Victor Antonio DeLiso

Victor Antonio DeLiso passed away in peace the morning of Friday November 8th, 2024 in his room at Aria Assisted Living in Gates Mills, OH. He had been experiencing difficulties with his health. After a brief stint in the hospital, he returned home and declined to the end with grace. He was attended by his wife Evelyn, sons, Max & Marco, and the capable and loving staff at Aria. He was 84 years old.

Victor was born April 29th, 1940 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was the middle child of Maria Elosia Petrella and José DeLiso. His parents were Roman Catholic and had immigrated to Argentina from Italy. He lived with his parents, older brother José, and younger sister Graciela in the neighborhood surrounding the Palace of the Argentine National Government of Buenos Aires. He was not well suited for formal classroom education and left it behind at the age of 12, going to work for his father to help support the family. Victor was an active boy with an engaging personality and participated in dance and futbol. Life in BA was hard due to early health problems, the limited wealth of his family, and a strained relationship with his father. He fell in love with the image of the United States as portrayed on the silver screen movies of the time. He left Argentina in 1959 and immigrated to the USA, not to return for 17 years.

Victor arrived in Miami on his own with minimal material assets and a striking will to find his way in this new land. His lacking English ability did not prevent him from finding employment. He began working as a busboy at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach Hotel. We don’t have many details about this period, but we imagine it was a time of exploration and learning the skills he needed to create his first shred of stability away from his family unit. In contrast to his aversion for structured classroom study, Victor was born with a gift for connecting with and learning from the people he met. Within 6 months of being in Miami, he fell in with a group of friends and together they made their way West across the country to Los Angeles. They drove an old Hudson car that needed a full quart of engine oil every 100 miles. This acceptance of the relationship between automobile upkeep and dependability and the resourcefulness to actualize it became a theme for Victor over his lifetime.

Upon arrival in LA he secured employment as a busboy at the Ambassador Hotel. Money was tight; he lived on a single loaf of Wonder Bread for a week. It is unclear how long he worked at the hotel but we do know that during this time he first entered into employment as a photographer, working at the morgue of Cedars Lebanon Hospital. The next step was a job in a Kodak lab from which he was fired. He also worked as a portrait photographer for families. Later he would describe the challenge of finding the family’s house, making introductions, setting up the shoot, and then quickly breaking down and moving on to the next client. Photography suited him and he persisted through the challenges to find jobs and develop his skill. He had a natural gift for putting his subjects at ease and developed an incredible timing to capture the moment. Eventually Victor found his way into dance photography and embraced it as his niche which lasted the duration of his career.

Victor married Barbara Leatherwood in 1961 and they lived together in Burbank, CA. They had two children, Adrienne Maria DeLiso and Victor Kenneth DeLiso. They were both in their early 20s and diverging outlooks on career goals put a strain on their marriage. During this time Victor was often on the road building his network of business contacts. The couple divorced after 10 years.

Victor lived a semi-nomadic life, traveling between towns and creating his own opportunity. His method was to arrive in a city with a dance studio, open the phone book and place the cold call, angling to come in and meet the owner and make his pitch for setting up a day of photography for the dancers. He returned to the same schools year after year to provide beautiful fotos for the students. In many cases he became such a welcomed guest that he was invited into the homes of his clients while he was in town.

By the early 1970s, Victor’s business had begun to flourish and he was able to take his foot off the gas for the first time since arriving in the USA. This was a season of maturation and reflection. He achieved his American citizenship in 1973. In 1974, he returned home to Argentina for the first time since arriving in the USA. He visited with his family and told them about his journeys thus far. It was the first of many visits back to Argentina and he kept in close contact with his parents, eventually purchasing an apartment for them in Buenos Aires.

Shortly thereafter he moved his home base to Atlanta, GA and leased a house. It was in Atlanta that he met his future wife, Evelyn Ann McGee, who was working as a dance instructor at the Atlanta Academy of Dance and Gymnastics. They began dating. Evelyn moved in with him and they lived together for 6 years before getting married on September 13th, 1980. Their marriage lasted 44 years and she was with him as a devoted wife and caregiver until the end.

