It was a golden September afternoon (and not that far back, really) in Tom Lombardi’s Morgantown area home with its view of Cheat Lake.
Dancing, diamond points of light off the nearby water moved in concert with a strong autumn sun to infuse the living room with a glow that was doing some living of its own.
Call it an illumination of timelessness that brightened well past simple nostalgia.
It suited the WVU professor and special education innovator just fine, for the moment.
That’s because he was catching the long-remembered light from a little kid back in Connecticut, who kicked up his heels to make people smile and clap their hands.
He was poring over a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings from his hometown of New Haven and other locales across the Constitution State.
Smile, he did. Couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, I was ‘Tommy Lombardi, the 8-year-old Tango King,’” he said in a raspy, somewhat tough-guy voice that never lost its Yankee moorings, despite all his decades in the Mountain State.
“How ‘bout that?”
The beat of the cause
Lombardi died at home last month with his wife and daughters at his side. His funeral Mass is this Saturday at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in Star City.
The professor’s curriculum vitae carried page after page of his accomplishments as an educator and advocate for a population that might sometimes need a little extra help with the doings most of us don’t even think about.
Before arriving in Morgantown in 1971, where he launched an inaugural special education major for fledgling teachers in WVU’s then-College of Human Resources and Education, he made his name in that field in Arizona.
How he did it was by getting residents of the Arizona Children’s Colony out of the day room and, metaphorically speaking, onto the dance floor.
That is, Dr. Lombardi — by then he had earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona — discovered that the denizens of the Colony did way better when they were engaged and simply involved with the proceedings of it all.
Despite its name, the institution in Coolidge, Ariz., housed a ranging population of people from toddlers to senior citizens.
The Colony, which came into being in 1927, was established with a pragmatic mission statement.
It was one which was hitched a bit to the prevailing medical conventions at that time (and maybe the social stigmas, too), over the care and “handling” of people with cognitive impairments, no matter how pronounced those impairments were (or weren’t).
Families across Arizona in those circumstances needed the assurance their children would be tended to long after they were gone.
Trouble was, though, that sometimes meant being “housed” — rather than nurtured.
Lombardi marked his Colony tenure with his co-director, Estelle Gardella Lombardi, a Connecticut girl from Newtown who was also an educator in the field.
She was just as tenacious to the cause as the man she married in 1962.
During their time in Arizona, those once-numbing Colony days of tying overmedicated residents to chairs in the day room with only flickering fluorescent lights and immovable wire mesh on windows forever locked for company — went the way of the Lindy Hop.
It was the beginnings of his “responsible inclusion” philosophy that to this day is often cited in textbooks and other publications.
Meanwhile, the couple met back in Connecticut at an enrichment camp for impaired adults.
Tom was working his way through school and his lodging consisted of the succession of couches various relatives would let him sleep on for the night.
Estelle was drawn to the animated charmer, she said — “Tom talked more than any guy I ever knew and he made me laugh.”
Together, they shared more than 60 years as husband and wife.
The first time he took her dancing it was a revelation, Estelle remembered.
“Tom cleared the floor. Wow.”
Not surprising. He was the Tango King, after all.
Fascinating rhythm
Lombardi was born in New Haven, Conn., in 1936.
The kid was knee-high to a Crosley console when World War II was raging.
He listened to the tunes of the day pouring from Marconi’s wondrous machine and the rhythm grabbed him visually, also.
It wasn’t long before he found himself drawn to the Fred Astaire and Busby Berkeley flicks, with their elaborate and intricate dance sequences, that his parents took him for Saturday matinees at the old vaudeville palaces that went with the times to become movie houses.
Turns out, he was a bit of a prodigy.
The tyke was just 6 when he danced his way into an audition for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.
Two years later (and in a sailor suit), he got a standing ovation at a local firemen’s benefit, courtesy of his crazy footwork.
It was also his first paid gig, as people kept dropping coins in his pocket while slipping folded $1 bills into his hand.
“My dad was amazed,” he said, still marveling at it all.
After that, more professional engagements began clomping in, just like a chorus line in one of Mr. Berkeley’s movies.
Despite those tweedy professors from Yale, New Haven at its heart was a meat-and-potatoes, shot-and-a-beer town.
Most of the non-college population had home-front defense jobs, and, after punching out at Armstrong Rubber and the other factories that supplied the war, they wanted a little fun and someone else they could cheer for.
Young Master Lombardi copped everything he saw on the theater screen, and if he didn’t get the turns and the slides and the taps just exactly right — well, that just made it all the more endearing and entertaining, didn’t it?
At the height of his popularity, he shared stages with Louis Prima, Gene Krupa and other music stars who passed through New Haven.
Things change, though, even if you are Tommy Lombardi, the Tango King.
He danced through high school and into New Haven State Teacher’s College. It took one to tango. He knew he wanted to further his education.
By then his parents had split up.
He was 19 when his mom died in the middle of finals week. He was starting to age out of the gig anyway, and he knew it was time to begin moving to a new song.
There was his marriage to Estelle and the arrival of their girls, Marie and Linda.
Connecticut begat the Colony, which came with the free use of a house and a car. Perfect for a young family just getting started.
Arizona made way for Almost Heaven.
Classes, plus whole teaching programs and professional collaborations with Estelle, came East, also.
A Fulbright appointment to Portugal and education consulting work with the government of Bermuda followed.
Grandchildren and great-grandchilden showed up for the encore.
‘Nah, I gotcha’
During that reporter visit in his living room back in 2014, the professor emeritus had just received a WVU Hall of Fame teacher honor to add to his wall of accolades.
He was 78 but didn’t necessarily look his age.
A stroke four years earlier had weakened his left side, but one wouldn’t have necessarily known that, either.
Lombardi, who only used that damnable cane when he absolutely had to, was laboring at sit-ups and Zumba steps to get it back.
To prove it, he gathered up Estelle.
“Uh, Tom?” she said, maybe just a little worried about his mobility.
“Nah, I gotcha,” he said, in that B-movie voice.
“We’re good.”
And with light from Cheat Lake and that late-afternoon sun matching their steps, the Tango King and his bride had a dance.
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