Italian America magazine, Fall 2014

FALL 2014 a ITALIAN AMERICA

Why Save Columbus Day?

Caesar RodneyFreedom’s Rider

Garlic Eaters!Italian Immigrant Fare

The Fiat 500The Little Car That Could

BONUS: The Ch

ristmas Sh

oppers Guide

Gift ideas w

ith an

Italian accen

t!

FALL 2014 b ITALIAN AMERICA

Tel: 800-777-7432 • 914-253-9446 Email: [email protected]: www.Unitours.com

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Adv #5710 - Italian America Magazine - 7.5” x 9.75”

FALL 2014 1 ITALIAN AMERICA

Italian AmericaTh e O f f i c i a l P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e O r d e r S o n s o f I t a l y i n A m e r i c a ®

Features

D e p a r t m e n t s

6

1822

12

ON THE COVER: The Columbus monument in Barcelona. See story page 22.

Editor-in-Chief Dona De Sanctis, Ph.D. [email protected]

Writers: Joseph Boncore, Eric Bryan, John J. Chinnici, Diane Crespy, Lucio D’Andrea, Krystyne Hayes, Laura Kelly, Rocco Marinacci, David McCormick

Graphic Designers: Krystyne Hayes, Diane Vincent

To advertise: Call Pat Rosso at 215/206-4678. Email: pieassociates @comcast.net. See www.osia.org for advertising rates, specs, demographics, etc.

FREEDOM’S RIDERCaesar Rodney’s PatriotismBy David McCormick

THE FIAT 500The Little Car That CouldBy Eric Bryan

WHY SAVE COLUMBUS DAY?What the Holiday RepresentsBy Dona De Sanctis

GARLIC EATERS!Immigrant Cuisine and American PrejudicesBy Rocco Marinaccio

2High Profile

3National News

4Oggi in Italia

5Pagina Italiana

9Book Club

10Our Story

27Fighting Stereotypes (CSJ)

28Your National Office

29Letters to the Editor

30The Last Word

31The Sons of Italy® Christmas Shopper’s Guide

ItALIAn AMERICA is published by tHE ORDER SOnS Of ItALy In AMERICA®

219 E Street, NE • Washington, DC 20002 • Tel: 202/547-2900 • Web: www.osia.org

fALL 2014 VOL. XIX no. 4

15It’s “Only” a Movie

16On the Bulletin Board

17Speakers Bureau

21Giovinezza!

24OSIA Nation

26Foundation Focus

Italian America Magazine is a publication of the Order Sons of Italy in America® (OSIA), the nation’s biggest and oldest organization for people of Italian heritage. To subscribe, see www.osia.org or call 1-800-552-6742.

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He was especially known for his roles as the heroes of Giuseppe Verdi’s many operas. He made his Met debut in 1956 as Ra-dames in Verdi’s Aida and gave his last performance at age 75 in 1994 as Verdi’s Otello. Bergonzi was born in a town near Verdi’s birthplace in Emilia Romagna and began as a baritone. He died July 25 in Milan at age 90.

Magda Olivero, who made her Metropolitan Opera debut at age 65 and gave recitals until she was 100, died in Milan Sept. 8. She was 104. At age 31, she left a budding career to marry, but returned after 10 years to perform the title role of “Adriana Lecouvreur” which became her signature opera. Early in her ca-reer, a conductor told her to look for another profession — advice the soprano wisely rejected.

High Profile ITalIaN amErICaNS IN ThE NEWS

HIGH PROFILEMICHAEL BOTTICELLI, the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 25 years. He has held this position since March 2013.

DONNA LOPIANO was recently named one of “The Ten Most Powerful Women in Sports” by Fox Sports for her internationally lauded leadership championing equal treatment for women in sports. As president of Sports Management Resources and a member of the National Sports Hall of Fame, she has testified before Congress advocating gender equity in sports. A former athlete, she participated in 26 national championships in four sports, including volley ball and softball.

RICK MASTRACCHIO, a NASA astronaut, has made four trips to the International Space Station since 2000. His latest expedition lasted 188 days, beginning November 7, 2013 and ending May 14, 2014. There he joined an international team of astronauts that included the Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano, and walked in space three times to repair faulty equipment. The crew completed 3,008 orbits of the earth and traveled 79.8 million miles during this mission.

ROBERT PANARA, a pioneering scholar in deaf studies, died July 20 in Rochester, NY of a heart ailment. He was 94 years old. The son of Italian immigrants, at age 10 he contracted spinal meningitis and lost his hearing. A teacher and a poet, he helped translate into sign language Shakespeare and other dramatic works; helped develop a national technical school for the deaf; and was a noted scholar and teacher of the deaf.

Compiled by Dona De Sanctis

Opera lost three of its brightest stars this summer with the passing of Licia Albanese, Carlo Bergonzi, and Magda Olivero, who sang at the world’s leading opera houses, delighting thousands with their performances and recordings for many decades.

Licia Albanese, a soprano, was praised for her interpre-tations of the doomed heroines of Giacomo Puccini’s operas – especially Madama Butterfly and La Boheme. She performed more than 400 times at New York’s Metropolitan Opera until she retired in 1966 to coach young singers.

Born Felicia Albanese in Bari, she was discovered in 1934 when, during a performance of Butterfly, the soprano became

ill. Albanese, who knew the role, was called from the audience to take her place. She died August 15 in New York City at age 105.

Tenor Carlo Bergonzi, who was hailed as Enrico Ca-ruso’s successor, sang for four decades all over the world.

Their Voices Stilled Forever

Licia Albanese as Butterfly

Carlo Bergonzi as Radames in 1956

Magda Olivero as Adriana Lecouvreur


National News ItALIAn AMERICAn ISSuES AnD EVEntS

Museum of American People to Feature Immigrant History & Contributions to the United States

ITALIAN AMERICA FALL 2014 3

A coalition of more than 150 ethnic and minority or-ganizations, including the Sons of Italy ®, is supporting a plan to build a multimillion-dollar National Museum of the American People in Washington, D.C. The museum will feature the history and contributions of the ethnic, religious, and racial groups that have settled in the United States. Projected to open in 2020, the museum would be the first of its kind in the United States, according to Sam Eskenazi, who directs the coalition. “It will embody our original national motto: E Pluribus Unum – From Many, We are One,” Eskenazi says.

No tax dollars will be used to build the museum, which will be entirely funded by donations from philanthropists, organizations, private citizens, and possibly foreign gov-ernments. The museum would be organized chronologi-cally in four chapters: Prehistory to 1607; 1607 to 1820; 1820 to 1924; and 1924 to the present.

The third chapter is of particular interest to Italian Americans, whose ancestors arrived in the millions from 1880 to 1924, says Dr. Philip Piccigallo, national execu-tive director of the Sons of Italy ® in Washington, D.C. “American museums are filled with Italian art, “he says. “And Washington’s monuments and architecture owe

The movie about Captain Richard Phillips’ ordeal at the hands of pirates who captured his ship has a real-life hap-py ending, thanks to U.S. Navy Captain Frank Castellano who commanded the destroyer that saved Captain Phillips after his ship was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009. It was the first American cargo ship hijacked in 200 years.

Navy SEAL sharpshooters fired on the pirates from the guided missile destroyer, the USS Bainbridge under the command of Captain Castel-lano, who tracked down the pirates and gave the SEALS the order to kill them, freeing Captain Phillips from his captors.

A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Capt. Castellano is currently assigned to the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA, but is slated to be the next commanding officer of the USS Vella Gulf.

He Saved Captain Phillips

Captain Frank Castellano

helped rescue the real Captain

Phillips

a great deal to the Italian American artisans who built them, but most people know very little about the many significant contributions made by Italian Americans, whose ancestors were the largest foreign group to come here in the 19th century.”

The museum’s permanent exhibits will use artifacts, documentaries, and computer technology, geared for both children and adults. They will be developed by teams of experts, including historians, anthropologists, arche-ologists, linguists, and others. For more information, see www.nmap2015.com or call 202/744-1868.

A possible design for the National Museum of the Ameri-can People projected to open in Washington, D.C. in 2020.

Looking for special Christmas gift ideas? Visit our special XMAS SHOPPER’S GUIDE in this issue on page 31.

Also, see www.osia.org at the “Market Place” section for discounts on Italian products and specialty items, including Murano glass, fine stationery, kitchenware, art posters, books and more!

Christmas Gifts at Special OSIA Discounts!

http://www.nmap2015.com

http://www.osia.org's


annually for humanitarian aid. The sizeable sum, however, is only about 1% of the EU’s total budget, according to Benjamin Ward of Human Rights Watch.

If the EU doesn’t offer assistance, Italian Interior Min-ister Angelino Alfano warned that Italy will ignore EU asylum rules that require migrants to stay in the country they land in until their refugee status is decided. “We’ll just let them go,” Alfano says.

ITaly’S NEWS, polITICS aND CulTurEOggi in Italia

Waves of Refugees Create Problems for Italy

Living to 100

By DOnA DE SAnCtIS

The violence and instability in Libya, Syria, and other war-torn nations have caused thousands of people, includ-ing women, children and the elderly, to risk dangerous sea crossings to escape to Italy. This refugee tsunami is creating serious social and financial problems for the Ital-ians, who question why other European nations are not offering assistance during this humanitarian crisis.

In 2013, nearly 43,000 Syrian refugees arrived in Sic-ily from Libya after paying huge sums to be smuggled into Italy. So far this year, that number has risen to about 100,000 people. In August alone, Italian authorities rescued 3,500 refugees while nearly 200 perished after their overcrowded ships sank. Every month, Italy spends $13 million for “Mare Nostrum,” a rescue program that involves air and sea patrolling of the Mediterranean Sea.

The problem will become even more serious, according to a report released in August by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Despite this, leaders of the European Union (EU) have declined offering Italy any help even though the EU has $1.3 billion set aside

The tiny village of Molochio in Calabria, has one of the highest rates of centenarians in the world. Now researchers think they know why. For the past 20 years, the vil-lagers along with thousands of other adults were studied by both Italian and American researchers. They found that people who eat a lot of protein in middle age are four times more likely to die of cancer and diabetes than people who eat a low-protein diet.

A high protein diet gets at least 20 percent of its calories from protein while a low protein diet has less than 10 per-cent. “Reduce such animal protein as meat, milk and cheese and substitute plant-based proteins including nuts, seeds and beans,” urges Valter Longo, one of the study’s co-authors.

Ironically, the researchers also found that too much protein is bad for middle aged people but good for seniors because it helps them maintain weight and avoid frailty. In fact, for most of their lives, Molochio’s centenarians eat a plant-based, low-protein diet, but have more protein when they become elderly and move in with their children. The study was published last year in the journal Cell Metabolism.

