East Central proudly recognizes the culture, heritage, and contributions of Italian Americans during NATIONAL ITALIAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

The month of October 2020 #ProudlyUnited FRANK SINATRA Singer, Actor

People may remember Frank Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) for hits like "My Way," his Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity and his adventures with the Rat Pack.

More than that, the proud son of Italian immigrants arguably did more than any other individual to shape the course of American entertainment and popular culture after World War II.

He became the first bona fide teen idol, remaking classic songs with his distinct imprint, as well as the first singer to find sustained success on the big screen. By the time Ol' Blue Eyes formed his own record label in 1960, he also packed enough clout to help drive John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. Altogether, the 150 million-plus EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES records sold, 11 Grammy Awards and Presidential Medal of Freedom give an idea of his outsized impact over nearly 60 years in the public eye. He ITALIAN was collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most AMERICAN influential people. Born to Italian immigrants in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra never learned how to read music, HERITAGE but he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music. A MONTH perfectionist, renowned for his dress sense and OCTOBER 2020 performing presence, he always insisted on recording live with his band.

#PROUDLYUNITED MOTHER CABRINI Roman Catholic Nun

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC (July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917), also called Mother Cabrini, was born Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Lombard Province of Lodi, then part of the Austrian Empire. She was the youngest of the thirteen children of farmers Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini. Only four of the thirteen survived beyond adolescence. Born two months early, she was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life. At thirteen, Francesca attended a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Five years later she graduated cum laude, with a teaching certificate.

Francis Xavier Cabrini heeded the request of Archive Photos/Getty Images Pope Leo XIII and moved to the U.S. in the late 1880s to serve the millions of Italian immigrants EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES who were flocking to its shores. She founded her first American orphanage in upstate New York in 1890 but refused to stay put, fielding calls to help ITALIAN the abandoned, sick and destitute across the country and around the world.

AMERICAN Naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1909, Mother Cabrini died in one of her own hospitals in Chicago eight years later, leaving behind a legacy HERITAGE of more than five dozen schools, orphanages and hospitals built. She became the first U.S. citizen to MONTH be canonized in 1946, fittingly finding her place in OCTOBER 2020 the firmament as the patron saint of immigrants.

#PROUDLYUNITED JOE DIMAGGIO Baseball Player

Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper," was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Born to Italian immigrants in California, he is widely considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time. His father, Giuseppe, was processed on Ellis Island and worked his way across America to California as a fisherman.

While not facing the outright discrimination endured by African Americans, Italian American baseball players weathered their share of ethnically charged abuse in the early 20th century. Such stereotyping was apparent in a 1939 Life profile of Joe DiMaggio, which made sure to note that the New York Yankees star EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES "never reeks of garlic." But DiMaggio was a ballplayer of extraordinary ability and dapper taste, and by 1941, when he reeled off his ITALIAN famous 56-game hitting streak (a record that still stands), he had transcended his first-generation roots to become a hero to Americans of all AMERICAN stripes.

Joltin' Joe wrapped up his career in 1951 with HERITAGE three MVP Awards and nine World Series titles with the Yanks, his iconic status cemented by a MONTH shout-out from Ernest Hemingway in The Old OCTOBER 2020 Man and the Sea and an A-list marriage to Marilyn Monroe.

#PROUDLYUNITED ENRICO FERMI Scientist, Physicist

Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 – November 28, 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the U.S. government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics. EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES The University of Rome physicist defected to the U.S. to escape the regime of Benito Mussolini, ITALIAN and oversaw the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in December 1942. Less than two years later, he became prominently involved AMERICAN in the development of the atomic bomb as associate director of the secretive Manhattan HERITAGE Project. While Fermi had to wrestle with the ramifications MONTH of his work – he later argued against the creation OCTOBER 2020 of the hydrogen bomb on ethical grounds – his positive contributions are remembered through a slew of awards and his reputation as the architect of the nuclear age. #PROUDLYUNITED LEE IACOCCA Automobile Manufacturer Executive

Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca (October 15, 1924 – July 2, 2019) was an American automobile executive best known for the development of Ford Mustang and Pinto cars, while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, and for reviving the Chrysler Corporation as its CEO during the 1980s. He was president and CEO of Chrysler from 1978 and chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992. He was one of the few executives to preside over the operations of two of the Big Three automakers. Iacocca authored or co-authored several books, including Iacocca: An Autobiography (with William Novak), and Where Have All the Leaders Gone? Portfolio Magazine named Iacocca the 18th-greatest American CEO of all time.

Iacocca followed a classic rags-to-riches storyline EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES to become one of the most celebrated executives of his era. The son of a hot dog vendor who was decimated by the Great Depression, he took an ITALIAN engineering degree to a sales position with Ford and, after introducing the wildly popular Mustang in 1964, became president of the company six AMERICAN years later. Fired by chairman Henry Ford II in 1978, Iacocca embarked on an equally impressive second act by taking over as CEO of the HERITAGE floundering Chrysler Corporation, his grandfatherly visage filling the role of commercial MONTH pitchman as he dug the company out of debt and OCTOBER 2020 cemented his standing as what one writer described as "the nation's economic Winston Churchill."

