Chicago Italians

1431 West Taylor Street
Chicago, Illinois, 60607
312-226-5566 (Phone)
312-226-5678 (Fax)



Museum Hours of Operation:

Monday-Friday: 9AM - 5PM
Saturday-Sunday: 11AM - 4PM

The National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame is handicap accessible

In 1977, George Randazzo founded the Italian American Boxing Hall of Fame as a way to raise money for a struggling local Catholic youth program. Randazzo collected boxing photos and memorabilia, a hobby that inspired him to organize a fundraising dinner that brought together a list of boxing greats and celebrities. The dinner honored twenty-three former Italian American boxing world champions, including Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta, Sammy Angott, Willie Pep, and posthumously Rocky Marciano, Primo Carnera and Tony Canzoneri.

The results were so overwhelming that a friend and local businessman, Don Ponte, encouraged Randazzo to start a Hall of Fame to honor all Italian American athletes. One year later, the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame was founded as a non-profit, educational institution. The first induction ceremony and banquet was a star-studded event, as the Hall of Fame honored Lou Ambers, Eddie Arcaro, Charlie Trippi, Gino Marchetti, Dom DiMaggio and "The Yankee Clipper," Joe DiMaggio. Mrs. Vince Lombardi also accepted the posthumous induction of her late husband, Coach Vince Lombardi.

In the years that followed, celebrities from all walks of life have come to the annual induction ceremonies to pay tribute to outstanding Italian American sports champions and heroes. A special and uninvited guest took part in the 1980 induction ceremony, as Prisident Jimmy Carter offered his congratulations and addressed the crowd. In 1988 the Hall of Fame moved from its original headquarters in Elmwood Park to Arlington Heights.

The NIASHF enjoyed a new beginning in 1998 with the help of Phoenix Suns Chairman/CEO Jerry Colangelo. A 1994 Inductee and Chicago Heights native, Colangelo was asked by Randazzo to serve as Chairman of an ambitious new Hall of Fame building project in the heart of Chicago's Little Italy. Colangelo accepted, and has succeeded in bringing together civic-minded men and women from across the country in support of the project. In 2000 the new facility was dedicated as "The Jerry Colangelo Center," a tribute to his efforts and leadership.

There are now over 200 inductees enshrined in the Hall of Fame. To date, the organization has raised over 6 million for scholarships and charitable causes. In 27 years, the collection of sports memorabilia the Hall has amassed is second to none. The priceless artifacts include Mario Andretti's Indy 500 racecar, Rocky Marciano's first heavyweight championship belt, Vince Lombardi's last coat worn as coach of the Green Bay Packers, and swimmer Matt Biondi's Olympic Gold Medals.

May The Year 2011 Bring for You Happiness,Success and filled with Peace,Hope & Togetherness of your Family & Friends....Wishing You a...*HAPPY NEW YEAR*

We're thinking of you this time of year,
Wishing you happiness, joy, and cheer.
May all your days be warm and bright,
And your nights enhanced by holiday light.

Enjoy your delectable holiday foods,
As parties and gifts create holiday moods.
Favorite people play a meaningful part,
While treasured rituals warm your heart.

You are special to us in many ways,
So we wish you Happy Holidays!

Nine years ago today we lost our angel, Please visit here with your thoughts AND PRAYERS

This memorial website was created in the memory of our loved one, Dawn Sansone who was born in Illinois on January 02, 1978 and passed away on November 06, 2001 at the age of 23. We will remember her forever.
Those of you who knew Dawn, Knew she was full of life, A sweet and feisty little firecracker who's smile could warm an eskimo. She was taken away from us without warning and has left large holes in the hearts of all who had the chance to see the smile that came from her always. Life will never again be complete without her being a physical part, Her heart will beat among us who loved her forever and ever

Please visit her site and leave your thoughts and wishes....Thank you
http://dawnsansone.memory-of.com/

Summing up the late Tony Accardo's leadership abilities, a veteran Chicago mob figure once confided to Chicago American columnist George Murray that "...Accardo has more brains before breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day." Possessing a nimble mind and a canny instinct for survival, Accardo boasted of having never spent a night in jail. though he was picked up in Miami Beach in 1929 on vagrancy charges while playing golf with Al Capone and Jack McGurn. But he was released on his own recognizance. Accardo's closest brush with the slammer came on Feb. 24, 1945, when he was forced to suffer the indignity of appearing in a police lineup at the Chicago Detective Bureau during a murder investigation. But that too, was only a mere formality.

