Truth be known...
Bob’s career in the world of art started back in 1954,
when his mother enrolled him in the summer art class.
Bob was just a little guy back then and was given an egg carton filled with water color tempera paints and a brush. Bobby quickly lost the brush and with his finger, dabbed one color and then dabbed another color and then blotted them together on his hand. Then another and another, Bob was so amazed at the magic that was happening before his eyes, the colors were actually changing all the time. “Is this real magic?” He had dots of color dabbed on his hands and arms, colors that where not available in the egg carton.
Perfect hand prints on the table where the sunlight hit turned them into beams of colored light that illuminated a whole new world. Bobby continued to mix and dab and blot until there was no skin left on his little body to dab, so he used cousin Louie’s nose. “It’s honest and truly real magic” he thought!!
continues
Little Bobby was jolted back to planet Earth by the sound of the football coach yelling like a maniac ... and he was kicked out for the summer and his little cousin too. 
This was the first day of Bob’s art career and he has not stopped creating illusions with color ever since. His mom took him home that day, washed him up and walked him to the Main Street Woolworth’s 5 & 10 to buy some paint for her “little bohemian”. I can’t help to wonder if the gym teacher in charge of that class, the man who told Rose Petillo that her son “would never be an artist” has ever recognized or put two and two together, that the little boy who made such a mess that day is Master Artist Bob Petillo all grown up today! He just didn’t recognize the mess was the beginning of a masterpiece in the making from his prize student!
Lea Ellen Dunham
