IN THE SHADOW OF CARTHAGE

ANGELE EMILIE PASTORE

NOVEMBER 19, 1943-APRIL 5, 2022

Angele Pastore, a professor of French for over thirty years at the City College of San Francisco, died on April 5th of this year after suffering a crippling stroke five months earlier. Having taught at several Bay Area institutions of higher learning, Madame Pastore had achieved near legendary status for her style, ribaldry, wit, and command of the classroom, as well as her passionate commitment to sharing her love of language and literature with her students. Her stirring life story serves as yet another example of how much the richness of American culture is built on the contributions of its immigrants.

Angele Pastore was born in Tunis, Tunisia, in the midst of the Second World War. Starting at the age of two, her father Mariano would take her by the hand to walk from their home in the outskirts of the capital along the beach to the ruins of Carthage, a memory in which she took great pride when she later read of the role that famed city played in both history and myth.

As Angele approached school age, Mariano moved the family, now including her younger sister Nadia, to the center of Tunis to ensure that the girls could enroll in the leading schools there. Long a French protectorate, political control of Tunisia had passed from Paris to Rome briefly during the Second World War, then returned to France with its reinstated educational system. Because her father and mother Domenica wanted to assure their daughters would have Italian as their first language, Angele began her first day at the Lycee Carnot pour Jeune Filles not speaking a word of French. Angele found herself derided by class mates as an ignorant “sal macaroni.”

As a teen, Angele became a voracious reader in both French and Italian, often burning the tomato sauce she was assigned to stir daily because she was buried in stories of the myths of the Mediterranean. Completing their years at their college for young women, a handful of students, Angele among them, was allowed to transfer to the city’s elite male college to prepare for the upcoming and all important baccalaureate exam. Perhaps her proudest memory of Tunis was walking into the school’s courtyard as the results of the baccalaureate were announced over the haut-parleur. She was first in the class.

The following year was Angele’s first as a teacher, but that career path was soon interrupted by political crisis. The gaining of Tunisia’s independence from France, as in Algeria, prompted an exodus of virtually all of its residents of European descent, most of whom left for France and Italy. “Menica,” however, had long yearned to join her family members who had migrated from Italy to California. Along with her parents, her sister Nadia, and her now thirteen year old brother Rocco, Angele arrived in the United States during the same month in 1963 that she turned twenty and John F. Kennedy was assassinated. After a week long cross-country train trip in which Angele was called upon to translate for the family in her then still-rudimentary English, the Pastores joined the host of their maternal relatives in the East Bay.

Her first job in a parachute factory was not inspiring. Then fate took quite a turn. Still at the age of twenty and without a university degree, Angele was offered a position teaching French to members of the military at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. She often recalled standing outside the classroom on that first day and saying to herself: “I can do this,” She entered with the elan, humor, and air of self-confidence with which she entered every classroom for the next fifty years.

It was then time to pursue her own education, a journey that led her to her Elysian Fields: the University of California at Berkeley. She loved the international community that surrounded her there: French, Spanish, Italian, Ethiopian, Persian, often men who pursued her (unsuccessfully) with great interest. Finishing her undergraduate years with high honors, she was awarded a fellowship for further studies, with duties as a teaching assistant. When Angele subbed as the instructor in an introductory French course, Dina DiBattista, immediately drawn by her charm and sheer sense of fun, began a life long friendship not only with Angele, but between their Italian families.

Angele once told Dina that she was puzzled why male students, with seats open in the back of the room, were seated on the floor directly in front of the desk she often sat on top of, legs crossed. In the era of mini-skirts, none at Berkeley was shorter than Angele’s.

Having finished her master’s degree, Angele was hired at Sonoma State University, where she taught French and Italian. The Angele who spoke Italian appeared to be a different person than the one who spoke French. She certainly had mastered the hauteur of the French, but her Italian was steeped in passione, faster, louder, hands gesturing dramatically, sprinkled with a few cazzos when the context permitted. Then she was off to teach for several years at Mills College in Oakland.

The year 1978 brought tragedy and hope to Angele. She, Rocco, and their parents lost their beloved Nadia to cancer, but, that year while still teaching at Mills, Angele gained a foothold at CCSF when hired as a part time instructor teaching night and summer courses. Ten years later, five spent as the chairperson of the language department at Lick Wilmerding High School, Angele reached the pinnacle of the mountain she had long been scaling: a full-time tenured position at CCSF, which she held for the next twenty five years.

Actress Ann Bancroft said of her husband Mel Brooks, a comic genius, that whenever she heard his keys opening their apartment door, she thought:”Let the party begin.” The same was true of Angele when she walked through the class room door. She not only sat on top of her desk, she stood on it. She doodled characters on the blackboard. She taught the use of prepositions like above and below by describing positions she took with her lovers Robert and Paul, a quite shocking confession until one realized that Robert was Robert Redford and Paul was Paul Newman. Arnold, with a brain like a cacahuete, later joined the cast of characters, but only to carry Angele’s book bags and suitcases.

But while her classes were always fun-filled, her standards were high. Repeated absentees were met with a withering stare, a cutting remark, and an F if merited. She was a key supporter of Tom Blair, the language department head, and formed close bonds with her colleagues Jackie Green, Claudio Concin, Germaine Redfearn, also from Tunis, and Carlotta Babilon.

A fellow language professor at City College described Angele as ‘unica,” one of a kind. She was that: profoundly erudite, delightfully witty in three languages, always available to support her students–a true bella regazza. Her death provided relief from the profound suffering she endured after her stroke. All who cared for her have lost a treasure, but she is now at peace.

Ciao, Tesoro.

This beautiful tribute to Angele Pastore was written by her long-time companion Dennis Riordan and submitted by   Tina Martin, a friend, student, and colleague at City College of San Francisco.

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