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Newsmakers
Winter
2004
TONY
ACCAMANDO,
a Vietnam veteran, has founded the volunteer organization Friends
of Danang which builds schools and medical centers
in that Vietnamese city, where he was station during
the war. Another of his projects helps children in Vietnam
who have lost limbs lead normal lives.
LOUIS B. DEMATTEIS (1911-1995)
goes down in history as the man who gave Sandra Day O'Connor
her start. He was the district attorney for San Mateo,
CA in 1952, when most law firms refused to hire women.
Dematteis, however, gave a promising young law school
graduate a job. Today Sandra Day O’Connor serves
on the U.S. Supreme Court. Dematteis graduated from high
school at 16, took law courses at night, and passed the
California bar exam in 1932 at the age of 21. The youngest
lawyer in the state, he ended his career as a Superior
Court judge.
MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLIAN had
excerpts from her latest book, Italian Women in Black
Dresses, read by Garrison Keller on his popular national
radio program, "A Prairie Home Companion." After
this exposure the book sold out of its first printing.
It was one a Sons of Italy Book Club selection for summer
2003. Gillian also received the 2003 New York Grand Lodge
Sons of Italy award for achievement in writing.
HENRY L. GIORDANO,
who led the U.S. drug fight in the 40's and 50's, died
of cancer last September at age 89. After practicing
pharmacy, he became an undercover agent and later a congressional
investigator for the U.S. Treasury Department, later
becoming its head in the 1960’s.
JUDGE ALDO GIROLAMI,
a justice of the California Supreme Court, is hearing
the widely publicized trial of Scott Peterson, charged
with murdering his wife and unborn child in California
last year. Appointed to the bench in 1984, Girolami served
13 years in the district attorney's office with 10 as
chief deputy. He belongs to the Sons of Italy’s
Modesto Lodge #2021 in Modesto, CA, and is married to
Vera Girolami, the California Grand Lodge's first vice
president.
MAJ. GEN. RAYMOND ODIERNO,
commander of the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq, was the
general whose troops captured Saddam Hussein Dec. 13,
2003. For months, he alone insisted that Hussein was
hiding near Tikkrit, where he was, in fact, captured.
Odierno, 49, is a West Point graduate in engineering
and a rising star in the Army, known for his brains and
brawn. The son of a Columbia University-educated engineer,
he grew up in Rockway, N.J.
FRANCES VISCO is
the founding president of the National Breast Cancer
Coalition, a grassroots advocacy group that lobbies Congress
on issues of concern to breast cancer patients and their
families. A breast cancer survivor herself, Visco is
a former attorney who served three terms on the President’s
Cancer Panel (1993-1999). She will be honored by the
Sons of Italy Foundation at its Washington gala in May.
ALFRED ZAMPA (1905-2000),
an ironworker who survived a fall from the Golden Gate
Bridge during its construction in 1936, has been posthumously
honored by San Francisco, which has named its newest
bridge the Zampa Memorial Bridge. He survived the fall,
breaking four vertebrae, and after a lengthy recovery,
went back to work on the famous symbol of San Francisco.
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