That Fork in the Road

We all have moments in life that affect our future.  It certainly happens when you find your ‘life’ partner or lose one.  Having children surely puts you on a different trajectory.  But sometimes a serendipitous event or an individual will present you with a life-changing fork in the road.

I was always proud of my Italian heritage.  More so when I moved at age 5 from an Italian enclave of Brooklyn to a multi-ethnic suburb.  I was now among the Irish, Scots, Germans, Blacks, Anglos, Slavs of all varieties, and even a Turk whom I thought was Italian with the surname Frati.  Ethnicity didn’t matter at first until 6th grade when we studied ancient history.  The chapter on Rome had a picture of Italy.  In 7th and 8th grades I was required to take Latin—surprisingly, this was a public school and I was on an academic tract.  If I was proud of heritage before this, because of food and family, history now made me prouder.

Jump to 1973 and that fork in the road.  I had a college degree in International Affairs and learned to low-crawl in the Infantry.  In short, I had no marketable skill for a business career.  My two options were insurance claims adjuster or retail sales trainee.  After a year of working at a large department store, an Italian American neighbor came to my rescue.  He needed an assistant with an education to operate a new 57-story skyscraper in Manhattan.

Fred (Freddy) Viggiano had worked his way up from the engine room to building manager.  He knew me and my family for two decades and exuded a pride of heritage unlike any Italian American I ever knew.  He translated that pride into action by giving his paesani a leg up in the very lucrative real estate industry, then-dominated by Jews and Irish.  Because of Freddy, Italian American job applicants and service vendors now had an edge, just as other ethnic groups were doing with their own. 

Despite our 25-year age difference, Freddy and I were close friends.  I learned not only real estate management but how the industry worked on a social level.  Jewish building owners regularly tapped their Jewish (and non-Jewish) contractors to buy $5,000 tables at black-tie Jewish charity events and Israeli bond drives.  Managing high-rise buildings is like running a small municipality, from security services to elevator and HVAC maintenance, from office cleaning to tenant build-outs, millions of dollars are in play.

Sadly, Freddy died at age 59 during our collaboration, so I moved on to manage buildings for private owners and major institutions.  In 1987, I met a Sicilian electrical engineer working for an Italian American contractor in my building.  He and his family had recently emigrated to the U.S. and I soon found myself at another fork in the road.  That man was Stefano (Steve) Gristina.  Within a few days I found an Italian educated soul mate who confirmed my observation that Italian Americans had progressed little beyond their neighborhood perception of heritage.  They lacked the big picture, a ‘classical’ perspective. 

Not long after meeting Steve, someone offhandedly informed me of a wealthy Italian American businessman in Massachusetts who loved Roman history – Carl (Peski) Pescosolido.  I contacted him and arranged a meeting.  By year’s end, Steve, Peski, and I incorporated the Italic Institute. 

Recalling Freddy’s lessons in mobilizing Italian American contractors, we held our first fundraising dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in 1988 to mark John Cabot’s arrival on North America in 1497, launching the British Empire. This was the first of fifteen annual galas honoring gifted or celebrated Italic people rather than just businessmen who buy the most tables.   The Italic Institute remains true to that philosophy.

Like Freddy, both Steve and Peski are no longer with us.  Steve bridged the gap between our immigrant roots and modern Italy.  Peski was a ‘Yankee’ from New England who endowed a Chair in Roman Studies at his alma mater Harvard and energized us with a generous donation before he died. 

For all these things I can rightly credit Fred Viggiano and the path he opened for me.  -JLM