“Salute!” Good health in old age = a low protein diet

Italian authorities rescuing refugees this summer. [VOA News]

Florentines are justifiably proud to call Dante one of their own. The medieval poet’s masterpiece, “The Divine Comedy” takes him on a journey through Hell, Purgatory

and Heaven. But what would Dante think of having a pizzeria named after him – even if it is called the “pizza

paradise”? [Photo by Cristiano Del Riccio]


Pagina Italiana PER CHI StuDIA LA nOStRA LInguA


Il Natale in ItaliaLA FESTA PIÙ IMPORTANTE

Il Natale si festeggia il 25 dicem-bre ed è la festa più importante in Italia. Con il Natale si celebra la nascita di Gesù. Le famiglie, in questo giorno, si riuniscono, cuci-nano molte cose da mangiare, giocano e si scambiano i regali.

I bambini aspettano la mat-tina di Natale per vedere se Babbo Natale, un vecchio con la barba che viaggia in slitta,

abbia portato quello che loro hanno scritto nelle letterine. Questo è un bel periodo per i bambini anche perché le scuole rimangono chiuse, in genere, dal 23 dicembre al 6 gennaio.

In questo periodo c’è chi parte per la montagna, per andare a sciare sulle Alpi che sono piene di turisti; si dice che partono per la settimana bianca.

LA VIGILIA DI NATALEIl giorno prima di Natale è chiamato la Vigilia e la

cena della Vigilia – il cenone -- è una delle più importanti. I negozi chiudono prima nel giorno della vigilia mentre tutto resta chiuso i giorni 25-26 dicembre.

Per il cenone della vigilia e per quello natalizio, in Italia si cucina moltissimo, soprattutto pesce. Allo stesso modo, durante tutto il periodo di festa, si preparano o si comprano dolci particolari, come il panettone, il pandoro o il torrone, e la casa viene decorata.

L’albero viene preparato, di solito, l’8 dicembre che è la festa dell’Immacolata Concezione. Insieme all’albero

spesso viene fatto anche il presepe che è la rappresentazi-one della natività di Gesù. In Italia si organizzano molte mostre con i presepi, anche particolari, e la più famosa è sicuramente la mostra di Napoli.

L’ANNO NUOVOSempre nel periodo natalizio cade la

festa per il nuovo anno, il Capodanno. Il 31 dicembre, giorno di San Silves-tro, si esce o ci si riunisce per il cenone dell’ultimo giorno dell’anno. I negozi chiudono prima, alle 18 al massimo. Quando arriva la mezzanotte si beve lo spumante.

La fine delle feste di Natale è il 6 gennaio, l’Epifania, cioè il giorno in cui, per i cristiani, i re Magi vedono Gesù e lo riconoscono come Dio.

Il 6 gennaio è particolarmente importante per i bambini perché la tradizione dice che una vecchia signora, la Befana, voli di casa in casa per riempire le calze dei bambini buoni con tante caramelle. Per quelli cattivi invece c’è il carbone! Si dice che l’Epifania tutte feste porta via!Fonte: NoiParliamoItaliano.com

L’albero di Natale

Il Panettone

La Befana

UNA CANZONE PER LE FESTEBIANCO NATALE (White Christmas)

tu, neve, scendi ancor, lenta per dare gioia in ogni cuor.

E’ natale spunta la pace santa; l’amor che sa conquistar.

tu dici nel cader, neve il cielo devi ringraziar.

Alza gli occhi, guarda lassù! E’ natale, non si soffre più.

http://parliamoitaliano.altervista.org/madonna-immacolata-concezione-ferragosto/

http://parliamoitaliano.altervista.org/il-presepe/

http://parliamoitaliano.altervista.org/capodanno/

http://parliamoitaliano.altervista.org/la-tradizione-della-befana/


By DAVID MC CORMICK

In 1775, Paul Revere’s famed midnight ride warned the colonists that the British were coming. The following year, Caesar Rodney’s lesser-known ride through a thun-derstorm cast the deciding vote to declare the 13 colonies’ independence from the British Empire, then the most powerful nation on earth. Who was this American patriot?

Caesar Rodney claimed both English and Italian roots; being descended from the Adelmare family of Treviso in Italy’s north-ern Veneto region. Rodney’s gggg-great-grandfather, Julius Caesar Adelmare emigrated from Italy to England in around 1550 and became a respected physician to British royalty, including Queen Elizabeth I. About 130 years later, sometime in the 1680s, Rodney’s grandfather, William Rodney left England to settle in Kent County, Delaware where Caesar Rodney was born in 1728. His family was wealthy and active in politics.

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) marked Rod-ney’s entrance into government service at age 27 when he nailed a call-to-arms written in his hand to a tree. It read in part, “those zealous to exert themselves in protection

of country liberties and property” should join the (Kent County) militia company. Rodney himself would be appointed its captain. Over the next decade, Rodney’s sense of civic duty would lead him to serve as sheriff, judge, state assemblyman, and associate justice of Delaware’s Supreme Court.

Although he was wealthy, witty and wise, Rodney never married and lived much of his adult life in solitude because of a cancer that disfigured his face. By 1768, it had worsened to the point that he was compelled to have the growth removed; leaving a hole that, in his words was “quite to the bone.” Eventually,

the cancer spread over his face, forcing him to wear a silk veil to conceal the toll the disease took on his appearance.

By the time the Declaration of Independence was drafted in 1776, the 13 colonies and England had been locked in battle for more than a year – ever since the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April, 1775, which had triggered Paul Revere’s ride. During the war, Rodney, now a colonel, had two Delaware battalions under his command. Although at first of moderate political bent,

A 19th century image of Rodney. No contem-

porary portrait exists probably because of the facial cancer that

disfigured him.

FALL 2014 7 ITALIAN AMERICAITALIAN AMERICA FALL 2014 7

he worked hard to bring Delaware in line with tenets put forward by the Continental Congress; coming to embrace the idea of total independence for the colonies—but the prospect of war still gave him pause.

By the summer of 1776, Rodney was serving as his colony’s delegate to the Continental Congress, the fledging American government in Philadelphia, as well as speaker of the Delaware Assembly, making him Delaware’s highest ranking official. Working tirelessly, he dealt with Tory uprisings and military exigencies. Now 47 and still battling cancer, he also suffered bouts of asthma that left him so frail that John Adams described him as “slender as a reed, pale; his face is not bigger than a large apple.” But Adams was quick to add; there was “…sense, and fire, spirit, wit and humor in his countenance.”

In June of 1776, an exhausted Rodney left Philadel-phia to return to Dover for a much needed rest, but was roused in the middle of the night on July 1 by a courier who told him he was needed in Philadelphia post haste. Rodney was made aware of the situation awaiting him there and specifically, that the vote to declare the colonies’ independence was scheduled for July 2.

Battling severe thunderstorms and fatigue, Rodney rode 80 miles through the night and well into the fol-lowing day to reach the Continental Congress in Phila-delphia, arriving in the afternoon of July 2. There he cast the deciding vote for independence from the British Empire. As he stood among his fellow patriots, Rodney said, “The voice of my constituents and all sensible and honest men, I believe is in favor of independence; and my own judgment concurs with them. Therefore, I vote for the Declaration.” He then signed the resolution enabling

Delaware to declare its vote unanimously for America’s independence. Two days later, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved and Rodney was one of its 56 signers.

Over the years, scholars have questioned whether a man in Rodney’s condition could make the trip on horseback on such a night. Fellow delegate Thomas McKean later stated that he met Rodney at the state house “in his boots and spurs…,” but Rodney’s brother, Thomas, said that upon receiving the call, Caesar immediately “called for his carriage” and set off for Philadelphia. Whether he made the trip on horseback or by carriage matters little—it was a flagging Rodney that covered 80 miles in “thunder and rain,” crossing more than a dozen streams by “ford, bridge or ferry” in some 14 hours, to reach Independence Hall on the afternoon of July 2 for that crucial vote.

Once independence was declared, Caesar had little time to rest. In his position as speaker of Delaware’s Assembly, he had to call for elections that would determine the form of government for Delaware. He also needed to find arms The 1999 Delaware state quarter

depicts Rodney’s famous ride.

The signatures of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence include two men of

Italian heritage: Delaware’s Caesar Rodney and William Paca of Maryland.


for Delaware’s militias. By the fall of 1776, supplies were woefully short for the troops. With cold weather coming, blankets were sorely needed, but there were none to be found. Out of his own pocket Rodney purchased “Corse Cloths” to keep his army warm.

He faced one crisis after another. As 1776 drew to a close, Delaware’s militia ranks were dwindling. Caesar pressed vigorously for more men to fill the ranks. For a while, the crisis seemed to agree with him. He even proposed marching with the troops if that would help fill the ranks. He told his brother that he had “…not been the least unwell…not even with Astma—In short I…grow fat…” However, this grace period in his health would be short lived.

In March 1778, Delaware’s legislature convened and elected Rodney president of Delaware for a term of three years. Popular among his compatriots, he garnered 20 of 24 votes. By this time, the Loyalists in Delaware, who were against independence from the King, were openly trading with British war vessels. In one instance, brazen Loyalists built a fort along the Maryland border. Rodney sent troops to drive them out. His term as president was extended and did not expire until November 1781.

The never-ending demand to provide men and supplies for Washington’s army, as well as problems with Delaware’s

Loyalists, caused his health to greatly deteriorate. Rodney put himself under the care of Doctor Thomas Bond in Philadelphia, who swore he could “create a cure.” Rodney was more pragmatic saying “….the Doctor must conquer the Cancer, or the Cancer will conquer me.”

Although ailing, Rodney still tended to personal mat-ters; taking care to settle debts that his brother Thomas had left behind in Philadelphia. Sometime during the second half of 1782 he returned home to Dover. In 1783, he was once again elected to the state legislature and chosen speaker. This was unexpected. Rodney had made it plain that “very little service can be expected of me…my con-stitution….is too much unhinged for me to discharge the duties in a public Station…” Rodney’s health continued in decline. To accommodate him, the senate held its April 1784 session at his home at Poplar Grove. Soon afterward, a notice appeared stating that Rodney died at his home near Dover the evening of June 26, 1784. He was 56 years old.

Aside from signing the Declaration of Independence, Caesar Rodney also served as a member of the Stamp Act Congress and the First and Second Continental Congress-es; speaker of the Delaware Colonial Assembly, president of Delaware State and major general of the Delaware Militia. Quite a legacy for this freedom rider!

David McCormick is a freelance writer, living in Springfield, MA. Contact him at [email protected]

John Trumbull’s famous painting of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence was sketched from life in 1817 and now hangs in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.



