Riccardi shares hallmark moments of her life

CLYDE – When 1939 Clyde High School graduate Phyllis Riccardi, now 93, wrote her first poem as a 17-year-old senior, she had no idea her verses would one day be sold to Hallmark Cards.

At the time, she was just trying to complete a school assignment.

A countywide talent contest had been planned, and students were required to enter.

“We had to do something for the contest — play piano or sing. I didn’t really want to play piano, because I wasn’t very good at it,” she said.

She decided to instead enter a poem after the verses came to her unexpectedly as she sat in class one day.

“I was sitting in my chair, staring at the clock. There was one minute until the bell rang to change classes,” she said. “I just thought, ‘Somewhere, somebody is going to sit in an electric chair, and here I am just sitting here in my class.’ ”

Those reflections led to one of her greatest pieces, a poem titled “Moments.” It still touches those who read it today. Its first stanza exemplifies the thoughts Riccardi had while in class:

I’ll wager men condemned for crime

More wisely would have used their time,

If to themselves they’d made the plea:

How can I spend more profitably

THIS MOMENT?

The poem won first place in the county talent contest.

“It was first in the county, and I wrote it just to get out of playing the piano,” she said.

That win revealed a hidden talent.

“I found I could make verses pretty easily,” she said.

Riccardi eventually married and moved to Cleveland Heights. While there, she and an artist friend purchased a printing press and used it to print cards they created together. Riccardi wrote the verses, and her friend painted the pictures.

“We printed them and sold the greeting cards in stores,” she said.

Riccardi wrote verses for birthday, birth announcement, and get well cards, among others. Some of them were sold to Hallmark Cards.

“I think $10 is the most I ever got,” she said.

Riccardi’s association with card making made her take notice of the artists behind the cards, and she took a special interest in the work of William Luberoff, a pulp artist who did freelance cover illustrations for magazines such as Secret Agent-X and Adventure beginning in the 1930s.

It was Luberoff’s work creating religious art for cards and calendars that caught Riccardi’s attention and inspired her to persuade him to create a custom work for her. It was something he rarely did for anyone.

Riccardi, her husband, and her six children eventually moved back to Clyde, and her connection with Luberoff began one hot summer day when she and her children were driving home from a day at the Fremont pool. The sky had turned dark above them.

“My kids kept telling me to look at it, but I told them, ‘I can’t. I’m driving.’ They kept begging me, so I looked up at the sky and I saw Mary and I saw a cross,” she said. “Later, I couldn’t get that out of my mind.”

She drew a rough sketch of what she saw and mailed it to Luberoff, asking whether he would paint the scene for her. He wrote back and told her he didn’t do private requests. It would, he said, cost her more than she could afford.

Riccardi persisted, telling Luberoff she would pay anything he asked. It was a gamble; he was a well-known, well-paid artist at this point and could request any amount he wanted. He agreed to work on the painting during his upcoming vacation.

“He could have taken me for a ride, but he only charged me $300,” Riccardi said.

Today, the painting hangs prominently in Riccardi’s room at Elmwood Nursing Home in Green Springs. Since moving there, she has found new friends who appreciate her poetry in the center’s poetry group.

“I came alive again in the poetry class,” she said.