by Barbara Sherf

Born and raised in Mount Vernon, New York, Elena (Levister) Verzieri fondly remembers playing with the children and grandchildren in a neighborhood of predominantly Italian immigrants. “When we were playing and their parents and grandparents would come out and speak to them in Italian, I said, ‘I’ve got to learn that language,’” says Verzieri, who happens to be African-American.

And she did exactly that. Her neighborhood friends and their families taught her many words and phrases that were helpful while she was growing up and set the stage for a storied career teaching Italian.

Verzieri married Robert Hatcher, a career Navy man. The couple moved to Philadelphia when Hatcher was stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. When he was transferred to Mississippi, Verzieri remained behind in Philadelphia and enrolled in the foreign languages program at Temple University while her daughters were just toddlers. Verzieri felt she wanted a career in addition to having children, and she did not want to rely solely on her husband’s income.

In 1974 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in foreign languages and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship. The scholarship program provides grants for U.S. graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study abroad before entering the work world.

The decision was clear for Verzieri: to use the grant to travel to Italy and immerse herself in the native language and customs before returning to Philadelphia seeking both a divorce and employment in her field.

“In the early ’70s the Philadelphia School District needed a couple of Italian teachers, and I applied,” Verzieri says. “That’s where I encountered a little problem when I was told that a person of color had never taught Italian in Philadelphia schools. I fought it and stuck it out until I was eventually hired to teach Italian in an elementary school in South Philly for two years and then went on to teach at the high school level.”

Verzieri raised her daughters in Mt. Airy before moving to a home in Roxborough in the early ’80s. She taught full-time in elementary and secondary schools in South Philadelphia for a total of 33 years before retiring.

“I was and still am totally accepted and revered in the Italian community because of my knowledge of the language and Italian customs,” Verzieri says. “I was invited day after day to different homes by families for dinners and family events.”

The language was not the only part of Italian culture she absorbed as a child and while studying in Italy. When she cooked for her two daughters, she typically prepared Italian dishes. “My specialty is making eggplant parmigiana and gravy, not sauce, from homegrown and fresh-picked Jersey tomatoes,” she said.

On a trip to Calabria, Italy, in the mid-’70s, she met a man who would become her second husband, Umberto Verzieri, a native Italian. The couple returned to Philadelphia to tie the knot and lived happily together stateside for several years.

But when Umberto returned to Calabria to visit his ailing mother, he was not granted a green card to return to the U.S. Verzieri then went back and forth to visit with him and his family until he died eight years ago.

She has been all over the bucolic countryside of northern and southern Italy, as well as the big cities. “I’ve been to Rome and the Vatican and even took a side trip to Yugoslavia and Africa,” Verzieri said. “I was not nor am I entrenched in African culture, since all of the schools in which I taught and surrounding neighborhoods were predominately Italian. However, I am clearly of African-American descent.”

There are no regrets in her life journey. “I’ve had an interesting and varied life, and I don’t have much left on my bucket list,” said Verzieri, who doesn’t give her chronological age but considers herself a certified card-carrying senior. “I want to stay free to do what I want, when I want and if I want. And I do.”

This article is reprinted, with permission, from Milestones, the monthly publication of the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.