The Signs of Italy By Louise fili

Graphic designer Louise Fili fell in love with Italian street signs on her first visit to Italy when she was 16 and saw a billboard advertising Baci Perugina chocolates. Her obsession with Ital-ian signage led to a career in graphic design as well as an avocation. Over the years, she has photographed thou-sands of Italian shop and restaurant signs. Now she has collected the best of them in one volume divided into three categories: classic, traditional, and eclectic. Each sign is unique but collectively they represent a part of Italy’s cultural heritage that all tourists see but few take the time to appreciate. Her passion has led to a beautifully designed book full of beautiful signs. [$40.00; hardcover; 264 pages; Princ-eton Architectural Press]

Sicily: A Cultural HistoryBy Joseph farrell

Powerful nations have invaded Sicily for most of its 3,000-year history, leaving their mark on the island’s landscape, language, cuisine, and culture. Foreign domination began in the 8th century B.C with the Greeks. Over the centuries, Sicily has been controlled by the Romans; the Carthaginians; the Muslims; the Normans; and the Spanish, among many others. Today, Sicily has more Greek temples than Athens along with Muslim mosques, Norman castles, Baroque churches, and Roman am-phitheaters. Each chapter of author Farrell’s short history covers Sicily’s rich cultural heritage and the often terrible price Sicilians have paid for it. [$15.00; paperback with illustra-tions; 292 pages; Interlink Books]

Also Worth Reading

Book Club fALL 2014 SELECtIOnS

My Two ItaliesBy Joseph Luzzi

Italian Americans have ancestral roots in southern Italy’s villages while their direct experience of Italy as tourists or students introduces them to the culture of Rome, Florence, and other Italian cities. Author Luzzi captures this schizophrenia in his poignant yet witty memoir. He grew up in a family of Calabrese immigrants who settled in Rhode Island, bringing with them the customs and mentality of southern Italian peasants. He learned about the ‘other’ Italy during his graduate stud-ies in Italian literature at Yale. Now a professor of Italian, his deep know-ledge and love of Italy reveals the many contradictions of this tiny, incredible peninsula in the middle of the Medi-terranean Sea. [$23.00; hardcover; 204 pages; Ferrar, Straus & Giroux]

The Sons of Italy®

Italian Americans vs. The Mass MediaBy Adolph CasoIt’s no secret that Italian Americans are unfairly targeted by the media in spite of the “po-litical correctness” that respects other ethnic, racial and religious groups. In his short study, Adolfo Caso provides examples of how the media have distorted information about Italian Americans, organized crime, and even Columbus. [$12.95; softcover; 170 pages; Branden Books]

Giuliana’s WayBy Albert M. ParilloIn his novel, author Parillo tells the Cinderella story of an eleven-year-old girl who leaves war-torn Italy all by herself in 1941 to go to America. There her dream of becoming an architect van-ishes when she is forced to leave school to work in a restaurant kitchen. But her talent for cook-ing brings her success beyond her wildest dreams. [$21.00; softcover; 395 pages; Authorhouse]

Reviewed by Dona De Sanctis



ItALIAn AMERICAn HIStORy AnD CuLtuREOur Story

By JOHn J. CHInnICI

All Joseph DiTrapani knew about his family was that they came from Palermo so it was a challenge for the ge-nealogical firm, My Italian Family to research the lineage of this former OSIA president and current president of the Sons of Italy Foundation®. In big Italian cities like Palermo, researchers must contend with a byzantine and illogical bureaucracy. Fortunately, our team knows some tricks.

INTO THE ARCHIVESOur researcher begins in Palermo’s

town hall in Piazza Pretoria, a square graced by the intricate Fountain of Shame (Fontana della Vergogna). These beautiful buildings house the municipal archives that could have records about the DiTrapani family.

Working through the protocols and hierarchy of Palermo requires luck and know-how from our researcher. To be-gin, he builds rapport with a low-level clerk in the archives—a grunt worker who might break a rule or two.

After friendly banter, the clerk grants complete access to the archives. The registers begin in 1866 and are still in their original, handwritten ledgers with crumbling covers and dusty pages. Our researcher carefully selects volumes from the industrial metal shelving units that hold them.

The clerk interrupts. Procedure prohibits our man from photographing the pages. Instead, he must leave a detailed list of the documents. We rely on the clerk to photocopy the pages and mail us the documents. For Palermo, this round of research went quite smoothly.

Next, our researcher moves on to Palermo’s state archives to learn about DiTrapani’s family before 1866. The archives are a beautiful building that began as a 15th century farmhouse for visiting Franciscan friars. It also was used as a church before being converted to a government building. Procedural red tape limits the number of registers one person can browse daily. Knowing this, our researcher brings along a friend to access twice as many records.

Our researchers get caught photographing the DiTrapani family entries. No photos can be taken without

Tracing Our Italian Roots

permission of the archives director who summons our two men to his office. It is full of dark wood, leather furniture, oriental rugs and antique silverware. After small talk, the director agrees to have his staff photo-graph the documents and mail the copies -- for a fee. Another list, another wait for mailed photocopies. No matter; these records will take us back a few more generations in DiTrapani’s roots.

CONNECTING THE DOTSFinally, the research bears fruit as the promised

documents arrive. We learn from the last name that an ancestor came from the Sicilian town of Trapani, but this family has been in Palermo since at least

1700 when Francesco Di Trapani was born. Settling in Via Resuttana, a neighborhood of northwest Palermo, the family scarcely moved until many immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s.

When Salvatore came over in 1913, he listed his occu-pation as baker or fornaio, the same occupation as Filippo Di Trapani, born more than 120 years earlier in 1791! Though the aftermath of World War II greatly changed Palermo’s cityscape, we tracked down still-standing fam-ily homes and village squares that DiTrapani’s ancestors probably frequented.

It has taken some elbow grease to gather the informa-tion, but it’s worth it when we see the surprise and awe on DiTrapani’s face after we reveal the historical information we’ve found about his roots.

John J. Chinnici is with My Italian Family, a genealogical re-search firm in Pennsylvania. See: www.myitalianfamily.com Also see ad on page 32.

Palermo’s town hall in Piazza Pretoria where the municipal archives are kept.

Joseph DiTrapani, OSIA’s immediate past president and current president of the Sons of Italy Foundation®.


ItALIAn AMERICAn HIStORy AnD CuLtuREOur Story

The Gift of Heritage


What did millions of Italians gain -- and lose -- by pur-suing their American dream? Most Italian Americans today don’t know. Now the answers can be found in Explorers Emigrants Citizens, a new book that captures the Italian American experience through rare photographs, letters, and documents. “This book is the perfect Christmas pres-ent,” says Anthony J. Baratta, national president of the Sons of Italy ®. “It should be in every Italian American family’s library. And I also encourage lodges to donate a copy to their local school and public libraries.”

The book is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and Paolo Battaglia, a small publisher and graphic designer in Italy. It is co-written by Battaglia and Linda Barrett Osborne, who was a senior writer and edi-tor at the Library before retiring. “I agreed to work on the project because I am 100% Italian despite my maiden name, Barrett, which my parents changed from Boccuzzi back in the 1940s to avoid discrimination,” she says.

She and Battaglia spent more than a year going through the Library of Congress’s vast holdings. They found 5,000 images and chose 500 of them for the book. These include 15th century manuscripts about the voyages of Columbus; the photographs of Carlo Gentile, the 19th century photog-rapher who captured the culture of Native Americans; and im-ages of the Piccirilli brothers as they carved the Lincoln Memorial.

Also included are Frances Cabrini, the first American saint; and Charlie Siringo, a lawman and cowboy as well as photographs of early 20th century Italian street bands, opera singers, and puppeteers. “Some Italian immigrants and Italian Americans are very well known, but we uncov-ered the stories of millions of nameless people who literally built the United States,” Barrett Osborne says.

The book also deals with the stereotypes and prejudices Italian Americans have confronted, but it bears witness to their triumphs. It has a moving foreword by Martin Scorsese about his own Italian American heritage. “We hope this book will be a legacy that today’s Italian Ameri-cans will pass on to the next generation,” she says.Italian glassblowers were at Jamestown, Virginia, the

first permanent English settlement in the New World.

Charlie Siringo was a detective who went undercover for the Pinkerton Agency and later

became a cowboy.

GIFT IDEA Explorers Emigrants Citizens by Linda Barrett Osborne & Paolo Battaglia

was a Sons of Italy National Book Club Selection earlier this year. This visual history of the Italian American experience taps for the first time the Library of Congress’s vast photo collection of Italian American history.

It has over 500 images and photographs, many never before published, includ-ing the first map ever to use the name “America” as well as stark photographs of what our early ancestors faced and triumphant shots of their successful children and grandchildren. [$55; hardcover; 320 pages; Anniversary Books. The Italian edition, TROVARE L’AMERICA is available for 48 euros through Amazon Italia: www.amazon.it]


By ROCCO MARInACCIO

Today, Italian cuisine has such prominence on tables all across America that people rarely think of it as “ethnic,” much less “foreign.” Ital-ian restaurants are in virtually every community. Americans consume 350 slices of pizza per second and spend $37 billion per year on this Neapoli-tan creation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. American supermarkets routinely stock pro-sciutto, mozzarella, olio d’oliva, and even Italy’s favorite breakfast snack, Nutella.

But about 100 years ago, Italian food was considered exotic, suspi-cious, and even dangerous to health and character. These shifting attitudes towards Italian cuisine reflect similarly shifting attitudes toward people of Italian heritage, especially during the Great Migration of 1880-1924.

“The Italian Joint” Today, Italian restaurants are usu-

ally among the best and most popular in American cities, while chefs like Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, and Mary Ann Esposito are teaching Americans how to prepare traditional Italian dishes on their respective tele-vision cooking shows. But it wasn’t until 1974 that The New York Times

“GArlICEATErS”Immigrant Cuisine and American Prejudices

Italian cold cuts and sausages were believed “unhealthy” for body and mind 100 years ago.

FALL 2014 12


awarded four stars to an Italian res-taurant, the now largely forgotten Parioli Romanissimo in New York City. This long wait illustrates the “outsider” status of Italian food for nearly 150 years. In 1827, Swiss Ital-ians did open New York’s first great restaurant, Delmonico’s, but they served a decidedly French menu where even the Italian-inspired dishes were French in style and name. (“Macaroni Italienne,” anybody?)

More authentic Italian food ap-peared much later, beginning with the table d’hôte (fixed price) restaurants in Lower Manhattan in the 1870s. These were the haunts of trend-setting New York bohemian artists, writers, and musicians. At Moretti’s or Maria del Prato’s, the forerunners of today’s hipster foodies devoured steaming bowls of minestrone or spaghetti with meat sauce, and huge platters of roasted chicken or fried veal cutlets, all served family-style – on platters passed from diner to diner. Of course, they washed everything down with red wine from straw-covered bottles.

If you wanted an Italian restaurant in New York City 100 years ago, you headed for Mulberry Street’s Little Italy; the streets near the old Metro-politan Opera House; or the bohe-mian Greenwich Village. Frequented by opera legends like Enrico Caruso and Giacomo Puccini as well as Italian

painters and poets, these early Italian restaurants also introduced New York-ers to Italian cuisine.

Characteristically set on the ground floor of a row house, the “Italian joint” had a scruffy atmosphere well-suited to its casual food and clientele. In his portrait of Garibaldi’s, from his 1895 short story “Bohemia Invaded,” James L. Ford revels in the restaurant’s shab-biness, noting the courtyard “littered” with “old wine casks, bottles, jars, emp-ty boxes, [and] broken chairs”—exactly the kind of “rubbish . . . that might be expected to accumulate about the kitchen door of an Italian restaurant.” Such rubbish must have piled high, as the Italian joint remained a fixture for decades and Italian food became a marker of urban cool.

