Chapter 1: Montalbano Elicona
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. [i]
---Ephesians 6:1-3
My father, Giovanni D’Amico, was born in Montalbano Elicona, Sicily, in 1905. His mother, Fiore Collichio, was of Greek ancestry. Her father made Sicilian bagpipes. The Italian bagpipe, made of reeds and a sheep’s hide, dates to the time of Roman Emperor Nero. Christmastime bagpipe-blowing shepherds traditionally come down from nearby Mount Etna to play in the villages. My paternal grandfather was a forest ranger charged with protecting the Sicilian fruit and nut orchards of King Umberto I (1870-1900) and King Victor Emmanuel III (1900-1946). The D’Amico family was poor but able to nurture Giovanni and his two sisters, Francesca, and Gina. Gina died in childbirth. Her son Vincenzo (Enzo) was my only Italian first cousin.
My father vaguely remembered being shaken in his carriage by the great Messina earthquake of 1908, in which 80,000 people died. He attended school through the sixth grade. He and his classmates often played hooky from school, hiding among ancient megalithic stones of unknown origin on a plateau a short walk from the village called Argimusco. Specialists believe this was a place of worship for primitive peoples, or even a magical site whose symbols referred to the constellations. Others maintain they are simply a natural formation.
Italians applaud Montalbano Elicona as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy. It encompasses a microcosm of the history of SiciIy and a slice of American history. A majestic castle crowns the medieval village, which is surrounded by millennial forests. With a population of 2,500, it borders an ancient Roman road between the Mediterranean and Ionian coasts of north-eastern Sicily. Perched on a mountain at an elevation of 3,000 feet, it offers an incredible view of the smoking Etna volcano thirteen miles to the south. On the other side are splendid views of the Aeolian Islands.
The name “Montalbano” means “white mountain.” Scholars also link it to the Arabic word “al-bana,” meaning “excellent place.” The Greeks who colonized Sicily in the 8th and 7th centuries, B.C., noted its similarity to the Greek mountain called “Helicon.” Both towns share the same elevation and a stream and river that meanders tortuously through to an adjacent valley. In Greek mythology, there were two springs sacred to the Muses at Helicon. One of them burst from a spot forcefully struck by the hoof of the winged horse Pegasus. In the other, the beauty of his reflection in the water inspired Narcissus. The waterways of Montalbano thus got the name “Elicona,” which is Italian for “Helicon.”
In the Roman era, Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, seized Sicily and its sea routes. Octavian vied with Pompey for power and tried to appease Sextus Pompeius by marrying one of his relatives. The marriage quickly ended in divorce based on irreconcilable differences. War soon followed. In 36 AD, Octavian’s legions united with other militia forces at Agrimusco. They launched a decisive attack that forced Pompeius to retreat to Messina and take to sea. Using a fleet borrowed from Mark Anthony, Octavian’s schoolmate Marcus Agrippa defeated Pompeius. Octavian later became Rome’s first great emperor, Caesar Augustus.
In the 1190s, Emperor Henry VI took Sicily from the Normans. When he died in 1197, his southwest German house of Hohenstaufen and the rival house of the Guelfs disputed his succession to the empire. The Hohenstaufen, in the person of Henry VI’s widow, Constance, held on to Sicily with papal help. In 1198, Pope Innocent III assumed control of Sicily as the guardian of Constance’s infant son Frederick, later known as Frederick II of Swabia. In 1211. The pope conferred on him the title of “Holy Roman Emperor.” The same year, the pope ratified the gift of Montalbano given by Frederick II to Constance of Aragon, with all its residences and tenements. Thus, Montalbano became part of the royal domain.
Professor Donald Detwiler describes Frederick II as “a man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability—called by a contemporary chronicler, stupor mundi, the wonder of the world, by Nietzsche the first European, and by many historians the first modern ruler. Frederick II established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy.” [ii] He maintained and deepened religious toleration, giving freedom of worship to Muslims and Jews. Able to speak six languages (Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek, and Arabic), he was an avid patron of science and the arts. He also played a leading role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry, which had a major influence on what was to become the modern Italian language.
Angered by a Guelf rebellion in 1233, Frederick II destroyed Montalbano and deported its inhabitants. Soon thereafter, however, he recognized its strategic value at the crossroads between the Ionic and Tyrrhenian Seas and as a gateway to the interior of Sicily, and he strengthened its fortifications. He built a castle on top of the mountain on preexisting Byzantine and Arab structures and gave the fortress to his wife, Constance of Aragon.
