The Italian Connection

Dear Readers, Sunday, June 16th, is Father’s Day, so happy Father’s Day to all you fathers and grandfathers out there, and may happy memories bring a small measure of comfort to all readers whose fathers are gone now. Hopefully, they …

Dear readers, October will always be Italian Heritage Month in the heart of Italian-Americans, and although Columbus and his day may be politically incorrect, Indigenous People’s Day is a bit over-the-top correct in my book. Nonetheless, we live and let …

Dear readers,  September is the month we celebrate Labor Day and my late father’s Vincenzo’s birthday.  It is a good time, I think, to reprint this column from September 2020.  ** I have always felt that, although the accomplishments of …

Dear readers, July Jottings, most with an Italian connection.  The father of American jazz was an Italian-American named Dominic (Nick) James LaRocca of New Orleans. He called his five-man group the original Dixieland Jazz Band, which produced the first jazz …

Dear Readers,  It was in 1977 that I flew down to Los Angeles from San Francisco with a group of Italian-Americans, including former mayor Joseph Alioto and his daughter Angela Alioto Veronese. Born in San Francisco in 1916, Alioto rose …

Dear readers,  September brings the Italian labor swap for Belgian coal of 1946 as my Labor Day rerun in memory of all those old-timers who toiled throughout the world under deplorable conditions, so that their children might have a brighter …

Dear readers, More Italian connections.  Our 22nd state, Alabama, I was surprised to learn, had many early Italians. However, unlike the Italians that settled in Arkansas and Tontitown circa 1896, who emigrated from the northern Alpine regions of Italy, at …

Dear readers,  The reason Coca-Cola and not green tea is consumed in copious quantities by today’s youth in Japan is a story with an Italian connection, namely Francis Gragnani, an Italian-American born in Fall River, Massachusetts. During the latter part …

Dear readers,  An August assortment of Italian connections for you.  ** Roman police inspector Brigadier Giovanni Maimone retired from the police department and received a pension immediately. However, when his partner Dox von Coburger Land retired from the Roman police …

Dear readers,  in July, let me refresh your memory and mine on the Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia.  ** Although the colonists declared themselves independent of England and set up the United States of America, a …