Today, Veterans Day and Nardiello’s 90th birthday, is the perfect time to celebrate one of this city’s cherished citizens.
When asked about turning 90, Nardiello said when he was 50, he never figured to celebrate his 90th. He admits: “I can’t do what I used to do.”
And who can? I remember when The Journal was located at the corner of First Avenue and Broad Street. Nardiello, then only 70, would park near the library, then walk quickly to work and up the flight of stairs, instead of using the elevator.
Before coming to Middletown, he lived in Brooklyn, N.Y. ,and if you’ve ever heard him, you know he never lost his thick accent. Nardiello served in the Air Force for three years during World War II, and like many veterans of that war, he doesn’t like to discuss his experiences overseas.
After the war, Nardiello graduated from New York University, and soon was offered a job at a newspaper in Texas, and at the the same time, he saw an advertisement in a trade magazine for an opening at a community newspaper in Middletown.
Texas or Ohio? Longhorns or Buckeyes? Southwest or Midwest?
He chose Middletown, and for that, we’re grateful. For six decades, Nardiello was the face and voice of The Journal’s sports section. When we wanted to read about the Reds, Bengals, Buckeyes, Middies — anything to get our minds off our troubles — we turned to Nard.
He picked the perfect time to land in Middletown. He covered five of the high school’s record seven boys state basketball championships, six Cincinnati Reds World Series appearances, and wrote about the birth of the Bengals and the death of their founder.
Talk about timing. He was in the newspaper business when there wasn’t a wall erected between the media and the superstars. All the members of the “Big Red Machine” called Nardiello by his first name, and once, after a young Joe Nuxhall signed a contract with the Reds, Nardiello had dinner with Joe and his wife.
He never blogged, never texted and never stabbed an athlete in the back. He prefers a firm handshake over Facebook.
He’s in about every sports hall of fame and the scorer table at Wade E. Miller is named in his honor.
Nardiello also is part of the fabric of the Middletown community. When he moved here, he lived above the YMCA in downtown. One day, he and his roommate, Frank Gouveia, went to LeSourdsville Lake, where he was introduced to a young Middletown woman, Winnie Moorhead. No one knows if it was love at first sight, but it’s been a lifetime of love.
Later this month, the Nardiellos will celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary. They were married in New York on Nov. 25, 1950, when torrential rain and 100 mph winds threatened to postpone the wedding.
“I don’t know how we did it, really,” said Winnie, 85. She said the storm didn’t compare to Hurricane Sandy, but it was “plenty big.”
Even on his wedding day, Nardiello is linked to sports. On that day, Ohio State and Michigan played the infamous “Snow Bowl,” a game contested in blinding snow that ended with Michigan surviving, 9-3.
The Nardiellos have two children: Catherine Nardiello, 54, a concert pianist in Italy; and Mary Anne Nardiello, 50, an attorney with the Butler County Prosecutor’s Office. When the girls were in eighth grade, Winnie said Catherine wanted to be a musician, Mary Anne a lawyer. The girls are dedicated, just like their parents.
Jerry and Winnie, 85, still live in the same ranch home where they raised their children.
Neither of them drive, but Jerry handles the outside chores. He mows grass and rakes leaves with the energy of a man half his age. In his spare time, Jerry sits at his desk in the basement, lit only by a 60-watt bulb, and reads his old columns, which his wife faithfully cut out and saved over the years.
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