Stingl: Piano man who spent years in clubs now plays for his home hospice workers

Generally speaking, you don't expect to be entertained while visiting someone in home hospice.

Unless you're popping in to see Salvatore "Sam" Fuggiasco, a.k.a. Sam the Piano Man.

This is a guy who has been playing and singing for some 75 years, first in small taverns in his north side Milwaukee neighborhood, later in bigger joints, in churches, at parties, in nursing homes.

And now, as a final encore, for the hospice workers who show up at the Greenfield apartment Sam shares with Pat, the woman he married 68 years ago.

I was there the other day when chaplain Judson Chubbuck and social worker Kelly Mangold, both with Allay Home & Hospice, made one of their regular visits. We listened as Sam reminisced for a while. Then showtime!

"This is called 'Hallelujah I Love Her So.' It's by Ray Charles," Sam announces as he sits down in a wheelchair at the electronic piano and begins to play.

Then he starts taking requests and launching into each one — "You Are My Sunshine," "Clair de Lune," "Piano Man," "Godfather Theme," "New York, New York."

"I have trouble remembering things, but my hands know where to go," he tells us, adding that he knows 1,000 songs by heart, more or less.

Sam is 91. He is hooked to oxygen for emphysema and COPD. His lungs are in bad shape. His hearing and vision are fading, but his memory and mood are impressive. When you see him in running shoes with neon green laces, you think he can sprint away from his dire diagnosis. 

A doctor said Sam had six to eight months to live. That was last February when he entered home hospice. A neighbor asked him recently if he's going to heaven. "I put in my reservation, but I don't know if they're going to take me," was his reply.

That one made Pat laugh. She handles most of her husband's care. She stood across the room while Sam played, swaying gently to the familiar music.

She tells me her husband wanted to be called Sam because that's the name of the rag man who came around and was nice to young Salvatore when he was a boy. Pat first met her Sam when she was a cashier at The Milwaukee Journal and he worked for WTMJ. He invited himself to her bowling night and that was that.

Uncle Sam drafted Sam into the Army in 1944 and he wound up fighting the Nazis from a tank in Europe. He kept a keyboard strapped to the back of the war machine.

A shell hit the tank one day, killing three of his buddies and launching him into the air. He woke up in the basement of a German farm couple who had lost two sons on the Russian front. They nursed him back to health and hid him from the enemy. Sam didn't talk much about the war to his own four kids, and he cries when he remembers it now.

He worked a variety of jobs throughout his life, including cigarette machine repairman and life insurance salesman. But music was a constant for him, with gigs sometimes six nights a week.

One of his favorite spots was The Rafters Steakhouse in Oak Creek, where Frank Sinatra would stop when he was in the neighborhood. Sam once played for him, and for Tony Bennett when he was here.

Chaplain Chubbuck has spent hours enjoying Sam's stories and tracing how they led to his home performances. "Sam's next-to-last gigs were in area nursing homes," he told me. "He noticed he had lost his piano bar audiences over the years but rediscovered them in nursing homes. He offered to those folks his music, humor and warm personality. He was well-loved. His last gig is to play for all the hospice workers who come to his house."

You forget who is supposed to be cheering up who. Kelly, the social worker, said Sam is the only patient who serenades her. "He's unique. You can't leave without getting a tune."

And Sam is the only person I've met who claims to have peed next to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in a restroom at the end of the war. That could probably be a song.

"He begged me, 'Don't salute.' "

Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl