ames Capriotti didn’t expect to be so moved. But when the first notes of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” filled the Uniondale Public Library, Capriotti, a veteran of the Vietnam War, felt the music hit home.
“That one in the beginning, the Lee Greenwood one — wow,” he said afterward. “Those songs, they can bring tears to your eyes.”
A Uniondale native who served in the Air Force, Capriotti was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early ’70s. He met his wife, Eleanor, while they were both serving — she was in Air Force communications. They have been married since 1972.
“People should be proud,” Eleanor said, reflecting on the patriotic song. “Not many people are.”
“Way back then, when the Vietnam veterans came back home, they were not treated nicely,” she added.
The couple were among roughly 20 people who attended a Nov. 9 concert at the library by five members of Stringtopia, the Long Island Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra, which has about two dozen musicians. The small ensemble featured Geri Rheel and Amy Noll on mandolin, Susan Weber on mandocello, Vicki Gleicher on mandola and Ken Kurshel on guitar, and they performed a wide-ranging musical tribute to America’s veterans.
Held in the library’s Bookmark Cafe, the concert blended patriotic anthems with classics ranging from Irving Fields’s “Miami Beach Rhumba” to the Beatles, “Yesterday,” some of which elicited emotional responses from the audience.
“Our Salute to Veterans is a mixture of music so focused on veterans as well as a little bit of the music we can do all the time,” Weber explained.
“How many people here are actual veterans?” she asked early in the performance. Three hands rose across the room. “This concert is for you.”
In 2019, Weber[//??//] was presented with the Long Island Music Hall of Fame’ Music Educator of Note Award. The East Meadow resident also taught orchestra for 32 years in the Uniondale school district.
The ensemble opened with the “Colonel Bogey March,” the tune made famous in “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and followed with a journey through 20th-century music — some selections written for veterans, and others chosen simply because they resonated across generations. Weber urged audience members to sing along, and many did.
Vocalist Joy DelGiorno, a frequent guest performer with the group, joined in on several numbers. She led the 1924 ballad “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” and her clear, nostalgic tone drew soft humming from audience members. Some grew teary during “We Say Thank You,” a song written specifically for veterans.
“It is so appropriate for Veterans Day — the words which you will hear many times through this piece (are) ‘we say thank you,’ and to me, that is what Veterans Day is all about,” Weber said.
DelGiorno also sang on “God Bless the USA.” “It’s another song I think is so appropriate for Veterans Day,” Weber said. “It was played at the 1984 Republican National Convention for Ronald Reagan. It gained even more prominence during the Gulf War — and rose into everyone’s vision again after Sept 11.”
Joyce Goldsmith, who attended with a veteran, couldn’t resist dancing. “We love libraries,” she said. “We think that all our tax dollars are well worth it because of our libraries, and so, every weekend, we go to a different library.
I make a list of concerts, and I chose which to go to,” she added. “But I didn’t do that for this. As soon as I heard Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra, I knew we were coming here.”
“We hope they took away an understanding of our instruments and our sound and enjoyment of the day,” Weber said of the audience. “Hopefully it brought back memories, because a lot of the music we do is older, which it clearly, by their reaction, did.”
