Joseph Andrew Zarnich first fell in love at 14. He was at a South Side street fair in the late 1920s with his family and he spotted a woman playing the accordion.
"He fell in love with the sound," said his daughter, Christine Zarnich.

It was the beginning of the Depression, and the gold-paved streets that Mr. Zarnich's parents had been told of before emigrating from Yugoslavia hadn't materialized. But Mr. Zarnich's father and mother worked extra hours and saved their money to allow their son to play the instrument he so admired. "They were immigrants and they were poor," Zarnich said. "But they saved up to buy him an accordion." The instrument played a pivotal role in Mr. Zarnich's life.

He taught the accordion to Pittsburghers for more than 40 years from a small studio on East Carson Street and later in Mount Oliver. He also achieved a bit of fame playing in the Polish Aristocrats Orchestra. His enthusiasm and longevity paid off in the form of a nickname that many in Pittsburgh knew him by: "the accordion man."

Mr. Zarnich, of Whitehall, died Thursday, after being diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks ago. He was 90. Mr. Zarnich was the second oldest of four children. He graduated from a technical high school and immediately began teaching and soon met his future wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Marx. "She was taking lessons from him," their daughter said. "He started asking her out. She was a stunning woman and she became like a groupie." They married in 1948. Zarnich and her brother, Joseph Howard Zarnich, both learned to play the accordion from their father.
"As a father he used to put Cheerios on his face to make us laugh," she said. "His warmth and humor while he was teaching always made the discipline and practicing easier."

His gigs with the Polish Aristrocrats made him well-known in Pittsburgh and he was eventually dubbed "the accordion man.""If you wanted to know about accordions, people would say, 'Come to Joe Zarnich, he's the best in Pittsburgh,' " his daughter said. Playing at various concerts and private events, along with giving lessons and fixing broken accordions, afforded Mr. Zarnich a very comfortable lifestyle. But more than anything, his daughter said, he received an enormous amount of self-satisfaction by passing along his love for the accordion to those he taught."He taught kids of middle class, people with low incomes," she said. "If they couldn't afford to pay for what he called the beginner's class, they might make him food or something. He just loved to see people play."

But as the years passed, people's enthusiasm for the accordion seemed to fade."Guitar got very big, and rock 'n' roll, and kids were just into sports and different extra curricular activities," she said. "And they just didn't want to do the practicing that went into the accordion. He was disappointed that it wasn't as wonderful an instrument to others as it was to him." Just two weeks before his diagnosis, he was still teaching. His five students, a few 14-year-olds and a doctor in his 70s, would come to his house in Whitehall for their lessons.
In addition to his daughter and son, Mr. Zarnich is survived by two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Mass was celebrated at 10 a.m. on Monday, August 29, 2005, at St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin Church in Whitehall, with a prayer service preceding it.