Even during his last years when he was consumed with cancer and his body a thin. frail shell, this elder statesman of the rackets was accorded a respect that was never shown other mob cures of his generation who reaped a r more bitter harvest. In death, Tony Accardo still looms as the most powerful mob figure of this era; the boss of bosses who helped shape policy on a national level.


Anthony "Big Tuna" Accardo, a product of the Prohibition era, ruled the rackets in this town for nearly forty years before succumbing to the ravages of old age and cancer on May 17, 1992. He was an early product of the "Circus Gang," a collection of Northwest Side toughs who congregated at John "Screwy" Moore's (a.k.a. Claude Maddox) Circus Cafe on North Avenue. Moore was nominally connected to the Torrio-Capone outfit, and he willingly obliged Scarface with a percentage of his gang's liquor revenue, and the necessary armaments through their gun dealer Peter Von Frantzius.


Accardo, a strapping, flve-nine, 200 pound lad who was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, joined the Circus Gang while he was still in his teens. He was introduced to the mob boys by "Tough" Tony Capezio, a gambling boss and syndicate man, who pulled him off the streets of the Grand and Milwaukee neighborhood, and gave him something more "useful" to do. By the end of the 1920s, Accardo was performing various tasks for the Capone mob while running with another gangster of future importance, his closest friend and confidant, Felice De Lucia, better known as Paul "the Waiter" Ricca.


Mob media writers have always suspected the youthful Accardo of complicity in Chicago's most sensational gangland killing, the 1929 St. Valentine's's Day Massacre. In all probability Accardo acted as one of Capone's lookouts on Clark Street and may have had a small role in the planning the hit, but it is farfetched speculation to place him in the garage at the time of the actual shootings.


It was after the Massacre, however, when Accardo first began to make a name for himself as Al Capone's bodyguard and special enforcer. His fearsome reputation for violence and cunning was no doubt nurtured by one of his immediate superiors: "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn. Accardo's stock and trade was vengeance and he was particularly adept with a baseball bat. In May 1929, Al Capone discovered that he was the target of a murder plot, hatched by Alberto Anselmi and John Scalise, two Sicilian contract killers who had been on the big guy's permanent retainer for five years. At a lavish dinner party given in their honor someone, maybe it was Accardo, maybe it was Capone no one knows for sure--took a baseball bat to their traitorous heads, and afterward dumped the bodies in a ditch in the south suburbs. Accardo's respectful mob associates would later pin a nickname on him that he would carry to his grave: "Joe Batters," or "Joe B." Go figure.

The "Big Tuna" moniker was strictly a press invention. There are those who believe it was given to him in 1949 by the late Ray Brennan of the Chicago Sun Times who marvelled at the 400-pound tunafish Accardo pulled out of the waters of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia. Others will tell you that Accardo actually landed the "big one" at Bimini during a deep-sea fishing expedition in 1955, and he continued to use the nickname as an alias while serving as a 'phantom" salesman for the Premium Beer Sales Company between 1956-58. Accardo pulled down a hefty salary of $179.000, even though he was rarely seen around the offices.. When he would telephone company president Dominick Volpe, Accardo would identify himself as the Big Tuna placing a call to the "little Tuna." Volpe had accompanied Accardo on the Bimini trip, and the fish he landed was a small fry by comparison. Fish stories aside, Tony Accardo had been pegged as one of Chicago's important gangland figures early on in his career.

In 1931, the Chicago Crime Commission named Accardo to its first published list of "Public Enemies," at a time when the power structure of the Chicago outfit was being revamped due to Al Capone's imprisonment for tax evasion in violation of the Federal income tax laws, Accardo expanded Capone's gambling operations across the city and suburbs siphoning portions of this illegal revenue into various legitimate enterprises including trucking firms, lumber and coal companies, labor unions, and restaurants and hotels.