#PROUDLYUNITED GERALDINE FERRARO Nominee for Vice President, Congresswoman

Geraldine Anne "Gerry" Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011) was an American politician, diplomat, and attorney. She served in the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985, and was the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 1984, running alongside former vice president Walter Mondale; making her the first female vice-presidential nominee representing a major American political party. She was also a journalist, author, and businesswoman.

A schoolteacher turned criminal prosecutor and congresswoman from Queens, Ferraro entered the limelight in 1984 by joining Democratic presidential hopeful Walter Mondale to become the first woman and Italian American to earn the vice-presidential nomination on a major party ticket. But her time as a political power player EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES was short-lived. Mondale was soundly defeated by incumbent Ronald Reagan that fall, and Ferraro's later attempts to run for the Senate ITALIAN fizzled. Nevertheless, the difficulty of her attempt to crack the glass ceiling became even more apparent in the years that followed, as it would AMERICAN be another quarter-century before Alaska Governor Sarah Palin followed as the second woman to earn a major party vice-presidential HERITAGE nod.

MONTH Her mother was a first-generation Italian OCTOBER 2020 American and her father was an Italian immigrant.

In 1993, she was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. #PROUDLYUNITED DR. ANTHONY FAUCI Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Anthony Stephen Fauci (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984.

In 1981, nearly 40 years before he became a ubiquitous media presence during the onset of COVID-19, Dr. Fauci of the NIAID learned of a strange new sickness within the gay community. He plunged himself into the research of HIV/AIDS despite a lack of bureaucratic support, taking the important step of allowing dying patients to try experimental drugs that were still being tested in trials. Later, after effective but costly therapies had been developed, he spearheaded the President's Emergency Plan for EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES AIDS Relief under George W. Bush to bring treatments to developing countries. While there remains no cure, Dr. Fauci's work has ITALIAN transformed the outlook for millions afflicted with what was once akin to a death sentence.

AMERICAN As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci has served American public HERITAGE health in various capacities for more than 50 years, and has been an advisor to every U.S. MONTH president since Ronald Reagan. OCTOBER 2020 The grandchild of Italian immigrants, Fauci is the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world who published articles in scientific journals. #PROUDLYUNITED ANTONIN SCALIA Supreme Court Justice

Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court's conservative wing. For catalyzing an originalist and textualist movement in American law, he has been described as one of the most influential jurists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important justices in the Supreme Court's history. Scalia was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University was named in his honor.

The first Italian American named to the United EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES States Supreme Court, was appointed during the Reagan administration. Scalia changed history by the very nature of his position, from his vote to ITALIAN end the 2000 presidential recount that handed the election to George W. Bush to his determination that the Second Amendment AMERICAN protected an individual's right to bear arms. He also made his mark as a champion of originalism, his biting arguments and dissensions drawing HERITAGE laughter as often as they raised the ire of colleagues. Even in death, the larger-than-life MONTH justice continued to move the cultural needle, OCTOBER 2020 with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously refusing to fill his seat until the election of Republican President Donald Trump.

#PROUDLYUNITED JOSEPH BARBERA Animator/Producer/Director

Do you know the cartoon company Hanna- Barbera? Do you know the cartoons Tom and Jerry, Jonny Quest, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and more?

Joseph Roland Barbera (March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the 20th century.

He was born to Italian immigrants in New York City, where he lived, attended college and began his career through his young adult years. After working odd jobs and as a banker, Barbera joined Van Beuren Studios in 1927 and subsequently Terrytoons in 1929. In 1930, he moved to EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES California and while working at Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer (MGM), Barbera met William Hanna. The two men began a collaboration that was at first ITALIAN best known for producing Tom and Jerry. In 1957, after MGM dissolved their animation department, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, AMERICAN which became the most successful television animation studio in the business. In 1967, Hanna- Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 HERITAGE million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company. In 1991, the studio was sold to MONTH Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was OCTOBER 2020 merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.

#PROUDLYUNITED POMPEO COPPINI Sculptor Pompeo Luigi Coppini (May 19, 1870 – September 26, 1957) was an Italian born sculptor who emigrated to the United States and eventual San Antonio resident. Although his works can be found in Italy, Mexico and a number of U.S. states, the majority of his work can be found in Texas. He is particularly famous for the Alamo Plaza work Spirit of Sacrifice a.k.a. The Alamo Cenotaph, as well as numerous statues honoring Texan figures.

Coppini emigrated to the United States in March, 1896 with nothing but a trunk of clothes and $40 to his name. He became a U.S. citizen in 1902.

In 1931, Italy decorated Coppini with the Commendatore of the Order of the Crown of Photo b David R. Tribble Italy for his contribution to art in America. The EAST CENTRAL CELEBRATES Texas Centennial Committee awarded Coppini the 1934 commission to design the Texas Centennial Half Dollar. In 1937, Coppini opened his San Antonio studio on Melrose Place. Baylor ITALIAN University awarded Coppini an honorary doctor of fine arts degree in 1941. From 1943 to 1945 AMERICAN he was head of the art department of Trinity University in San Antonio. In 1945 he cofounded the Classic Arts Fraternity in San Antonio HERITAGE (renamed Coppini Academy of Fine Arts in 1950).

Coppini's statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Texas MONTH Governor and third president of Texas A&M OCTOBER 2020 University is considered one of the most revered works on the A&M campus in College Station and students often place coins at the statue's feet for good luck on exams. #PROUDLYUNITED