The next ruler with substantial connections to Montalbano was Frederick III of Aragon. In 1302, the Treaty of Calabellotta ended the 20 years of rebellion against French colonization. The rebellion, called the “Sicilian Vespers,” is the subject of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “I Vespri Siciliani.” Frederick III ruled the kingdom until his death in 1337. He transformed Montalbano castle from a fortress to a royal summer residence. While there, his trusted personal physician, Arnaldo da Villanova, treated his gout.
Frederick III organized the Sicilian parliament into an assembly of three houses modeled after the three estates of the kingdom of Aragon. They represented the feudal landowners, the clergy, and the towns of the royal domain. From the castle of Montalbano in 1311, he issued the oldest rules in Europe for the election of administrative officials in the city of Palermo. In 1805, Montalbano passed into the hands of the Society of Jesus. After Italian reunification in the 1860s, the government confiscated ecclesiastic properties, and Montalbano became a municipality.
In 1967, my father returned to his native land with our entire family. We toured Turin, Venice, Florence and Rome with my Aunt Franca and my cousin Enzo and visited Montalbano. By then, King Frederick II’s castle was in ruins. There were cows and chickens in the streets, and the authorities shut off the water every night at 8 PM. The only shabby hotel in town housed a movie theater in the basement. I had trouble sleeping there because of the screaming and cheering of the audience as it watched a “Godzilla” movie. My father wanted to buy property in Montalbano and build a modern hotel. We persuaded him not to pursue his plan. Of course, it turned out that he was right. Montalbano restored the castle in the 1980s, and tourists can now stay at the four-star Hotel Federico II for €138 a night.
Conditions were much worse in Montalbano in 1922, the year Benito Mussolini came to power. My father therefore agreed to lead a small group of young men on a perilous journey from Sicily to America, funded by the Mafia. His aim was to find work in the new world and send money back to his struggling family. Arrests and injuries decimated the group as it moved north through Italy. Many returned home. My father was the only member to reach the French border. Chased by a border guard, he escaped into France by throwing his suitcase at the guard’s feet, causing him to fall. He sailed out of Le Havre and disembarked at Ellis Island at age 17, unable to speak English and with only $6 in his pocket. He entered the United States just in time. The Immigration Act of 1924 favored immigrants from northern Europe and imposed strict quotas on Southern Europeans.
He found work as a barber in New York City. One day, a well-dressed customer asked him for a haircut and gave him a tip of $5, a week’s income in the 1920s. After the second and third haircut and tip, my father inquired about this special treatment. The customer replied he was a Mafia messenger who wanted my father to join the organization and smuggle narcotics between Sicily and New York. My father said he was not interested in the job. The Mafioso refused to take “no” for an answer and threatened physical harm. My father replied that he owned a gun and was prepared to defend himself. The mob backed off, and my father followed through with his original intention, which was to support himself honestly and send money to his poor family in Italy. He did so for the rest of his life.
In 1928, Giovanni drove to California with a business partner named Albert Carlozzo, also from Sicily, and opened a beauty salon in Hollywood. Their clientele included aspiring actors and rising stars. Unfortunately, Albert had impregnated his girlfriend in New Jersey. Motivated by the ancient Sicilian code of honor, my father closed the shop and drove Albert back to the East Coast so that he could marry the woman in question.
Dad became a US citizen and established successful beauty shops in Red Bank, NJ named “John’s Beauty Salon.” In 1939, his barber Vincent Cannamela introduced him to a lovely young girl from Brooklyn named Elvira Caravello. Her parents had migrated from Palermo, had experienced tough times during the Depression, and had passed away by the time she turned twenty-one. The youngest of nine Caravello children, she went to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to live with her sister Mary and her husband Anthony Cannamela. Tony’s brother Vincent Cannamela was married to her sister Clara, and his other brother Frank was married to her sister Stella. All three brothers immigrated from Sicily. They were co-owners of the American Barber Shop in Perth Amboy. The three families lived in a large house divided into four apartments, and they shared the rent from the fourth apartment three ways. This unusual scenario was featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
John and Elvira married in 1940. I was born on January 24, 1941, my sister Anita on May 31, 1944, and my brother Victor on July 10, 1949. My earliest memory dates to August 14, 1945, V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, marking the end of World War II, the deadliest and most destructive war in history. When President Harry S. Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, war-weary citizens around the world erupted in celebration. What impressed me as I sat on my father’s shoulders was the noise of passing cars blowing their horns and dragging tin cans from their rear bumpers. I thank the “greatest generation” for fighting and winning the war and saving the world from authoritarian fascism.
When we were young, we would often visit our aunts and uncles in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. My Uncle Vincent, whose son Vincent Jr. became a doctor, urged me to educate myself by reading New York Times editorials and Time magazine. He also introduced me to the wonderful world of Italian opera. Like my uncle Vincent, my father was highly intelligent. A self-taught philosopher who gave psychological advice to his customers, he authored articles in a local newspaper and spoke on local radio about physical and mental health and inner youth and beauty. “Deepak Chopra” ahead of his time. His favorite saying was “as you think, so shall you be.” Although he left school after the sixth grade, he was smart enough to seek advice from his customers. At a teacher’s suggestion, he forced all three of us to take piano lessons to develop good study habits. His insistence on daily practice did the trick but led to many arguments and reprimands. On one occasion, when visiting, relatives asked me to play a song on the piano, I expressed my frustrations by playing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
The piano lessons produced the desired effect. Anita, Vic, and I all studied hard and got good grades. Mom and Dad stressed the virtue of hard work. They made it clear that we should treat everyone with respect, regardless of their race, ancestry, sex, ethnicity, or creed. Beyond that, was the mandate to be good persons and citizens. Unspoken but understood was the expectation that we would enjoy better, more prosperous, and more productive careers and lives than my father and mother had endured. I applied these lessons during my years at Red Bank High School. I got excellent grades, was consistently on the Honor Roll and became the President of the school’s National Honor Society chapter. I won my first election in the spring of my junior year. My classmates elected me Senior Class President by a five-vote margin over a popular athlete who had rebuked his baseball team a few days earlier for losing a game while he was on the mound trying to impress scouts in the stands. All but one of my future elections would also be close.
My parents were not churchgoers except on major holidays. Just before I got too old to enroll, they sent me to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Red Bank for catechism and confirmation classes. I was significantly older than the rest of the class, which included my future wife. Just before confirmation, the Mother Superior asked the class for the name of the bishop who would be coming. All hands went up except mine, so the nun called on me. I did not know the answer. The nun’s response was, “the big ones are stupider than the little ones.” We had to attend confession before confirmation. During my session with the priest, I admitted I did not attend mass regularly because my parents did not take me to church. His response was to yell at me as if my parents’ dereliction was my fault. Because of this unfortunate experience, it would be years before regular church attendance would become part of my life. To his credit, however, my father urged me to study the gospel of Matthew. He emphasized Chapter 22:37-39: “... You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This advice would serve me well in later years.
I am grateful to Montalbano Elicona and my ancestors for nurturing Giovanni D’Amico and launching him on his marvelous adventure. I am also extremely grateful to the country of my birth, the United States of America, and for the opportunities it afforded our family. Since the founding of the nation, immigrants have played a vital role in creating a diverse, dynamic, and growing economy. Immigrants make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries. By being flexible with where they live, they help local economies manage worker shortages. Immigrant workers support the aging native-born US population by boosting the number of workers and reinforcing Social Security and Medicare funds. Children born to immigrant families are upwardly mobile, promising future benefits not only to their families, but to the US economy overall.[iii] The bottom line is we need more immigration to augment the population and help the US remain globally competitive.
I praise and honor my parents for all they have done for my sister, brother, and me. Although labeled “stupid” by the Mother Superior at St. Anthony’s Church, I heeded my parents’ insistence that I study hard and get good grades. It paid off. I was the first person in the family to graduate from high school. I suppressed my tears with a grateful smile when my parents attended my graduations from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
It had been an exciting time to be a college student. John F. Kennedy exploited television to win election to the Presidency in 1960. We had high hopes for a brighter future in America. Before his Inauguration, the President-elect returned to his alma mater to attend a meeting of the Harvard College Board of Overseers. I was among hundreds of students who watched him ascend the steps of University Hall. We yelled “speech! Speech!” and he turned around. He said, “I am going to talk to President Pusey about your grades.” We groaned. He smiled broadly, raised his arm, and replied, “I will represent your interests.” We cheered not only on that occasion, but also a year and a half later when he attended a football game. The band, of which my roommate Dr. Harry Knopf was a member, played “Hail to the Chief” as he took his seat. At halftime, the band played “Hit the Road Jack” and Kennedy left. We would not see him again.
I was in law school when the President was assassinated on November 22, 1963, I walked the campus in stunned silence as church bells all over Cambridge marked the somber occasion. What followed were turbulent years of war in Vietnam, riots, battles over civil rights and poverty, and the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Murder would also predominate during my first year as an attorney.
[i] Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations in this book are from the New King James Version (NKJV)
[ii] Detwiler, Donald S. Germany: A Short History. Southern Illinois University Press, 1999, p. 43.
[iii] Arloc Sherman, Danilo Trisi, Chad Stone, Shelby Gonzales, and Sharon Parrott, Immigrants Contribute Greatly to U.S. Economy, Despite Administration’s “Public Charge” Rule Rationale, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 15, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/research/immigrants-contribute-greatly-to-us-economy-despite-administrations-public-charge-rule
