Remembering Jiggs

For over six decades, the Franklin County Press hummed with the sounds of printing and conversation.

Monday through Friday, the antique presses came to life, roaring over the steady chatter of old friends who gathered each morning to talk politics, economics and whatever else came to mind.

Today, the presses are silent and the chairs, empty.

On the door, a floral wreath marks the passage of a man and an era in Apalachicola's history.

Genaro "Jiggs" Zingarelli, the Franklin County Press' founder and proprietor, passed away on Sept. 10 in Port St. Joe.

He was 93.

One of the nation's last commercial Linotype operators, Zingarelli set type using the skills he'd learned as a young man at a Nashville printing school.

He formed lines of type using hot, molten lead and brass letter castings, and printed all manner of stationery, invoices and documents using a press only 20 years his junior - a 1935 Kluge.

Though he purchased an offset press in the 1970s, Zingarelli never embraced the latest in printing technology.

"All that you see is magazine, color printing. I can never do anything like that," he told the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2005.

"In other words, the world went off and left me."

Paper Boy

Zingarelli was born on May 27, 1915 in Apalachicola to A.J. "Jack" and Lizzie Zingarelli.

Like his siblings Helen, Teresa and Joe, Zingarelli attended school at the Catholic Convent, and later at Chapman High School, where he played football.

During his school years, Zingarelli earned his nickname, "Jiggs," after performing the traditional dance he learned from his Irish mother.

The nickname followed him throughout his life, though his family still called him Genaro, a name he shared with his Italian grandfather.

Zingarelli became interested in printing as a teenager while working at the Apalachicola Times.

He and his brother, Joe, melted 10-pound pieces of lead for the Linotype machine, for which they earned 50 cents, and delivered the Times throughout town.

Occasionally, Zingarelli operated the press, standing on a wooden Coke crate to give him the needed lift.

After graduating from Chapman, Zingarelli briefly attended Transylvania College in Lexington, Ky. on a football scholarship before enrolling at a Nashville printing school.

He worked as a Linotype operator in Rocky Mount, NC, until Uncle Sam tapped him on the shoulder.

The Big Red One

Like most men of his generation, Zingarelli spoke little about his experiences in World War II.

When he did share his memories, he kept the conversation light, not wanting to trouble his family.

Details of Zingarelli's heroic exploits emerged slowly.

He had served in the Army's First Combat Infantry Division, known as the "Big Red One" for the red number 1 emblazoned on the unit's shoulder patch since the first World War.

Zingarelli sailed overseas on the Queen Mary, which was converted into a troop transport ship during the war, and saw first combat in North Africa.

There, Zingarelli, who spent most of his time in the company of troops from New York and New Jersey, encountered his Apalachicola pals Audie Scott, Richard Powers and Herbert Marshall.

In North Africa, the First Combat Infantry Division first engaged with Germans in northern Tunisia, near Kasserine Pass, in February 1943.

After a crushing defeat by Rommel's troops, the Allies forced an Axis surrender in May.

From North Africa, Zingarelli traveled to Sicily, taking part in the invasion of Gela, before sailing to England to prepare for Operation Overlord.

In the early morning hours of June 5, 1944, Zingarelli and the men of the "Big Red One" were the first ashore on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of northern France.

Though his unit had been through the bloodiest battles of World War II, Zingarelli emerged unscathed.

In 1994, Zingarelli's daughter, Elizabeth Milliken of Washington, D.C., was watching the PBS television program, "American Experience."

As the program recounted the lead-up to D-Day using archival footage, she saw a familiar face emerge from a troop transport ship in England.

"The guys were walking out with bags on their back, and there was Dad," remembered Milliken, who recognized her father by his distinctive walk.

Milliken had a still made of her father's time onscreen, which Zingarelli displayed on top of a file cabinet at the press.

Zingarelli's family learned only recently, while reading his military discharge papers, that he'd received four Bronze Stars for heroism in combat.

He'd never told a soul.

At the Press

After returning home from World War II, Zingarelli had little time to reminisce.

He founded the Franklin County Press in 1947, and a year later, married Allie Weinel, a North Carolina native and Chapman schoolteacher.

Zingarelli worked long hours to support his growing family. He and Allie had four children, Bill, John, Elizabeth and Rob.

At the press, Zingarelli could accommodate most any need. He printed all types of forms, receipt books and other business documents, as well as oyster tags, invitations, stationary and calling cards.

Occasionally, Zingarelli, a volunteer firefighter for over 40 years, would be called away from work to quench a blaze.

He stopped the presses and ran to his truck, leaving every door in the shop wide open.

Social visits to the press always picked up during political season, with townspeople dropping by to discuss the candidates.

Zingarelli, who printed signs for all those vying for office, kept his opinions close to the vest.

Dozens of old political signs hang on the back walls of the press. Together, they tell a history of Franklin County politics - the winners, "Bobby Howell for Mayor," the losers, "George Chapel for Mayor," and those who still hold office, "Jimmy Gander for School Board."

The Paper

In the early 1950s, Zingarelli and his wife published the Franklin Press, a local, weekly newspaper.