“Garlic Eaters” Not everyone, however, relished

the hearty fare and the shabby charms of these Italian restaurants, and an increasingly negative perception of Italian food emerged at the turn of the 20th century and continued through the 1930s. Time and again, Italian food was the object of scrutiny and scorn, both within popular culture and

at institutional levels. Sometimes, the criticism directed at Italian food was based on personal taste or opinion. It many cases, though, it intended to vilify the Italian Americans who prepared, sold, and ate it.

Many ethnic slurs, such as “spa-ghetti bender” or “grape stomper,” testify to this intent. No slur, how-ever, was more revealing than “garlic eater,” which reflected the common stereotype of the foul-smelling and dirty Italian. For example, in 1890, the social reformer Jacob Riis asserted that Italian immigrants were “content to live in a pig sty,” while an earlier reformer, Charles Loring Brace, in 1872, described an Italian tenement as “a bedlam of sounds, and a combina-tion of odors from garlic, monkeys, and the most dirty human persons.”

The Food PoliceAt the turn of the last century, cu-

linary reformers moved to eliminate the threats posed by Italian immi-grants and their food. The “science” of the developing Home Economics movement fueled these reform efforts, which criticized many basic Italian food preferences.

New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia favored closed markets like this one over push carts which he

eventually banned.

Bertilotti’s restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village was a typical “Italian joint” at the turn of the 20th century.


A diet high in fruits and vegetables, for example, was believed lacking in protein. Highly seasoned dishes were thought to cause physical and emotional problems. And such stan-dard Italian cold cuts as salame and mortadella, along with pork sausages, would “make you take on the dispo-sition and tendencies of the hog,” according to a late 19th century pam-phlet entitled Food and Morals. Such linking of food to character is the basis of culinary reform. In 97 Orchard, her study of eating habits among Lower East Side immigrants, Jane Ziegelman notes that “Non-Italians found proof of the . . . immigrants’ lowly character in the food they ate.”

In order to familiarize immigrant families with American eating habits, cook books and classes were offered in public schools, settlement houses, and other immigrant aid institutions. In addition, visiting social workers and public health officials gave home dem-onstrations on cooking and kitchen hygiene. These individuals repeatedly cited a litany of complaints: Italians insisted on “indulging” in olive oil and other imported “luxuries” like cheese. They resisted drinking milk and gave their children coffee. They relied on pasta and beans for protein instead of meat.

The iconic “spaghetti and meat-balls” is a distinct example of success-ful “Americanization” of the Italian diet. A dish entirely unknown in Italy, where meatballs constitute the sec-ond course and are never served with pasta, it emerged as Italian Americans adapted to an American cuisine built around large servings of meat. But for the most part, Italian housewives kept to mealtime traditions, earning Italian Americans a reputation as the ethnic group most resistant to culinary assimilation.

The End of PushcartsApart from the home kitchen, how-

ever, there was one notable success in the institutional war against Italian food preferences, a battle that was, ironically, finally won by a legendary Italian American: New York’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Upon assuming office in 1934, LaGuardia vowed to erase all 15,000 pushcarts from the streets, eliminating what some were calling “The Pushcart Evil.”

Long a fixture in immigrant neigh-borhoods, by 1925 nearly one-quarter of the city’s pushcart vendors were Italian immigrants. Tenement residents purchased house wares, prepared food, and, most importantly, 80 percent of their fresh produce from pushcarts, rendering them a source of otherwise inaccessible healthy food. Additionally, many New Yorkers viewed the pushcarts, along with the “Italian joint,” as aspects of the city’s cosmopolitan diversity. “I am sorry that the picturesque pushcarts are now being replaced by the modern municipal markets,” wrote one jour-nalist. “To me the pushcarts are typical of this great metropolis.”

LaGuardia, however, had no pa-tience for such “gushing sentimental-

ity.” He maintained the long-standing official line, as stated in the “Report of the Mayor’s Pushcart Commis-sion” (1906), which emphasized the “danger from improper food supplies because of dirt and germs,” and the pushcarts’ contribution of “additional odors and noise in neighborhoods where conditions are now almost unbearable.”

Over time, LaGuardia removed the pushcarts from the streets and created nine enclosed markets. At one market opening, he addressed his audience of vendors, whose uniform of white coats (an adaptation of surgical at-tire) reflected the growing anxiety about germs and food. Concluding his speech, LaGuardia evoked the persis-tent connections between the immi-grant’s diet, filth, and low behavior: “There will be no more of this,” the mayor proclaimed, as he pretended to spit on an apple.

TodayAs farmers’ markets return to New

York and other cities across America and the Mediterranean diet earns praise for its healthfulness, LaGuar-dia’s food phobia seems unimaginable. So too do the old prejudices against garlicky food and the people who eat it. But long before Italian Americans and their food earned a place at the national table, these anxieties were real. Remembering them reminds us just how challenging the journey to that table has been for this nation’s estimated 25 million people of Italian descent.

Rocco Marinaccio is professor of English at Manhattan College in New York City. Contact him at [email protected]

Push carts were prevalent as this late 19th century advertisement

indicates.



How stereotyping shapes the public image of Italian Americans today.

By Dona De Sanctis

SENd YOur CONTrIBuTIONS TO [email protected] or mail to: Italian America Magazine, 219 E Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002. Include name and daytime telephone number. No telephone calls please. Mailed submissions cannot be acknowledged. Contributors’ names, when known, are in parenthesis.


• ANTI-ITALIANPRIEST Italy is the curse of the Church, according to Fr. Ray Blake who, in his August 17, 2014 blog, complained that speaking Italian is essential for people seeking to advance in the Church.

He added that “certain Italian cul-ture” is associated with corruption and inefficiency because it wants to employ “everyone in the village...even buying a cup of coffee in a bar practically always involves half an Italian family, someone to take the order, someone to give the order to, someone to make the coffee and someone to clear-up afterwards,” he said. Francis Fraietta, Connecticut

• HOTTEMPERS=COLDGELATO? Italian ge-lato has less fat and fewer calories than ice cream so Haagen-Dazs is selling it ... by pushing unflattering stereotypes.

A national commercial shows an attractive young Italian couple insulting

each other in Italian with English subtitles. They call each other crazy and selfish; shout and break plates until the sight of a container of gelato defuses these two emotional time bombs but only temporarily.

The company has received numerous complaints about the commercial on its Facebook site, but still airs the ad. Gina Sicina, New York

• THEENEMYIS...US In his campaign to become the next governor of New York, Republican candidate

Rob Astorino likened his opponent, the cur-rent governor, Demo-crat Andrew Cuomo to a mafia boss. During a July 28 campaign stop in Syracuse, NY, Astorino compared Gov. Cuomo’s involvement in an anti-corruption probe to a “mafia boss” making “an offer you can’t refuse.”

Both men are of Italian heritage. The Sons of Italy® immediately issued a statement criticizing the remark.

• ISNOTHINGSACRED? “Those who...have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the Mafia ... are excommunicated,” Francis said in an outdoor Mass in Calabria June 23. The pope’s edict could make him a target for the Mafia because in southern Italy members of the Mafia gain local support by portraying themselves as religious men who support the Catholic Church.

It was the first time in history that a pope excommunicated Mafiosi. But two Ameri-

can political cartoonists saw it only as a chance to trot out tired Mafia jokes. Tom Stiglich is a nationally syndicated political cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, and other important publications. He drew Pope Francis waking up to find a severed horse’s head on his bed. Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic drew Francis extending the cross to a gangster holding a machine gun and telling him, “I’ve got an offer you can’t refuse.”

Father Ray Blake ... no fan of Italy

Love Italian-style, according to Haagen-Dazs

New York’s Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rob Astorino [L.] and his oppo-nent, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Political cartoonist

Tom Stiglich



WhaT’S NEW: DISCouNTS, SErvICES aND EvENTSBulletin Board

By KRyStynE HAyES

For the first time, the Sons of Italy® is offering a special guided tour of Ire-land through its partnership with the travel company, Collette. Prices start at $2,899 per person (double occupancy) and include round trip airfare from New York if booked by Oct. 26. (After that date, prices start at $3,249.) The tour begins April 26 and ends May 5, 2015.

Highlights include visiting the Blarney Stone and Castle; learning about the art of whiskey making (and tast-ing); and a trip to the stunning 700-foot Cliffs of Moher for awe-inspiring views. Remember, book by October 26 and save $350 per person.

Taking the trip benefits OSIA because Collette will make a donation to the Sons of Italy® for every land and air trip booked by OSIA members and supporters at no extra cost.

The OSIA/Collette Travel Program offers four tours a year to various destinations (except Italy. Those tours are offered exclusively through our partner Unitours.) Visit www.gocollette.com for itineraries or call 800/437-0235 to book. Remember to mention “Order Sons of Italy in America®, and promotion code “U001.AX1.918” for OSIA to get credit.

Emerald Isle Magic

New Book on Daughters & DadsLosing a father can be one of the

most heart-wrenching experiences in a woman’s life. Now a new book, Daughters, Dads, and the Path of Griev-ing: Tales from Italian America explores the difficult and painful process by in-terviewing 50 Italian American women who have been through the loss.

Psychologists Lorraine Mangione and Donna DiCello also guide the reader through helpful questions and exercises that lead to a better understanding of the crucial father/daughter relationship. [Daughters, Dads, and the Path Through Grief: Tales from Ital-ian America by Donna DiCello, Psy.D., and Lorraine Mangione, Ph.D. $19.95. At local bookstores and online from Impact Publishers at www.impactpublishers.com. Tel: 1-800-246-7228.]

Visit Ireland’s Blarney Castle next spring with the

Sons of Italy®.

Americans are known for their love of barbe-quing, but few know that out-door grilling is an Italian tradi-tion, too. Roast-ing arrosticini, or spiedini, as they are sometimes called, is a tradi-tion that comes from Abruzzo, a mountainous region about 50 miles east of Rome. Spiedini are made with mutton or lamb’s meat cut in bite-size pieces; pierced by a bamboo skewer; and then roasted on a brazier. This style of grilling lamb has been enjoyed in Italy for hundreds of years.

Now Americans can try grilling Italian-style through a device called il cubo (the cube) that makes preparing the spiedini quick and easy. Simply stack any kind of meat in the cube; place the top on, insert the skewers and slice to produce about 50 spiedini. Then roast them the traditional Italian way on a rectangular grill that uses wood instead of charcoal. For more information, see “Rostigrill” on page 33.

John Basilone TributeA full-length documentary on Marine

Sgt. John Basilone, the most highly deco-rated enlisted man in WWII, is in desperate need of funding, reports the film’s pro-ducer, Diane Basilone Hawkins, who is his niece. She has produced an award-winning short documentary on her heroic uncle and now is working on a longer version called Legacy of a Hero. She hopes to complete it by March 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of his death in combat at Iwo Jima. Donations are tax-deductible. To contribute, see johnbasilone.com or call 908/328 2944.

Barbeque Italian Style

The cubo makes the spiedini; the grill in the background roasts them.

http://www.gocollette.com

http://www.impactpublishers.com

tel:1-800-246-7228


haiku poems have become classics. Contact: 908 227 7951 (VA) Email: [email protected] Website: turtlelightpress.com

SOUTH CAROLINA Author Frank Pennisi on his novel, Sciatu Mio that follows three generations of Sicil-ians from Italy to America. Book signing. Contact: 843/272-9997 (SC). Email: [email protected]

WASHINGTON, DC AREA Writer/researcher Linda Barrett Osborne, who edited “Explorers, Emigrants, Citizens,” a massive “visual history” of Italian Americans for the Library of Congress, will speak on this impressive book and do book signings. [The book was a Sons of Italy Book Club Winter 2014 title.] Contact: 202 269 0779 (DC) Email: [email protected]

Sons of Italy Speakers BureauNeed a speaker for your club meeting or a special event? Contact these experts directly. Some may require

travel expenses and/or honorariums. For more speakers see: www.osia.org at “Studies in Culture.” To apply as a speaker, contact Dona De Sanctis at [email protected].

FLORIDA&BEYOND Historian & author Carlo Fer-roni speaks on Italian POWs in WWII and his book on this topic. Book signings. Contact: 831 688 2961 (FL) Email: [email protected].

LOUISIANA Author/historian Alan Gauthreaux speaks on his book about Italian immigrant history in Loui-siana. Book signings. Contact: 504 452 7147 (LA) Email: [email protected]

MID-WEST Author Dominic Candeloro, professor of Italian American studies (ret.) on Italian Americans of Chicago; Italian American literature; and more. Book signing of Italians of Chicago. Contact: 708 354 0952 (IL) Email: [email protected]. Also will Skype.

NORTHEAST&BEYOND Poet and journalist Rick Black on the poetry of Nick Virgilio of NJ whose

WhaT’S NEW: DISCouNTS, SErvICES aND EvENTSBulletin Board

Columbus, holding the map, is surrounded by American presidents in this 19th century patriotic mural.

Columbus As InspirationColumbus Day is a reminder that from its earliest begin-

nings, the struggling American republic found its inspira-tion in the figure of Columbus. In fact, October 12th is one of America’s oldest holidays, first celebrated in 1792 in New York on the 300th anniversary of his first voyage.

In the early years of the American republic, Columbus was admired as much as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The nation’s capital was named for him and his image is captured in paintings and statues throughout the Capitol Building, the seat of American government.

By the 19th century, Columbus had become a symbol of American patriotism. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 in honor of the 400th anniversary of his first voyage. Also that year, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day a legal holiday and Columbus was hailed as the symbol of America’s achievements and progress and even as a saint, led by God to the New World. In 1971, the second Monday in October became officially Columbus Day and a federal holiday.

To defend Columbus, the Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice® (CSJ) has researched and released a report,

Columbus: Fact vs. Fiction. The CSJ urges concerned Italian Americans to obtain a copy of the report and cir-culate it among their family, friends, and community. And especially to their children.

For a free copy, send a large (9x12) self-addressed en-velope to: Sons of Italy Columbus Report; 219 E Street, NE; Washington, D.C. 20002. Or download a free copy from www.osia.org at “Studies in Culture.”




http://www.osia.org






across Italy that year. Four years later, the 500’s launch at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show signaled Fiat’s return to the U.S. market after a nearly 30-year absence.

The revival of Fiat and its popular 500 was the handiwork of Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, who is also chair-man and CEO of Chrysler. Born in Abruzzo but raised in Canada, he is fluent in English and has degrees in business and law.

In 2004, Marchionne was ap-pointed CEO of Fiat at a time when its European market share had sunk from 9.4% to 5.8%. Within five years, Marchionne guided the auto maker back to a 9.1% European share. In the three years since introducing the Fiat 500 to the U.S., the car ranks 24 out of 40 affordable small cars, accord-ing to U.S. News & World Report. They range from about $16,000 to $20,000, making them affordable to both young professionals and working class families. What is the story behind this little car that could?

The Little

During World War II, almost every Italian city was bombed by either the Allies or the Germans, leaving much of the country in ruins. But Italy’s strategic geographical position and emerging democracy made it a vital U.S. ally and the beneficiary of $1.5 billion under the Marshall Plan be-tween 1948 and 1952.

Italian automobile manufacturing virtually came to a halt during the war and was struggling in peacetime when the most popular form of transporta-tion became the economical scooter. Between 1946 and 1956, Piaggio sold

By ERIC BRyAn

Back in the 1970s, cars made by Fiat and Alfa Romeo were fairly common sights on U.S. streets and highways. Then America fell in love with Japanese and Korean autos and Italian models became an endangered species. But in 2007, Fiat made a comeback with a semi-retro vehicle that echoes a famous European car which was one of Italy’s greatest success stories: the Fiat Cinquecento (500). It was unveiled in 30 cities

Fiat’s first 500, launched in 1937, was affectionately called “il

Topolino” (the Mickey Mouse).

FIAT’s “super CEO” Sergio Marchionne re-launched the

500 in 2007. The Sons of Italy Foundation® honored him at its 25th

anniversary NELA Gala in Washington, D.C. last year.

The father of the Fiat 500, Dante Giacosa (1905-1996), was one of the most important automotive engineers

and designers of the 20th century.


one million Vespas, and Lambretta scooters also thronged Italian streets. Although Alfa Romeo launched its 1900 SS Cabriolet, a sports car with a middle-class price tag, cars by Lancia, Ferrari, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo itself, demanded fatter wallets.

But even before the war ended, plans were already underway to offer Italians an affordable postwar vehicle. While the Germans were occupying Fiat’s headquarters in Turin and the city shook under Allied bombs, Fiat’s managing director, Vittorio Valletta gave Fiat engineer and auto-designer Dante Giacosa the job of designing new cars for peacetime production.

Giacosa was born in Rome in 1905. By age 22, he’d earned a degree

in mechanical engineering from Poly-technic University of Turin. In1937, soon after he was hired by Fiat, he engineered the Topolino (“Mickey Mouse”), a charming mini-car some-times referred to as the original 500 and one of the world’s smallest cars.

Between 1950 and 1971, Italy’s postwar economy surged ahead. Its Gross Domestic Product doubled and per capita income tripled, defining the period as “the Italian Economic Miracle.”

Operating in this buoyant climate, Giacosa knew that Italians were ready to graduate from scooters to cars. So

he designed a new city car, the Fiat 600, the company’s first rear-engine auto. The 600 was a four-seater that the masses could afford. Going into production in 1955, it was initially priced at 590,000 lire ($940).

As the 600 rolled off Fiat assembly lines, Giacosa was already planning the 600’s little brother, the famed 500 or Cinquecento, named for its nearly 500cc-sized engine.

The first Fiat 500, the Nuova (“New”), premiered in the summer of 1957.

The two-seater‘s body design was lightweight but robust, simple, and cheap to construct. It had doors with rear hinges; bare hubs; and a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine. An important factor was its fuel economy. The 500 Nuova could get up to 50 miles per gallon at a time when the price of gas was 91 cents a gallon compared to the U.S. rate of about 30 cents per gallon. Another major plus was its small size – ideal for maneuver-

Car That Could

Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin. From 1957 to 1975, Fiat factories turned out nearly 3.9 million Fiat 500s, making it the

automaker’s bestselling car at that time.

The Fiat 500, the Nuova (“New”), premiered in the summer of 1957.

About 3.9 million were sold between 1957 and 1975.


ing the narrow, ancient cobblestone streets of most Italian cities yet small enough to park in spaces big enough for only a scooter. The 500 Nuova had a sticker price of 465,000 lire ($743).

Despite recognizing its many advantages, Italians were less than enthusiastic about Fiat’s micro-car. A scooter was cheaper and could carry two persons. The Fiat 600 could accommodate four passengers; had more power and speed; and was not that much more expensive than the Nuova.

Three months after the Nuova’s debut, Fiat introduced upgraded models of the 500 at the 1957 Turin Motor Show. The new models, the Economica and the Normale, had various improvements including more powerful engines, and they were faster. Also, at 490,000 lire ($779), they were only slightly more expensive than the Nuova. By 1959, the car began to catch on, and Gia-cosa earned an award for excellence in industrial design.

New 500 models soon followed, with a number of updated features. [See below.] Fiat grew exponentially in terms of workforce and output. From 1957 to 1975, its factories manufactured nearly 3.9 million Fiat 500s, making it the automaker’s bestselling car at that time. The 500 became Fiat’s postwar flagship car, and an icon of the Italian Economic Miracle. Giacosa, “the father of the 500,” is regarded as one of the most important automotive engineers and designers of the 20th century.Eric Bryan is a free-lance writer origi-nally from Burlingame, California.

The Little Car That Could Since its launching in 1937, the FIAT 500 has undergone numerous transformations. Here is a sampling.

A 1960 ad for the Fiat 500 station wagon, the Giardiniera, which carried four passengers and luggage.

Popular with the jet set that kept them on their yachts, the Ghia Jolly came in white, yellow, blue, coral, and pink; and had wicker seats. [ Photo John Lloyd]

A racing Jolly in 2011 clocked speeds of nearly 60 mph and a gas economy of over 50 mpg. [Photo Jeremy Paff]

The latest version of the Fiat 500 is an electric car. [Photo by Norbert Aepli, Switzerland.]


NEWS for youNg ITalIaN amErICaNSGiovinezza!

Italian Program Growing in Virginia


By LuCIO D’AnDREA

Virginia does not have many Italian Americans, but students there are enthusiastic about learning Italian, especially in Fairfax and Prince William counties near Washington, D.C. which both have flourishing Italian language programs.

In Fairfax County, nearly 1,000 children at Mantua Elementary school are learning Italian. They start in kin-dergarten and continue through 6th grade, with one full-time teacher and two part-time teachers. “Italian culture is part of the curriculum, through pictures and discussion,” says teacher Marina Afentakis. Students also can practice through emailing and Skyping with children who are learning English at an elementary school outside Turin.

Prince William County has about 86,000 students, but very few of them are Italian American. Still, currently four high schools and one middle school are offering Italian and plans are under way to add an Italian program to a fifth high school. The total enrollment for Italian language is 1,213 students, most of them in high school.

“A 2012 survey of 15,000 students showed that Span-ish was their first choice for language instruction, and Italian was second,” says Carol Bass, a world language supervisor. According to Ms. Bass, students want to

Just in time for Christmas come several new bilingual children’s books that teach Italian through nursery rhymes, fairy tales and stories in both Italian and English. All are available at reasonable prices through Long Bridge Pub-lishing. The firm also sells Italian posters, maps and ma-terials for teachers. See www.longbridgepublishing.com. Email: [email protected].

Also for Christmas, The Night of La Befana, a beautifully illustrated storybook on the legend of the Befana written and illustrated by two sisters, Isabella and Maria Centofanti. In addition to the traditional story, the book has recipes for making Befana cookies. The hardcover edition is $17.95. Order through www.ItalianChildrensMarket.com. Email: [email protected] (See page 31).

learn Italian because they are fascinated by the culture. They also have enthusiastic teachers, some of whom are native speakers; and the program has the support of the administration. “Several students plan to take the Italian AP (Advance Placement) exam,” she says. Plans are now being considered to introduce Italian into several new middle schools and three high schools in the area. Forza Italia! Lucio D’Andrea is founder and president emeritus of the Abruzzo and Molise Heritage Society in Virginia.

Stocking Stuffers for the Little Ones

Marina Afentakis teaching Italian at Mantua Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia. Also seen here visiting

are Lucio and Edvige D’Andrea.

http://www.longbridgepublishing.com

http://www.longbridgepublishing.com


http://www.ItalianChildrensMarket.com

http://www.ItalianChildrensMarket.com



By DOnA DE SAnCtIS

Columbus Day is under attack, despite the fact that it is a legal, federal holiday. The latest example occurred last April when the Minneapolis City Council established an “Indigenous People’s Day” on the same day as Co-lumbus Day.

Over the past 20 years, other cities and states have even proposed changing the name of the holiday. So we have “Indigenous People’s Day” (Berkeley, CA); “Discoverers Day” (Hawaii); “Native American Day” (South Dakota); and “Leif Erikson Day” (Wisconsin).

Oregon, Nevada, and Iowa do not celebrate Columbus Day at all while several other states, including California and Texas, have removed it as a paid holiday for state government workers.

In states that still celebrate the holiday, Columbus Day parades have been interrupted by alleged Indian activists. In Denver, Colorado, these activists sought for years to block Italian American organizations, including the Sons of Italy ®, from obtaining parade permits. When that failed, the protestors covered marchers with red paint, insults, and threats of physical harm.

Ironically, more than 100 years ago, in 1906, Colorado became the first state to celebrate Columbus Day. How did Columbus go from being a popular symbol of intrepid exploration to “the Hitler of the 15th century”?

Let the Games Begin!Columbus bashing began in 1992 as the United States

prepared to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Italian sea captain’s first voyage to the Americas. At that time, a number of books were published that questioned the ethics and achievements of Columbus.

Most notable among these studies were: The Conquest of Paradise by Kirkpatrick Sale; Lies My Teacher Taught Me about Christopher Columbus by James Loewen; and A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

All three were written by revisionist historians, who presented the European explorer as a greedy, violent man. According to them, Columbus murdered peaceful native people, stole their gold, and corrupted the natural earthly paradise he found in the New World.

The authors were inspired by the “multi-cultural” movement, which proposed that because American educa-tion and society was “Euro-centric,” the art, culture and contributions of non-Europeans, especially Americans of African, Hispanic, and Indian descent along with Pacific Islanders and Eskimos, were being ignored.

Teachers, text-book publishers, and special interest groups representing these racial and ethnic minorities began attacking European culture to better glorify non-European civilizations. Among the casualties of multi-culturalism were the reputations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Christopher Columbus.

The media, always eager for a new “spin” on a familiar subject, picked up multi-culturalism, including the books by Zinn, Loewen and Sale, and helped spread the word about them.

Now these books are found on the required reading lists at many American schools and universities. Zinn’s book, in particular, is a textbook used in high school and col-lege history classes. As a result, a generation of American students regards Columbus as a racist who killed millions of Indians and brought slavery to the New World.

A Fourth Grade LessonA concrete example of how schools present Columbus

and European culture came to the attention of the Sons of Italy ® CSJ a few years ago when the father of a New York

Why Save Columbus Day?

Protestors, like this one, frequently interrupt Columbus Day parades. [Photo: Walter Santi]


City school child sent photocopies of the social studies curriculum his fourth grader was being taught.

The lesson plan presented a fictitious re-creation of the first meeting of Columbus with the native tribes he found in the New World. Columbus and his crew were described as “hairy, dirty and smelly men with pale, white skin, who talked ‘gibberish;’ cheated the Indians; and infected them with fatal diseases” brought to their world by Columbus and other Europeans.” The Indians were described as tall, healthy, generous people, eager to make friends with the strangers and give them gifts.

The lesson plan was based exclusively on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Students then had to write an essay on whether or not Columbus was a hero. This lesson plan was used throughout the school district.

The CSJ immediately contacted the school principal as well as the school district superintendent, charging that the presentation of Columbus and his men was both unbalanced and racist.

The CSJ letter pointed out that the lesson plan did not mention that Columbus was a deeply religious man who wanted to bring Christianity to the New World, or that his letters reveal he ordered his men to trade fairly with the Tainos and protected them from the marauding Canibs who captured, enslaved and even ate the more gentle Tainos. The CSJ included copies of the Sons of Italy® report, Columbus: Fact vs. Fiction. [See page 17 to obtain a free copy.]

As a result, the school district ordered the elimina-tion of the offensive material and added more balanced information about the Italian explorer, including part of the CSJ report on Columbus’s life and accomplishments.

“We are not out to bash anyone,” the assistant school superintendent said. “We want the children to see there are two sides to every story so they can discuss the pros and cons of progress and decide for themselves what is the truth.” That is a fair and reasonable goal. Italian Americans do not want to see Columbus glorified or vili-fied, but simply presented in the context of the standards and ethics of his time.

Why Columbus MattersSlanted history lessons like the above present Colum-

bus as the first of many European “invaders,” and charge that his holiday celebrates the destruction of the New World and its peoples. This unbalanced view of history

ignores the fact that Columbus is also a symbol of the contributions that Europeans have made to America.

Columbus matters because after him came millions of other Europeans who brought their art, music, science, medicine, philosophy, inventions, and religious principles to America.

Columbus matters because Greek democracy, Roman law, Judeo-Christian ethics, and the belief that all men are created equal are European contributions that have made the United States what it is today.

Columbus matters because his holiday recognizes not only the achievements of a great Renaissance explorer, but the success of millions of immigrants from not only Europe, but all over the world, who followed him, seek-ing religious freedom, political stability, and the chance to give their children a better tomorrow.

Columbus As IconColumbus Day matters especially to Italian Ameri-

cans because it commemorates the arrival of more than 5 million of their ancestors on these shores more than a century ago. Today, their children and grandchildren constitute the nation’s fifth largest ethnic group, but de-spite their numbers and sterling record of achievement, Italian Americans are routinely stereotyped in this nation as goons and/or buffoons.

Italian Americans see Columbus Day as the only day of the year on which the nation officially recognizes the presence if not the contributions of an estimated 18 to 26 million people of Italian heritage. For that reasons, organizations like the Sons of Italy ®, lobbied for years to make it a federal holiday. They succeeded in 1971 when Congress passed a law declaring the second Monday in October Columbus Day in all 50 states.

What’s Next?But despite these facts, as we have seen, Columbus Day

is in danger of being eliminated. What’s next?

Do we ban St. Patrick’s Day celebrations because of the long and bloody struggle between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland?

Do we abolish Thanksgiving because the Pilgrims built their cabins where Indians lived?

And what are we going to do about the Fourth of July?

See why Columbus Day matters?Dona De Sanctis, Ph.D., is editor-in-chief of Italian America magazine in Washington, D.C. Contact her at [email protected]



OSIA Nation MAKIng A DIffEREnCE

NEWYORK

GOTAGOODSTORY?

Have you or your lodge done something remarkable that makes a difference to your community or promotes our heritage? Send details with your lodge’s name and number (photo optional) to: ITAL-IAN AMERICA Magazine, 219 E Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 or E-mail [email protected]. Include daytime phone number. Entries not acknowledged and photos not returned unless requested.

Joseph DiTrapani was recently honored by the Grand Lodge of New York when he was inducted into the New York State OSIA Hall of Fame on June 22. It is a distinction conferred only on an officer who has been both the state president and national president.

Mr. DiTrapani was N.Y. state president from 2001-2005 and went on to serve two terms as OSIA’s national president (2009-2013). Currently, he is president of the Sons of Italy Foundation®. He joined the Order in 1976, prompted by his father, Sam. Over time, he accepted increasing leadership responsibilities. He was a state trustee, principal state trustee, state orator, and state first and second vice president. He chaired the 2005 national convention in New York City and chaired committees to raise funding and/or membership, especially for the Garibaldi Meucci Museum on Staten Island.

In 2011, he became the first OSIA national president to be re-elected in some 26 years, according to Joseph Sciame, himself a past national president of OSIA. “He served with distinction, identified problems and found solutions,” Mr. Sciame said.

OSIA MOURNS

CHRISTINA M. CHRISTALDI died unexpectedly April 6, 2014 at age 65. A wife, mother, and nuclear medicine technologist, she belonged to the Enrico Fermi Lodge #2229 in Medford, NJ for 25 years and served as a New Jersey state second vice president.

JEAN SPATUZZA REED, sister of National Past President John Spatuzza, died August 25, 2014 in Indiana. Her brother served the Order from 1975 to 1977.

MICHAEL L. STROLLO, an 80-year-member of the Order Sons of Italy, died April 16, 2014. A for-mer national trustee and national regional deputy, he also served the Order as state treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and was president emeritus of the Er-nest M. Strollo Lodge #683 in Germantown (Philadelphia). The lodge is named for his father who founded it in 1993. A WWII vet who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, Michael Strollo was presi-dent of his lodge for 16 years. At his death, he was the lodge orator. His sister, Joanne Strollo is the only woman ever elected OSIA national president. (1993-95).

FLORIDA

October has been declared Ital-ian and Italian American Heritage Month in Florida, thanks to the efforts of the Grand Lodge of Florida, whose officers petitioned state senator Maria

Lorts Sachs to draft and introduce the measure last May as Florida Sen-ate Resolution #720 . It passed unanimously and

Florida State Senator

Maria Lorts Sachs

[L. to R.] OSIA National Past President Peter Zuzolo; Mr. DiTrapani; GL of NY President Joe Rondinelli, and OSIA National Past President Joseph Sciame

recognized “the enor-mous contributions that Italian and Italian American people have made to this state, this country, and the world.” An estimate 1.7 million people in the state are of Italian descent.Florida State

Senate Seal



OSIA Nation oSIa loDgES aT WorK

SPECIAL RECOGNITION

JOHN SPATUZZA was made OSIA National President Emeritus during a meeting of OSIA national officers in Chicago last August. Exactly 39 years ago, in August, 1975, he was elected OSIA Supreme Venerable by the delegates to the 34th National Biennial Convention of the Order also held in Chicago that year. The title, “supreme venerable” eventually became “national president.” His father, George, had held that office for a record 10 years (1947-1957) and was also named president emeritus. Only one other person, Judge Felix Forte, had been similarly honored, although the tribute was awarded posthumously. George and John Spatuzza were also both lawyers as well as presidents of the Grand Lodge of Illinois, and both were elected OSIA national president at age 50. They are the only father and son ever to have been elected OSIA national presidents.

ANTHONYJ.TAMBURRI, dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College/City University of New York, has been named Distinguished Professor by the university, effective September 1, 2014. An internationally known scholar, he has led the Calandra Institute since 2006 and is only the 15th professor at Queens College to receive this honor. He is a national at-large member of OSIA.


NEBRASKA

The Cristoforo Colombo Lodge #1419 in Omaha was invited by the American Italian Heritage So-ciety, (AIHS), a local organization in Omaha, to participate in its “La Festa Italiana” festival. Lodge Vice President George Grillo created a display outlining his lodge’s contribu-

NEWJERSEY

The Grand Lodge of New Jersey and the New Jersey Sons of Italy Foundation ® have launched a pilot grant program for students taking the Italian Advanced Placement (AP) Examination in Italian Language and Culture. In a letter sent last May to the principals of about 400 public and private high schools in the state, Grand Lodge President Dominic Pucci announced the two organiza-tions will give a $50.00 grant to each student taking the exam to help defray the application fee of $89. Students also will receive a free one-year mem-bership to the Grand Lodge of New Jersey.

To date, 40 students have qualified for the grants, says Salvatore Turchio, the grand lodge’s third vice president. He adds that the New Jersey Grand Lodge is the only OSIA state lodge to actively promote and underwrite an AP exam grant program. “Ours will continue in the 2014-15 academic year,” he says.

tions to its local community’s youth and churches as well as its fund-raising for OSIA’s national charities. “The display also promoted our Columbus Day Banquet, scholarships, the weekly lunch and dinner events,” he says. OSIA’s booth was mentioned in local newspaper stories about the festival.

AP grant promoters GL of NJ Presi-dent Dominic Pucci (L) and his 3rd

V.P. Salvatore Turchio


The Sons of Italy Foundation®HELPIng tHOSE In nEED

Foundation FocusBy Joseph J. Ditrapani, President,the Sons of Italy foundation®

Twenty years ago, in 1994, the Sons of Italy Foundation® helped send Au-relio Teleman to Harvard. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in biology and today is doing cancer research. Four years later, in 1998, Elisabeth Gambino won a SIF scholarship that allowed her to graduate from Hampshire College

in New Hampshire. Today, she teaches underprivileged children and severely emotionally disturbed elementary school students in Baltimore. Aurelio and Elisabeth are two of the hundreds of young Italian Americans who have received SIF scholarships over the past quarter century. They aspired to change the world. Through your support of the SIF, you helped them do it.

These SIF scholarships are in addition to the more than $1 million in grants given by OSIA lodges around the country each year. Word about the SIF scholarship program has spread. Right now, applications for the SIF’s 2015 national competition are streaming in well before next year’s Feb. 28 deadline. Early in 2015, a new crop of the most exceptional and promising students will be chosen as scholarship recipients, and honored at the SIF’s National Education & Leadership Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2015.

To maintain the level of scholarship funding the SIF has provided over the last 25 years, we need your help today. If only 100 of you gave just $50 to the SIF scholarship fund, the SIF could fund a new scholarship or supplement a larger scholarship for a wounded warrior. Just imagine

if each member of OSIA gave $10 to fund scholarships. Instead of awarding ten or twelve grants a year, the SIF could help so many more worthy young Italian American students.

Think about the aspirations that could be fulfilled if that number tripled, or quadrupled ... or more! It’s pos-sible, but we can’t get there without your support. Please help us continue this great tradition that has served as the impetus for these scholarship recipients to achieve success.

So as three of the most important holidays of the year approach – Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s, I ask you to be both thankful and generous by making a gift of $50 or more to the SIF’s scholarship program. With your help, students who aspire to do good in the world will reach for the stars help from SIF scholarships. These scholarships and the essential work the SIF does to advance education would not be possible without generous and committed individuals like members like you.

Your support is a meaningful way to advance education and keep Italian Americans at the forefront of a changing world. Like Aurelio and Elisabeth, they aspire to change the world.

Donations can be made online at www.osia.org or by calling 1-899/552 OSIA.

Tony Bennet t f ans who a r e a l so Sons o f I t a l y ® members in the Richmond, VA area can get a special 15% discount on tick-ets to his one-night-only concert in the city on December 18th. The Grammy Award-winning musician is a past SIF NELA honoree. Buy tickets by phone at 800-514-3849; online at ETix.com; or in person at the box office. The special discount code is ITALY.

Tony Bennett…At A Discount

®

CHECK IT OUT! visit your oSIa web site WWW.oSIa.org for updates on the latest OSIA news, reports & issues.

http://www.osia.org

http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001hchv_GsLOyPEZopov-7aWQeTcsHKPaIFzYYjfI7OigKVD7_cdYM-Ly3_9ehQcm-sdM7YMZH2R6NBXcmVwDXkU05rITwk60xUKMr-xkyMtJY=


fIgHtIng DEfAMAtIOnThe Commission for Social Justice®

By JOSEPH BOnCORE, CSJ nAtIOnAL PRESIDEnt

The CSJ Perspective

In September 2013, Aflac, a nationally known insurance company, pulled a publicity stunt in a New York City subway by allowing their spokesperson/mascot “the Aflac duck” to walk around the subway station in the midst of a busy New York rush hour commute in order to shoot a new television commercial. Did anyone ever see this commercial? Did it help sell Aflac’s supple-

mental insurance? The answer to both questions is “no.”

The reason: within minutes of “the duck” showing up on various social media outlets, the animal rights advocacy group, PETA, issued a statement that “a subway station is no place for a duck, who can’t possibly understand the reason for all the noise and commotion of an everyday commute, let alone a gathering crowd with flashing cam-eras. Aflac has been so creative in the past with its use of computer-generated imagery, ... we’re hopeful that in the future Aflac will leave live ducks out of its publicity stunts and use its creative power to come up with a kinder way to grab the public’s attention.”

When an Aflac spokesman was asked that, given the negative feedback, would the company think twice before taking a farm animal into the subway again, he replied, “Absolutely! We didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers.”

Fast forward one year to New Year’s Eve 2014. Aflac unveils a new mobster-themed television commercial that

has the Aflac duck kidnapped by mobsters and taken for a ride in their limo. One of the actors is that perennial Hol-lywood “mafioso”, Frank Vincent of The Godfather and “The Sopranos”. The thugs pat down the duck; threaten it; and then shove it from the moving limo.

The Sons of Italy Commission for Social Justice and other Italian anti-defamation groups contacted Aflac, charging that the commercial uses negative stereotypes of Italian Americans. Our complaints were ignored as was our request to remove the commercial from the air. Talk about “ruffling feathers!”

Is Aflac more responsive to the treatment of a duck than to the sensibilities of an estimated 18 million people of Italian heritage? Unfortunately, Aflac doesn’t stand alone. Thanks to the relentless stereotyping of Italian Americans by the media, entertainment and advertising, 74% of adult Americans believe that most Italian Americans have “some connection” to organized crime, according to a poll by the Princeton-based Response Analysis Corporation.

The onus is on us Italian Americans to be more like PETA and raise the awareness of these problems in corpo-rate America. I implore each of you to be watchdogs and defenders of your heritage. Support the CSJ and report any defamation to us so we can respond and bring national attention to this ongoing lack of respect for us and what we stand for. Send your comments to me through the magazine at [email protected]

Attention All Lodge Officers!

Are your members complaining that they are not receiving their magazines? Here’s some information that might help them.

As lodge officers, you must send the names and addresses of all new members to your state’s grand Lodge. you also must inform your grand Lodge of all address corrections and changes, too! It is best to do this every month. grand Lodge contact information is listed at www.osia.org under “About OSIA” or call OSIA national at 202/547 2900.

grand and Subordinate Lodges must observe the following deadlines in sending their updated mailing lists to ABR, which prepares the labels for our magazine mailings. they are:

December 1 – winter issue March 1 – spring issue June 1 – summer issue Sept 1 – fall issue


http://www.osia.org


News from National WhaT NaTIoNal DoES for you

T-Shirt Design ContestBy DIAnE CRESPy

The Sons of Italy Foundation® has launched a contest for a t-shirt design that will be on thousands of shirts the foundation will send out in 2015 as gifts to people who contribute to its charitable programs. All skilled graphic designers are invited to submit artwork to be considered for the shirt’s final design.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS:•Originaldesign (containingno copyrighted material)

should include “Sons of Italy®” and “2015” and reflect Italian American pride.

•Artworkresolutionmustbe300dpidesignedatmini-mum dimensions of 8” W by 10” H.

•Filemustbesavedas.jpg,.tif,.psd,.epsorvectorart.

•[email protected] by Jan. 9, 2015.

RULES:The SIF, a 501(c)3

organization, reserves the right to cancel con-test at any time, includ-ing in the event a the-matically and technically appropriate design is not submitted by deadline. No prize of any monetary value will be awarded in this contest. Winning design will appear on the 2015 t-shirt, with designer’s name in accompanying letter and/or in other SIF publications if appropriate. The SIF reserves all copyrights to winning design. Submission of artwork constitutes entrant’s agreement to these rules and entry requirements noted above.

Heritage ContestBy LAuRA KELLy

The Sons of Italy® National Office is holding a contest that will award a genealogy package to the lucky winner. To enter simply renew your national At-Large Member-ship (ALM); or purchase one for yourself, or as a gift. All purchases must be made on line through www.OSIA.org and will be automatically entered to win.*

The prize is either the “Five Generations” package that will research the winner’s Italian family back five generations, and provide copies of records and pictures from ancestral hometowns when available. Or the winner can choose instead the “Living Relatives” package that involves researching the town of origin and connecting with living relatives in Italy. The genealogical firm, My Italian Family has donated the packages.

OSIA Family Album UpdatedBy DIAnE CRESPy

In 2015, the Sons of Italy® will publish an update of its OSIA Album, first published in 2010. The album is a col-lection of personal stories, photographs, and biographical listings from OSIA members and supporters who want to share their Italian heritage and OSIA involvement.

It will be printed and sold as a limited edition in part-

Past SIF t-shirt designs.

The contest runs from 12:00 am EDT on Oct. 1, 2014, through 11:59 EDT on Oct. 31, 2014. There is no limit to the number of memberships an individual may purchase. Each membership purchased during contest pe-riod earns one automatic entry. The winner will be drawn at random on Nov. 4 and will be contacted by the Sons of Italy National Office. See www.OSIA.org’s Members Only section for discounts that My Italian Family offers all OSIA members.

*RULES: Only ALM transactions (new, renewed, or gift) processed online through OSIA.org between 12:00 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2014, and 11:59 p.m. EDT on Oct. 31, 2014, are eligible. No mail, fax or phone ALM transactions are eligible for this contest. Individuals who give an ALM gift membership are eligible to be entered, but the gift recipi-ent will not be entered. Winner will be chosen at random on Nov. 4, 2014.

nership with Harris Connect, LLC. The company invites OSIA members to submit material at no charge and will take the purchasing orders. All copies must be pre-ordered.

Details about submitting material and/or purchasing the album will be provided in the winter 2015 issue of Italian America and in our e-newsletter, Questo Mese as well as on the OSIA website (www.OSIA.org).


http://www.OSIA.org

http://www.OSIA.org


Letters to the Editorthere have been some interesting developments stemming from the interview I did with novelist Christopher Castel-leani, “All this talk of Love, that ran in the summer 2014 issue of Italian America. After it ran, I received a letter from a retired Harvard professor of psychology, who has written a book of his childhood experiences in an Italian American community. that gave me the idea to link stories like his to make a television series. I’ve since met another writer, Joanna Clapps Herman, who, despite her name, is Italian American and interested in this project. Just thought you would like to know the role Italian America has played in possibly making my idea a reality.Susan Jensen, Salisbury, N.C.

The Perfect GiftLooking for a unique present for family or friends? give the gift of your rich Italian American heritage with a one-year subscription to Italian America magazine, the most widely read publication in the u.S. for people of Italian descent. We will contact your gift recipient telling him or her (or them) of your present. fill out the form below and return to us ASAP.

Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for processing.

Please give this gift subscription to:

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Send your check for $20.00 payable to OSIA SuPREME LODgE to:

gIft SuBSCRIPtIOnItalian America Magazine219 E Street, nEWashington, DC 20002


We rarely hear about the thousands of Italian americans who are first responders, who help strangers at great risk to themselves. So I thought your readers might like to hear about John Vescio, a senior investigator in the new york State Police Department. On June 3, Investigator Vescio was off-duty at a gas station, filling up when a sedan slammed into a nearby pump and caught fire. Vescio rescued the driver, an elderly man who was trapped in his car; then returned to the blazing pumps to retrieve a first aid kit in his car that he needed to help the

victim, who was diabetic and had passed out at the wheel. Miraculously, no one was injured. the en-tire rescue took less than 30 seconds. ten seconds later, the pumps explod-ed. for his heroic rescue, Vescio was named Officer of the Month by the na-tional Law Enforcement Officers Memorial fund last August. Len Di Sesa, New Hampshire

Investigator John Vescio, in the gray tee shirt, runs to

the rescue.

REMINDER: OSIA’s Web site is seen by millions of people worldwide. Now you can link your lodge’s website to OSIA’s and let the world be your stage. Contact Diane Crespy at [email protected] call 202/547-2900.


I had a rare and very special experience in June: the oppor-tunity to attend the Cooley’s Anemia Foundation (CAF) annual Patient-Family Conference in Illinois where I met more than 250 people involved with this genetic blood disease. Nearly 30 years ago, the CAF became one of our official charities. Over the years, we have donated more than $2.3 million to the CAF, making OSIA the biggest supporter of this Foundation that

fights a fatal blood disease.

Cooley’s anemia strikes people of southern Italian descent. For decades, the brothers and sisters of OSIA have funded the Foundation’s important medical research program, which has helped pave the way for major breakthroughs that have changed the lives of all those with Cooley’s anemia.

Although I have been aware of the excellent work that the Foundation does, this was my first opportunity to meet so many of the patients, families and doctors who make up the Cooley’s anemia community. They are an amazing group of people. Despite the fact that these patients and their families must live with an incredibly difficult disorder, they are motivated, passionate, and incredibly determined.

They are also knowledgeable! The questions that they asked and the comments that they made show that they have a deep knowledge about the complicated disease that affects them. I realized that the Cooley’s Anemia Foundation is largely responsible because it has spent so much time and ef-fort to find and spread the information that patients and their families need.

Thanks to OSIA’s support, Cooley’s anemia patients who receive good care routinely live into adulthood. Some have started families of their own; others are pursuing ambitious careers that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Two of the patients I spoke with have even become doctors themselves!

The physicians at this conference also were impressive. Treating Cooley’s anemia requires both tremendous dedication and a depth of knowledge that can only come from tireless experience. Being in a room with these doctors and patients and hearing firsthand the stories of what is involved in their care, made me come away with a profound respect for how brave and resolute they are.

Listening to the array of speakers – which in addition to doctors talking about clinical care and scientists describing complicated research projects — included patients sharing strategies for survival with their fellow Cooley’s anemia patients, I was struck by how fortunate I was to be able to sit there and witness the results of OSIA’s alliance with this productive Foundation.

I saw patients thriving because the seeds of research that the Foundation planted were watered by OSIA and nurtured by scientists until they resulted in new therapies and strategies that are helping patients live longer, produc-tive lives that in previous years would have been tragically denied them. The staggering spirit of life in that room moved me intensely.

My take-home message from this wonderful event: OSIA has done a lot for Cooley’s anemia – and it is absolutely imperative that we do even more. Only with our support will the Foundation be able to achieve its ultimate goal: a cure for Cooley’s anemia.

By AntHOny J. BARAttA, OSIA nAtIOnAL PRESIDEnt

Italian America is the official publication of the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA), the largest and longest-established orga-nization of American men and women of Italian heritage. Italian America provides timely information about OSIA, while reporting on individuals, institutions, issues, and events of current or histori-cal significance in the Italian-American community nationwide.

Italian America (ISSN: 1089-5043, USPS: 015-735) is published quarterly in the winter, spring, summer and fall by OSIA, 219 E St. NE, Washington, DC 20002. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. © 2014 Order Sons of Italy in America. All rights reserved. Reproduction by any method without permission of the editor is prohibited. Statements of fact and opinion are the responsibility of the au-thors and do not necessarily imply an opinion on the part of the officers, employees, or members of OSIA. Mention of a product or service in advertisements or text does not mean that it has been tested, approved or endorsed by OSIA, the Commission for Social Justice, or the Sons of Italy Foundation. Italian America accepts query letters and letters to the editor. Please do not send unsolicited manuscripts. Italian America assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Annual subscriptions are $20, which are included in dues for OSIA members. Single copies are $2.98 each.OSIA MEMBERS: Please send address changes to your local lodge. Do not contact the OSIA National Office.POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Italian America, 219 E St. NE, Washington, DC 20002. Subscriptions are available through the OSIA National Office, 219 E Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002. OSIA membership information is available at (800) 552-OSIA or at www.osia.org. Archives are maintained at the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minn.Printing by Printing Solutions Inc., Sterling, Va. To advertise: Call Pat Rosso at 215/206-4678 or email her at pieassociates @comcast.net. Also see www.osia.org for advertising rates, specs, demographics, etc.

Italian AmericaItalian America Magazine is produced by

the national headquarters of the Order Sons of Italy in America®, 219 E Street, NE,

Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 202/547-2900. Email: [email protected]

OSIA National Executive Director

Philip R. Piccigallo, Ph.D.

Office ManagerAndrea Beach

Director of DevelopmentDiane Crespy

Publications EditorDona De Sanctis, Ph.D.

Executive AssistantKrystyne Hayes

Administrative AssistantLaura Kelly

SPRING 2014 30 ITALIAN AMERICA

http://www.osia.org



Sons of Italy®

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Travel and Tours to Italy


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On The BookshelfBooks by and about Italian Americans

REMINDER Order your books through OSIA and Amazon.com. Just go to www.osia.org, click on “Sons of Italy Book Club” and choose either a Book Club selection or an-other book. Orders are shipped within 24 hours. As a special bonus, Amazon.com will donate a percentage of book sales ordered on our site to OSIA.

HOW DID BENIGNA

LIVE TO 107?Former USA TODAY editor David Mazzarella searches for clues to his mother Benigna’s longevity. He finds good food, hard work, laughter, and a nurturing spirit. With many Benigna-approved recipes.

To order “Always Eat the Hard Crust of the Bread,” send this ad and a check for $12 (soft cover) or $17 (hard cover) to: TPD Publishing LLC, Box 8591, Falls Church, Va., 22041

http://www.osia.org

http://www.osia.org


On The BookshelfBooks by and about Italian Americans


[email protected]

If you ever thought there was a parallel between Ravioli making and management-leadership you are right. Learn more about this creative, entertaining and educational parallel at the Ravioli Rules website.

Visit www.bordigherapress.org or call 212.642.2001. Mention this ad for a 15% discount.

This is the story of how one man — Luigi Del Bianco, chief carver of Mt. Rushmore —has been lost to history for reasons never explained.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). ITALIAN AMERICA MAGAZINE (ISSN 1089-5043) is published quarterly at 219 E Street, NE; Washington, DC 20002. The annual subscription price is $20. The complete mailing address of Known Office of Publication is located at 219 E Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. The general business offices of the publisher and the editor are at same address as above. Publisher: Order Sons of Italy in America, same address as above. Editor: Dona De Sanctis, same address as above. Owner full name is Order Sons of Italy in America, 219 E Street, NE; Washington, DC 20002. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees and other Security Holders Owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None. Tax status: has not changed during preceding 12 months. Publication Title: Italian America. Issue Date for Circulation Data below: SUMMER 2014. The extent and nature of circulation is: A. Total number of copies printed (Net press run). Average number of copies of each issue during preceding 12 months 35,950. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. 2. Mail subscriptions: Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months 35,950. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. C. Total paid circulation. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months 35,950. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means. Samples, complimentaries and other free copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 50. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date : 50. E. Total distribution (Sum of C and D):100. Average number of free copies each issue during preceding 12 months 175. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. F. 1. Office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months 150. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing:135. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months 35,950. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. G. Total (Sum of E and F should equal net press run shown in A). Average number of copies of each issue during preceding 12 months 35,950. F. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 33,100. I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete. Filed July 24, 2014. Dona De Sanctis, Editor-in-Chief.


CCLLOOSSEE OOUUTT SSAALLEE oonn FFoorr tthhee LLoovvee ooff IIttaalliiaann CCooookkiinngg!! Looking to freshen up those traditional recipes? We’re offering our BEST SALE YET so you can get your copy of For the Love of Italian Cooking, the official cookbook of the Sons of Italy, in time to celebrate Italian American Heritage Month!

From our table to yours, this cookbook showcases hearty fall recipes to warm you up like "Pasta Fagioli," and classic Italian combinations like "Sausage and Polenta," to make you feel like you're back in your mother's kitchen!

Proceeds from the sale of this publication will be used to fund the cultural, educational and charitable programs of the Sons of Italy.

30% OFF + FREE SHIPPING ON ALL ORDERS WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Every book: $24.95 $17.47 plus $5.00 FREE shipping & handling

Please send me _____ copies for $17.47 each. (Includes discounts; must be shipped to same address.)

TOTAL DUE: $_________________

SHIPPING INFORMATION (*required information)

Title:____________ First name*:________________________ Last name*:__________________________________

Address*:_______________________________________________________________________________________

Address 2:_______________________________________________________________________________________

City*:______________________________________________ State*:_____________ ZIP*:_____________________

Email:______________________________________________ Phone*:_____________________________________

BILLING INFORMATION (*required information) Billing address is same as the shipping address.

My check is enclosed (payable to OSIA Supreme Lodge) Please charge my: Amex / MC / Visa Expiration*:__________ CCV*:_________

Credit card number*:______________________________________________________________________________

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Email your order form to: [email protected] | fax to: 202.546.8168 | or mail to: OSIA, Attn: Cookbook, 219 E St NE, Washington DC 20002.


T H I N K O U T S I D ET H E B O T T L EFIND THIS AND OTHER INNOVATIVE RECIPES

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Love . Faith .Family.

www.adrianatrigiani.com

For a signed bookplate, email [email protected]/AdrianaTrigiani

AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND eBOOKFrom New York Times Bestselling Author

ADRIANA TRIGIANI

Italian America magazine, Fall 2014

Documents

Transcript of Italian America magazine, Fall 2014