{"id":306891,"date":"2026-07-27T19:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306891\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T19:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:01:12","slug":"story-of-staten-island-couple-has-roots-in-perry-bouton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306891\/","title":{"rendered":"Story of Staten Island couple has roots in Perry, Bouton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The life story of Sebastian \u201cSonny\u201d Grasso and Teresa Rigor has its roots in Perry and Bouton.<\/p>\n

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\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The life story of Sebastian \u201cSonny\u201d Grasso and Teresa Rigor has its roots in Perry and Bouton.<\/p>\n

\u201cSonny and Teresa: A Love Story Across Generations,\u201d a historical novel by Salvatore A. Trancucci III, was inspired by the true story of my grandparents, Sebastian \u201cSonny\u201d Grasso and Teresa Rigor.<\/p>\n

Although the author was born and raised on Staten Island, N.Y., and now live in Union Beach, N.J., a significant part of his family\u2019s history began in Perry and Bouton.<\/p>\n

Teresa was born in Bouton and spent an important part of her childhood in Perry, growing up within an Irish-American family. When she was 8 years old, her mother died, and her father, consumed by grief and unable to care for her as she needed, sent Teresa away to live with relatives. Her sister and brother were considerably older and had already begun building lives of their own.<\/p>\n

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Those early experiences of loss, separation and displacement shaped the quiet strength Teresa carried throughout her life. She eventually pursued nursing and was living in Kansas when in 1948 she met Salvatore A. Trancucci, the author\u2019s grandfather.<\/p>\n

Sonny was an Italian-American baseball player from Staten Island, a World War II veteran and a professional player in the Boston Braves organization. Baseball brought him to Leavenworth, Kansas, where a chance meeting with Teresa at Wadsworth Park began a love story spanning 62 years.<\/p>\n

The pair married in 1949 and eventually built a large Staten Island family. To the young author, they were simply Pop and Gram. It was only years after they were gone that he began to understand how much of Teresa\u2019s strength \u2014 and the family life she created \u2014 could be traced back to what she experienced as a young girl in Iowa.<\/p>\n

One small Christmas tradition came to represent that history. Each year Teresa placed an orange in her children\u2019s stockings because an orange was all she had received for Christmas as a girl growing up with very little during the Depression. What seemed like a simple family custom was actually a memory carried from Iowa and passed quietly to another generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSonny and Teresa\u201d reflects on Teresa\u2019s Iowa background and follows her life from the period when she met Sonny through the marriage and family they built together. Most of the details of the Perry and Bouton history forms the foundation of the second book in Trancucci\u2019s Generations series, \u201cEchoes of Generations: The O\u2019Malleys,\u201d which is currently under review with a noted publisher.<\/p>\n

The second book reaches further into Teresa\u2019s family history, including the O\u2019Malleys\u2019 Irish origins, their settlement in Iowa, the family\u2019s experiences in Perry and Bouton and the losses and decisions that eventually shaped Teresa\u2019s life. Readers who reach the end of \u201cSonny and Teresa\u201d will find a preview of the O\u2019Malley story.<\/p>\n

Trancucci\u2019s effort to understand Teresa\u2019s story eventually brought his family back to Iowa. He and his wife, Kelly, traveled here with his mother, aunt, uncle and other relatives. They visited Perry and Bouton, saw places connected to Teresa\u2019s childhood and visited Violet Hill cemetery, where his great-grandparents are buried. Family genealogy materials inherited by Trancucci\u2019s uncle also helped him trace the O\u2019Malley side of the family and inspired the second book in the Generations series.<\/p>\n

Although \u201cSonny and Teresa\u201d is framed by an against-the-odds love story, it also explores early loss, Depression-era family life, Irish and Italian immigration, faith, marriage, community, caregiving, memory and the importance of preserving family history before the people who hold it are gone.<\/p>\n

Trancucci\u2019s editorial and media portfolio<\/a> includes the story behind the novel along with historical background, author information, discussion themes and publication details. Historical photographs, book-cover images and additional family materials are available at saltrancucci.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The life story of Sebastian \u201cSonny\u201d Grasso and Teresa Rigor has its roots in Perry and Bouton. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-306891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}