Victor supported Evelyn financially which gave her the freedom to return to school and change her career. She studied Materials Science and secured a PhD from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Their first son Marco Antonio DeLiso was born September 19th, 1987, followed by Joseph Maximillian DeLiso born March 6th, 1990. The family moved to upstate NY where they lived in Big Flats for a few years and then an extended stay in Corning, NY. Evelyn worked as an engineer at Corning Incorporated for the duration of their childhood. Victor began investing in real estate at this time, acquiring multiple condos in Manhattan and multifamily properties in Corning, NY. The family also lived in Fontainebleau France for two years around the turn of the millennium.

Victor is remembered as being an involved father with a strict manner and wild emotional swings. He had a knack for creating adventure and fun out of nothing. Being more advanced in his career, he was able to structure his work around the school schedule and took his sons to Manhattan during the summer to accompany him at his dance studio in Hell’s Kitchen. The boys remember these trips fondly, the dynamics of leaving from rural Corning and the excitement of driving into Manhattan through the Lincoln tunnel. He enrolled them in the Clinton Housing Community Center summer camp where they made friends and explored New York City.

By the early 90s Victor gave up the road and consolidated his efforts to the Manhattan dance scene. This was the peak of his photography business when he leveraged the many relationships he had forged over the years with studio owners and dancers in the area. He set up the equipment in his modest studio on West 38th street. The boys would sleep in the loft upstairs, watching him operate through the wooden rails. By this point his process had been refined to a science. He would host dancers, shoot the fotos, take the negatives to a local lab, do the showing back in the studio and make the sales. His business model was dependent on selling the prints and he did not adapt it when the industry shifted from print to digital media. Despite his mounting wealth and relative stability, Victor never forgot the lean years and retained the ability to live in discomfort when his life’s circumstances required it.

Victor eventually left photography, sold his properties, and retired to Cleveland, OH with Evelyn. He was healthy and active until about 70 years old. Around this time, he endured a few major health events that impeded his mobility and increased his needs beyond the point of what our family was able to provide. Throughout his life he held a great deal of skepticism about the medical establishment and was highly suspicious of doctors and hospitals. He was characterized as a noncompliant patient but despite this, or perhaps because of it, his many caregivers would ultimately form lasting friendships with him. Under Evelyn’s close supervision, he bounced between a few different care facilities before finding his new home at Aria in Gates Mills, OH. He enjoyed regular visits from Evelyn and his sons came to visit him several times a year. He maintained a positive attitude despite his periods of suffering and limited mobility.

Victor loved watching movies. Erroll Flynn, Burt Lancaster, Danny Kaye, John Wayne, and Stuart Granger. Legends of the silver screen whose presence and attitude were absorbed into his own sensibilities and style. He had a flair for the dramatic and a love of comedy. Charlie Chaplin, The Honeymooners, Laurel & Hardy, and the Three Stooges. He had a particular fondness for the barren landscape, self-reliance, and high stakes encounters of the Wild West. John Wayne operated with a cowboy code that was above the law of the land. Victor passed this love of cinema to his children. When watching movies together, he cared about how they were received. It was like we couldn’t miss a single plot point or we’d have to pause and go back. Many times, when describing how a movie might begin, he would introduce it by saying that it was about a priest, even though this was almost never the case.

Victor taught his sons Max & Marco many many things through shared adventures, transmitting his lived experiences into lessons they will carry with them always. How to strategically develop relationships to support a larger aim. The importance of having the right tools for the task at hand and treating them with respect. For getting up early and facing the day head on. For communicating clearly and openly. How to play chess, futbol, tennis, guitar. The benefit of pausing in the early afternoon to meditate on the needs of the day. How to collaborate with the police. The importance of physical exertion to bolster mental health. How to convert the tedium of errands into a journey of human connection and laughter. How to conduct yourself with levity, the importance of play. The freedom that comes from desiring what you have.

The world is colder and more predictable in the wake of his departure. As a family we feel immense gratitude for the Aria caregivers who gave him the grace of a peaceful egress. Victor is survived by his wife Evelyn, his four children, Adrienne DeLiso (Clay Corbisier), Victor “Ken” DeLiso (Inacia), Marco DeLiso and Joseph “Max” DeLiso, and two grandchildren Kayla and Felipe.

“From dust you are and to dust you will return” - Genesis 3:19

“Drive like hell and you’ll get there” - Victor DeLiso

“No matter what happens, I just keep on going” - Victor DeLiso