As the "old guard" slowly faded away Ricca and Accardo broadened their responsibilities. When Frank Nitti committed suicide in 1943, Paul "the Waiter Ricca assumed control of the Outfit, even though he was incarcerated in a federal prison at the time. Accardo functioned as his second in command and always managed to defer final action to Ricca during the entire three-year period the "Waiter" spent in confinement at the Leavenworth Penitentiary. Upon his release, Accardo was handed a rich plum for his abiding loyalty: he was put in complete control of wire operations and betting parlors from northwest Indiana to the northern suburbs of Chicago. Evidence of Accardo's propensity for violence, and willingness to employ whatever means necessary to effect an outcome was clearly demonstrated on June 24, 1946, when James M. Ragen was cut down in a fusillade of bullets as he drove south on State Street near Pershing Boulevard. Ragen controlled the Nationwide News Service (the name was later changed to Continental Press), a telephone wire that dispensed race track results to participating poolrooms across the U.S. The stormy history of this operation extends back to the horse and buggy era when gambling czar Mont Tennes seized control of the wire from John Payne. After Tennes was "squeezed. by Capone In the 1920s, he sold his interests to publishing mogul Moses Annenberg.

When Annenberg was forced to divest his gambling interests in 1939, because of tax troubles with the government, James Ragen stepped in and took control. But Ragen was intractable with the syndicate, and refused to share his spoils with Accardo, who allegedly ordered his removal. When the bullets failed to kill the aging Ragen, a mob operative slipped into his hospital room in August. In the autopsy that followed, traces of mercury were found in Ragen's blood system.

Under Accardo's direction, Continental became the outfit's cash cow - so much so that Estes Kefauver's Senate investigating committee called it "the life blood. of the outfit. That same year -1950 - Accardo, acting under Ricca's orders, shoved aside "Big" Jim Martin who controlled an enormous policy racket in the Twenty-eighth ward. Political protection was provided by Alderman George Kells, and with so much revenue and "clout" at stake, Martin and his silent partner in City Hall were understandably perturbed at Ricca for demanding that they relinquish control. On November 15, Martin suffered serious gun shot wounds. The shooter missed the mark, but Accardo achieved his original purpose. Martin fled to Los Angeles, and Kells drove to Florida never to return. The alderman told reporters at the time that he was doing it because his wife was in "poor health."


Accardo now personally controlled more than 10,000 gambling dens in Chicago ranging from corner cigar stands, right up to the lavish Loop pool rooms. He also played a role in establishing Havana, Cuba as a new base of operations for organized crime figures following the repeal of Prohibition. The revenue from these operations netted the Outfit millions, but narcotics trafficking was one area Accardo refused to involve himself with. Aunt on the advice of Jake Guzik and men to deal in drugs. Only in recent years has this dictate been challenged by the "Young Turk" faction, and usually with a corresponding loss of life within the ranks of the interlopers.

Accardo, like others before him, had a penchant for the good life. As his wealth, esteem, and political influence escalated in the early 1950s, he purchased a lavish mansion at 915 Franklin Street in River Forest for the sum of $150,000, this time ignoring the advice and counsel of Humphreys who told him that "the smart money don't go to the suburbs."

"You and your family will stick out like a sore thumb and the Feds will always know exactly where you are." Nevertheless, Accardo stocked his mansion with the most expensive furniture, and a black onyx bathtub that served as his unofficial command post. Later, Accardo added a twenty-room mansion in Miami to his holdings.

Accardo's opulent lifestyle, and a celebrated European vacation he took with his wife Clarice, and a well-known Chicago police lieutenant in 1959, attracted national media attention which compelled the government to sit up and take notice. A year later he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to six years on charges of income tax evasion. However, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned U.S. Attorney Richard B. Ogilvie's successful prosecution of Accardo due to what they called "prejudicial newspaper coverage." In a second trial convened in 1962, the Chicago mob boss was acquitted.

Tony Accardo bragged that he never spent a night in jail, even though he was indicted no less than four times between 1948 and 1982. Each time the government failed in its mission to put him behind bars. In the celebrated 1982 labor-racketeering trial in Miami, Fla., Accardo and fourteen co-defendants were charged with conspiring to share in $2 million in kickbacks involving the placement of insurance business from the mob-controlled 550,000 member Laborer's International Union into the hands of a convicted swindler named Joseph Hauser of Beverly Hills, Cal. In stirring courtroom testimony, Hauser labeled Accardo as "the number one" power behind the union. He detailed the methods used by the Chicago mob leader to force the removal of secretary treasurer Terrance O'Sullivan in favor of his own man
Angelo Fosco, who ultimately succeeded his father Peter Fosco as union president.

But Accardo's two crack defense attorneys, Carl M. Walsh and Eddie Kay, poked holes through Hauser's testimony and revealed that the government had paid him $105,000 as a protected witness. The Miami jury freed Accardo but sent six of his associates to jail including Al Pilotto, president of Local 5, and James Caporale, an official in the Chicago-based council. While all this was going on, Accardo quietly orchestrated the appointment of his son-in-law Ernest Kumerow as president of the County and Municipal Union Local 1001. Kumerow, a former star baseball player at the University of Illinois took charge took of a Local that represented some 3,000 city street and sanitation workers. The old man's clout in organized labor was extensive and far reaching.

The unfavorable publicity surrounding Accardo, coupled with his continuing l.R.S. woes, compelled the nervous Ricca to make a change in the upper echelon of the outfit. In 1957 or so, Paul Ricca decided that Accardo should shun the limelight for a while, in favor of Sam "Momo" Giancana, an ambitious, but maniacal killer whose modest bungalow in Oak Park was a far cry from the palatial estate the Big Tuna resided in. Giancana was at first considered to be a "low- profile" type, but Ricca had erred badly in this regard. Giancana took up with Phyllis McGuire of the singing McGuire Sisters act, and soon found himself more enchanted with Frank Sinatra and his Hollywood pals than attending to his business in the manner Ricca would have preferred.
Paul Ricca succeeded in diverting the attention away from Accardo, but the publicity surrounding Giancana's own ostentatious life style forced another change in 1966, the year after Momo went into a self-imposed exile following a year-long stretch in prison after he refused to testify before a federal grand jury. Accardo resumed control, with Joey Aiuppa serving as his second in command. This time, Accardo seemed more than willing to avoid the mistakes of the past. He sold his home in River Forest in 1963, in favor of a more "modest" 18 room ranch house at 1407 N. Ashland Avenue. It was there in January 1977, when a gang of burglars foolishly broke into the home in search of cash and jewels. They were stalked, hounded, and ultimately tracked down by syndicate hit men who slashed the throats of the six burglars. One was castrated, and another disemboweled.

Bernard Ryan, the first of the burglary suspects was found shot to death on Jan. 20, 1978 in Stone Park. Steven Garcia, 29, was pulled out of the trunk of a car parked in the garage at O'Hare Airport on February 2. Vincent Moretti and Donald Swanson, two veteran second story men, were stabbed to death on February 4 in an abandoned car in Stickney Township. John Mandell, who was considered somewhat of an electronics expert suffered a similar fate. Police located his remains in an auto trunk on the South Side on February 20.

The sixth man suspected of complicity in the burglary, 43-year-old John McDonald, was shot to death in a North Side alley in April 1978. In the weeks that followed, a number of burglars and sneak thieves prudently decided to skip town though they were not involved in the River Forest heist. No-one was taking any chances with the old man on this one, especially after Accardo's 75-year-old houseman Michael Volpe disappeared. just five days after testifying before a grand fury. Accardo had sent an important message to all those who would question his leadership abilities or willingness to dispense justice as he had years earlier. Since 1979 and up to the time of his death, Tony Accardo alternated his residence between his Indian Wells condominium located twenty miles outside of Palm Springs. Cal., and his other home in Barrington Hills. From his location in the warm California desert, Accardo served as the outfit's "chairman emeritus" while younger men carried out his directives back in Chicago.

In the last years of his life, Accardo was beset with various legal and personal problems. In February 1983 his 40-year-old nephew John Simonelli was indicted by a DuPage County grand jury on auto theft charges.

