouse. What excitement for a 10-year-old! Our family was connected to other Maltese families including Vellas, Callejas, Pisanis, Muscats, Deguaras, Vassallos, etc. The other core Maltese institution in San Francisco was the Maltese American Social Club on Oakdale Street with its annual children?s Christmas party and summer Maltese picnic. The Club had routine social events, having a bar and poker tables, as well as pastizzi being available. There were always several groups of older men playing poker. During that time, only men were allowed to be members of the Club so, unlike now, one would not find women there at all. The only time women were present was at the dinner-dances, when the whole family was invited including children. Children were even allowed on the dance floor as long as they were dancing and not running around. We all learned the social graces at those events. At Christmas they always had a Santa Claus handing out presents to all of us kids. The annual Maltese Picnic, has lasted for more than 70 years, at parks down the peninsula. My Vella family has also had an annual summer picnic for the last 60 years. My family lived in the Bayview district of San Francisco, first, from 1951, on Kirkwood Street and then from 1956 on Quint Street, then finally moving across the Bay to San Leandro in 1962, where my parents lived for more than 50 years. When we lived on Kirkwood Street my Uncle Frank lived nearby as did my childhood friends Eligio, Lorna, and Mona Vella. St. Paul?s was only five blocks away. Bayview had its share of Maltese and Italian busi-nesses. There was Solari's, which was Italian-owned, and very close to where we lived, and then there was another Italian-owned grocery further up 3rd Street, close to Palou. Because few people had cars and parking was impossible anyway, the one close to Palou would pack your groceries in a box or boxes and deliver them to your house later in the day. The only Maltese-owned stores was Muscat Market on San Bruno Avenue and the Calleja furniture store on Revere Avenue. This was in the days when the milk company delivered bottles of milk to your front door. My cousin Mary Vella Rummelhart reminisced: ?I always felt that what was strong in the Bayview was the feeling of Maltese community not only in our own family but with every other Maltese. You never walked down 3rd Street going to this shop or that without knowing everyone you passed. Even if you didn?t quite know them personally, you greeted them. Although all the Maltese are now spread out, I think this is still somewhat present within our ethnicity.? By the mid-1960s, most of the Maltese had moved out to the suburbs and Bayview became primarily African American. At the age of 12, I became a naturalized citizen of the United States (on December 4, 1956 with my father), and remember, with raised hand, telling the judge that I would not try to overthrow the government of the United States! I experienced the San Francisco earthquake of 1957 (recalling the ceiling cracking in my classroom while the class heard a vocation to the priesthood talk; and the boy who had went to the toilet coming back and saying, ?I didn?t do it?.). During elementary school, I delivered newspapers for the Call Bulletin for years, at the Civic Center (where secretaries saved postal stamps for my stamp collection) and near my home. My father, Angelo, bred rabbits and chickens in the back yard of our Kirkwood home. I recall one partially headless chicken running around the basement squirting blood until the end. Dad would also do our haircuts. He worked for a variety of metal shops and was a jack of all trades, helping out many neighbors on their projects. He loved his occasional poker game at the Club. In San Leandro he ran the Church of the Assumption Monday night bingo game for 25 years bringing in thousands of dollars for the parish?s elementary school. My mother, Josephine, worked as a foreman at a plastics company for a number of years. For many years she made the best pastizzi and could produce an Irish knit sweater, sized by eyesight, in four days as well as complete knit baby outfits. At Father Benny's urging, I accepted "a calling to the Franciscan religious life" at the end of the seventh grade. The Catholic Church then frequently selected the brightest boys in their schools and urged them to become priests. I attended St. Anthony's Seminary in Santa Barbara for four years of high school (1958-1962; receiving a classical education with Latin, Greek, Spanish, etc.), San Luis Rey College from 1962 to 1967 with a BA in Philosophy, novitiate at Mission San Miguel (1964-1965,, where I first wore the Franciscan brown robe, and took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience), and one year of theology at Mission Santa Barbara (where I ran an adolescent support group, which got me thinking about being a psychologist). I worked for two summers at St. Paul of the Shipwreck Elementary School in 1960 and 1961 (sanding and varnishing desks; teaching summer school). In 1962 I made my one and only film acting debut in a Franciscan vocational film, which starred Jack Nicholson, in his first film role. I taught catechism at Camp Pendleton Marine Base during my senior year of college. While I am no longer a Catholic, I do need to thank Fr. Benny for granting me a classical education. I served as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War for two years at Conard House, a psychiatric halfway house. I worked at the University of San Francisco?s Counseling Center for three years. I received a PhD in Counseling Psychology at the University of Berkeley in 1977. I then worked for the Department of Psychiatry at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco for 35 years as a clinical psychologist, chief psychologist, and as the founder of the Neuro-psychology Service. I have been married for 48 years to my wife Marilyn and am the proud father of Dr. Lea Vella, PhD, a psychologist, and Dr. Maya Vella, MD, a radiologist. I am a proud Maltese American who has many recollections. * I wish to thank Mona Vella-Nicholas and Eligio Vella for their help.