GREEN: Roger Carano often walks to the back of his yard and stands near the totem pole.
The pole offers a connection to his late father, Joe Carano, who carved it more than a half century ago.
“It is my Dad,” said Carano, 73, a retired Akron fire lieutenant.
The totem pole in the Carano family has become a symbol of the tree of life over the generations.
Joe Carano, born in 1911, carved it during the winter of 1958 when he and his wife, Virginia, lived on Leeman Drive in what was then Franklin Township in southern Summit County.
He worked at B.F. Goodrich as a maintenance mechanic and before that winter he asked an Ohio Edison crew if he could have an old utility pole.
One day, a crew dropped a pole off at the house.
Joe Carano put the pole in his garage and worked on it all winter.
He grew up in Krebs, Okla., surrounded by Indian reservations.
He was part Italian-American and part Native American — the Choctaw tribe through his grandmother.
Totem poles always fascinated the elder Carano. That spring, he dug a deep hole and put it in the backyard.
Roger Carano, who was a barber for 10 years before he was hired by the fire department, said his father was a hard-working man.
“My dad was a tough old guy,” he said.
Fast forward to 1974. Joe and Virginia Carano sold their house and retired to Sarasota, Fla., after Joe finished 42 years at Goodrich.
Four years later, Roger Carano, then living in Green, decided to visit the new owners of his parents’ old house.
He asked them if he could dig up the totem pole so he could preserve it for the family and put it in his yard. The new owners said yes.
So Roger Carano, an Army veteran, and some friends dug the pole out of the ground and moved it to the backyard of his house.
Over the years, when his mother and father would visit from Florida, the family would always gather around the pole.
Eventually, Joe and Virginia Carano moved back to Northeast Ohio.
Roger Carano took care of the totem pole over the years, repainting it and repairing it as it needed work.
Virginia Carano, died in February 2002 at the age of 87. And in September 2003, Joe Carano died at the age of 92.
Roger Carano continued to care for his father’s totem pole.
“In his later years, he became mellow and he meant everything to me,” Roger Carano said of his father.
But these days, he and his wife, Brenda, speak of eventually passing the totem pole on again.
“My daughter will take it when we need to go to a nursing home,” Roger Carano said.
Traci Finney, 45, who lives on a six-acre farm in New Franklin with her husband Rick and children, Joey and Julia, said she will make room for the totem pole on the farm near the barn when the time comes.
“I am looking forward to having it,” she said. “We will keep it in the family.”
Today, Roger and Brenda Carano will visit Traci and Rick Finney’s farm along with Rick Finney’s family, and enjoy Father’s Day together.
“I know my father really misses” his father and his mother, Traci Finney said.
By keeping the totem pole painted and restored, she said, her father is staying close to his father, honoring him, even 10 years after his death.
Roger Carano looks into the future, even beyond his daughter’s generation to his grandchildren and knows that the pole will always be part of the family.
“Joe’s great-grandchildren will never let it get away!” he said.
Roger and Brenda Carano will spend some time at Greenlawn Memorial Park at the grave of his parents this Father’s Day. And he plans to walk to the totem pole in his backyard and have some quiet time with the pole his father made.
“It is hard to believe it is so solid,” he said. “I cherish the totem pole because that is a real object that I have a connection to and I can touch.”
Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.