The Tomasellos are a tireless lot. A characteristic probably attributed to their bloodline and heritage originating in Santo Stefano di Camastra, province of Messina in Sicily.
Salvatore and Marion Tomasello, Richard Tomasello’s grandparents, were part of the “immigrant newcomers” during the turn of the 20th century. The couple gave birth to Emanuel Victor Tomasello, Richard’s father, in New York City in 1912.
When Emanuel was a teenager, his family moved to Milwaukee, where he would meet his future wife Rosalie Farina and later marry her in 1934. They started a family and conceived nine children, five boys and four girls spanning almost twenty years.
During this time, Emanuel earned his high school diploma; enrolled in Marquette University where he obtained two Master’s degrees; learned formal Italian; operated his own window washing business; and taught French, Spanish and English at a junior college at night and public schools for thirty years before retiring at 70.
Richard Tomasello was born in Milwaukee the fourth child in succession. Several months after the attack on Pearl Harbor the family moved to Santa Monica, California where Emanuel joined his other siblings working at Hughes Aircraft in Long Beach. After the war ended, the family returned to Milwaukee.
When Richard was a teenager in high school, he dreamed about flying. He hired a pilot to take him and his high school sweetheart Mary Anne up on a date. He shared with the pilot that one day he would fly and own his very own airplane.
At twenty-four, Richard acquired his pilot’s license and started to fly. He ultimately bought a plane in 1970. Nine years later, in his late 30s, Richard with his wife Mary Anne and two sons, moved to California. He sold his car and stowed the family in his four-passenger Cessna 170 and took off for San Diego where he started his own successful carpet business of over thirty years.
While attending Italian classes at Grossmont College taught by Graziella Spinelli in 1999, she invited Richard to join House of Italy to support her as president of the club where he became vice-president for two years before being elected to president for the next six years.
During his tenure as president at House of Italy, Richard would tirelessly volunteer his time. He actively helped Mario Cefalu with the Sicilian Festival in Little Italy; he spearheaded sponsoring the Italian tall ship Amerigo Vespucci’s only west coast stop in August 2002; he helped support the San Diego Italian Film Festival when Victor Laruccia and Pasquale Verdicchio approached Richard for sponsorship and with a donation helped the organization get started.
Richard’s father taught him the importance of being Italian and its culture advising him, “Don’t lose your Italian heritage.” They would travel together five times to Italy and France. In fact, on one of their last trips together, remarkably they found Richard’s grandparents house where their niece and nephew were still living in the very same house his grandparents had left almost a hundred years earlier.
Donate