A few months later, the Big Tuna was dragged before a Senate Subcommittee investigating labor racketeering within the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HEREIU), led by Richie Daley's pal Edward Hanley. Accardo was an uncooperative witness even though he was under an immunity grant from the government. His refusal to answer sensitive questions or provide clarification to the committee members resulted in a contempt of Congress citation which was handed down in February 1984. Ill health prevented him from further testimony, as the committee concluded its hearings with this finding "the committee finds that the mobster dominated locals of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees Union in the Chicago Area served only the purpose of giving a cloak of legitimacy to what was nothing more than a pure extortion racket." Accardo emerged from his Senate ordeal unscathed. as you might expect. But before another year had passed, Tony's niece Sheila Simonelli was busted for allegedly trying to sell $23.5 million in stolen securities. The woman's mother Marie Simonelli, is Accardo's sister.
Then in August 1991, a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that Accardo could not deduct $60.000 in back taxes and penalties, stemming from his courtroom victory in Miami nine years earlier. While the sum of money was trifling compared to the vast fortune Accardo had amassed over the years, it was indicative of the heat the government had been putting on the ailing gang leader. Accardo's death closes out a significant chapter in Chicago organized crime history. For all practical purposes he was the last link to Al Capone and the fabled Prohibition era which has faded into the abyss of history. Tony was without question the most powerful mob figure of his time, and his passing raises new concerns about the renewal of a gang war in Chicago, as other less circumspect figures seek to reap the harvest of what Anthony Accardo had sewn years ago.
...................And then the wolf blew in the house, Next Fairy tale

Neighborhood:
Little Italy/
University Village 1068 W. Taylor St.
Chicago, IL 60607

Mario's Italian lemonade has the consistency of a Slurpee and is like store-bought Italian ices, ''only better,'' promises Dorothy DiPaolo, the current owner's mother. Mario's ices consist of chilled slushlike lemonade, fruit and syrups in various flavors including fruit cocktail, pina colada, chocolate and banana. Lemon is the No. 1 flavor. DiPaolo opened the business in the '50s with her late husband, Mario. The wooden stand is Italian green, white and red, sprouting from the front of a brick rowhouse next door to Jamoch's Caffe. DiPaolo says that when she and her husband opened their stand, there were many stands and pushcarts in the neighborhood. Over the years, most have disappeared. She says customers from many years ago who went to nearby St. Ignatius come back and bring their children. Mario's also sells snacks including snowballs, seeds and nuts, lupini beans, dried chickpeas and candy.

Three friends married women from different parts of the country.....

The first man married a woman from Utah . He told her that she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from California . He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done, and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Chicago . He ordered her to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has some difficulty when he pees.

There was an Italian immigrant man who had worked all his life, had saved all of his money, and was a real "miser" when it came to his money.

Just before he died, he said to his Italian wife..."When I die, I want you to take all my money and put it in the casket with me. I want to take my money to the after life with me."

And so  he got his wife to promise him, with all of her heart, that when he died, she would put all of the money into the casket with him.

Well, he died. He was stretched out in the casket, his wife was sitting there - dressed in black, (what else), and her best friend was sitting next to her.

When they finished the ceremony, and just before the undertaker got ready to close the casket, the wife said, "Wait  just a moment!"
She had a  small metal box with her; she came overwith the box and put it in the casket.

Then the undertaker locked the casket down and they rolled it away. So her friend said, "Girl, I  know you were not fool enough to put all that money in there with your husband."
The loyal wife replied, "Listen, I'm an Italian Catholic & I cannot go back on my word. I promised him that I was going to put that money in the casket with him.."

You mean to tell me you put that money in the casket with him??"

"I sure did," said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account, I wrote him a check.... If he can cash it, then he can spend it." AMEN!

CIAO TUTTI

If you are 30, or older, you might think this is
hilarious!


When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up;
what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning....
Uphill...
Barefoot...
BOTH
ways. yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But now, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.  You've got it so easy!  I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet.  If we
wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and
look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email!!  We had to actually write somebody a letter -with a pen!  Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us.  As a
matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission
to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!
There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!
There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car..
We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished,
and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause,
hey, that's how we rolled, Baby!  Dig?
We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting!  If you were on the
phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house,
you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!!  Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!  And then there's TEXTING.  Yeah, right.  Please!  You kids have no idea how annoying you are.
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you
had no idea who it was!  It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'.  Your screen guy was a little square!  You actually had to use your imagination!!!  And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever!
And you could never win.  The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change thechannel!!!  NO REMOTES!!!  Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on
Saturday Morning.  Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!
And we didn't have microwaves.  If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove!  Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long.
Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.  And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!
And car seats - oh, please!  Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were luckly, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See!
That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten!  You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980  or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd