Teo Perini

My very good friend Teo Perini passed away a year ago on May 13, 2024, at the age of 89. At the time his wife, Irena, asked me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral. This is my recollection of what I said.

 

First, I would like to point out that Teo was his real name. I thought it might be short for the Italian version of Theodore, but he told me that his father preferred short names, and so he and his brothers were Geno, Teo, and Enzo. 

 

One day about fifteen years ago I first met the three brothers when they walked into our chess club at the Fairfield Senior center. Geno was a good player but lived too far away to become a regular, and Enzo did not care that much for chess, but Teo was an avid player who added Fairfield to his list of chess venues. He soon became an integral part of our small club and even would occasionally invite us to his home in Shelton for chess and pizza.

 

In 2017, I stopped driving because of poor eyesight, and when Teo heard the news, he offered to drive me back and forth every Wednesday. I readily accepted, and so, one day he picked me in his beloved old BMW. I directed him from my house along the back roads to the Senior center but after a while he took a wrong turn, and I discovered that he meant to stop at Rawley’s for a quick lunch before chess. 

 

Rawley’s is an old hot dog stand on the Post Rd. that has been a relatively unchanged fixture with its four booths in Fairfield since the 1920s. I had already had a small lunch but had a burger with a slice of tomato while he threw down two hamburgers with practically everything on them, as well as an order of fries. 

 

It was the start of a beautiful friendship as we repeated this ritual every week. On the ride and in the few minutes we spent at Rawley’s we learned about each other. Here are some of the things I learned about his remarkable story.

 

He was born in 1935 in Fiume, an Italian seaport city on the northern Adriatic coast. As a child he grew up in a war zone as WWII raged. He remembered seeing bombs dropping on the port, and booby traps scattered along the roads. After the war, Fiume became part of Yugoslavia ruled by communists under Marshal Tito. Now it is part of Croatia. 

 

Soon his father decided to leave Fiume and migrate to Italy where the family was interned in refugee camps. Eventually, they left for America but for some reason Teo had to be left behind in one of these camps. He remembered what it was like to go without food for three days until he and a buddy got their hands on a pound of spaghetti that they devoured in one sitting. On the other hand, he somehow managed to ride a motorcycle all over Italy while waiting to join the family in Bridgeport.

 

When he finally got to America, he had nothing but the carpentry skills he had learned in school. He found work with an Italian construction company but after a couple of years, he decided to branch out on his own. It was a good time to be a builder in Connecticut, and Perini Construction would become one of the largest builders in Fairfield County. He loved building and often as we drove to chess, he would detour to proudly show me his work. He did everything from additions on single family homes to condominium complexes.

 

His likes extended to more than building. He loved ballroom dancing with his beautiful wife Irena. They even traveled to Vienna to waltz away one New Year’s Eve. Travel was also one of his loves, and the year before he died, he was thinking of a round the world cruise. He was fluent in Italian, Croatian, and could get by in other Slavic languages. He was our translator when Serbians or Russians dropped by for chess.

 

He also loved Grand Opera especially in person, and he and Irena frequented New York’s Metropolitan. But he was no highbrow. Wrestling was his favorite TV fare. He did not understand American sports like baseball, football, and basketball, but did love to watch tennis on TV. 

 

Teo loved to eat, drink wine, and entertain. Even though he loved dining out, he loved to cook and the back porch on the home he built himself in Shelton was the scene of constant gatherings.

He loved his wife Irena, herself an immigrant from Belarus, and his two children by previous marriages. I could tell by the way he talked with them on the phone while we sat at Rawleys. He had many friends both here and abroad and he seemed to be in constant touch with them. I was fortunate to become one of them.

 

There is an old saying: 

 

                  TO LIVE LIFE YOU MUST LOVE IT

                      AND TO LOVE LIFE YOU MUST LIVE IT

 

Teo loved life and he loved to live it.

 

Arrivederci Teo.

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