As editor and publisher, Zingarelli wrote news articles, sold advertising and printed each edition. Allie served as "social editor."

In his weekly column, "Just Jabber," Zingarelli detailed local happenings with characteristic irreverence.

The labor of putting a newspaper together each week was intensive.

Zingarelli set all the type on a Linotype keyboard, which displayed letters arranged in order of frequency.

As Zingarelli pecked out a line, a brass casting of each letter, number and space fell into the machine's holding chamber.

Pushing a lever transferred the completed line into a casting chamber, where hot, molten lead formed around the brass castings to produce a slug.

On a flat make-up table, Zingarelli positioned the slugs inside an adjustable frame, or chase, pounding each line into place with a mallet and block.

Zingarelli then fastened the chase onto his Kluge press, where ink imprinted the type onto paper.

When his press went down, Zingarelli called his friend Wesley Ramsey, the editor and publisher of The Star in Port St. Joe, who also used a Linotype and Kluge.

When the workload proved too much to handle, Zingarelli retired his newspaper permanently.

When Ramsey's son, Willie, took over as editor and publisher of The Star, Zingarelli reminded him frequently of his short career as a newspaper man.

"He talked about how crazy anybody was to be in the newspaper business," said Ramsey, who suspected that his friend enjoyed the work more than he ever admitted.

"I don't think Jiggs ever did anything he didn't enjoy," he said.

Shop Talk

The Franklin County Press was always a hub of social interaction for two reasons - its location across the street from the post office and the magnetic quality of its proprietor.

Upon entering the shop, visitors always joined a conversation in progress, with Zingarelli trading barbs and eliciting laughs with his quick wit and deadpan delivery.

Zingarelli went to great lengths to get a laugh.

If asked to print invitations for friends' parties, he hid a joke on the first card of the stack, dismaying those who feared the whole lot was ruined.

"He had a marvelous sense of humor," said his friend, retired Army Colonel Harry Buzzett.

On one of Buzzett's wedding party napkins, Zingarelli printed a giant mullet under the couple's names.

When a relative lodged a protest, he extolled the virtues of Apalachicola's prized fish: "Mullet means a lot to us around here."

Buzzett recalled Zingarelli's comic rapport with his late brother, Joe, who was always a fixture at the shop.

"Each one of them had his part," said Buzzett. "They'd pull it on anyone they could get away with. It was exciting because you didn't know what would happen next. It was a natural flow."

As the years passed, and Zingarelli's friends retired, their visits to the press became longer.

Every morning, a group of regulars could be found chatting in the press's chairs or on top of the long wooden counter, as Zingarelli tended to his business.

 Most of the regulars, like Buzzett and the late Squeaky Martina, Joe McDonald and Bobby Howell, were Zingarelli's close friends for decades.

"It was very, very difficult for a newcomer to get in," said Buzzett, who noted some exceptions, like Harry Arnold and the late Raymond Diehl.

Several of the regulars had keys to the press, and occasionally had the shop open before Zingarelli arrived.

The press club's reputation grew over the years.

Downtown shop owners directed tourists to the press if they wanted a good laugh, and Zingarelli always suggested they take a complimentary souvenir.

"He'd say, ‘If you want some men, take a couple of these with you. I'm trying to get rid of them,'" laughed Buzzett.

Zingarelli always obliged a request for a tour, and loved to meet new people.

"Dad was very kind, he would stop the press, talk to them and show them around," said Milliken. "Everybody had a print story and they loved to see the shop."

"Made to work a long time"

When Zingarelli was not working, he loved hunting and fishing with lifelong friends like J.V. "Bubba" Gander.

He also enjoyed travelling with Allie, and visited his daughter everywhere she lived during her husband's naval career.

Whatever country they happened to be in, Milliken always found a press shop to show her father.

"They always smelled the same - the ink always smelled the same," she remembered.

Though he enjoyed his vacations, Zingarelli always returned to Apalachicola and the Franklin County Press.

He remained busy into his 90s, even as printing technology became more and more advanced.

When Zingarelli's equipment broke down, Willie Ramsey lent him his, just as Zingarelli had done for him and his father, Wesley.

During his visits to Apalachicola, Ramsey marveled at the old printing presses, which seemed to last forever.

"They were made like Jiggs," he said. "They were made to work a long time."

No Progress

In his life, Zingarelli quoted fellow printer Benjamin Franklin: "No progress without change, but all change isn't progress."

He liked his old machines, admired their elegance and utility.

"This here is still the best way," he told the Tallahassee Democrat in 1996 as he pulled his chair close to the Linotype keyboard.

A month before his death, Zingarelli still printed oyster tags and entertained guests inside the Franklin County Press.

Today, the press is just as he left it.

Paper bundles are arranged in orderly stacks behind the front counter.

Slugs of type line worktables and the insides of antique wooden file cabinets.

Printing aprons hang at ready on a post near the Kluge.

The press looks the same, but the quiet tells a different story.

Jiggs is gone, and he cannot be replaced.

For photos of Genaro "Jiggs" Zingarelli and the Franklin County Press, see the Photo Gallery on the Times' homepage.