Word: raff
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...commandeered at gunpoint a TWA plane that had taken off from Los Angeles International Airport and skyjacked it to Rome, where he was captured and jailed (TIME, Nov. 7). Behind that senseless and dramatic odyssey lay another one that helps to explain Raffaele Minichiello's bizarre action. Raff, as his family calls him, retraced that first, formative journey for U.S. Lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, who flew to Rome to organize Minichiello's defense. As the young Marine talked in his cell in Regina Coeli prison, Attorney Mitchelson recorded parts of it in Raff's own hesitant English. TIME...
...Raff grew up in the southern Italian village of Melito Irpino, one of those timeless, unchanging communities that hide behind hills all over Europe. Even there, he was something of an outsider: a U.S. citizen by virtue of his father's naturalization years before in America. The 30-year disparity in his parents' ages did not contribute to a settled home life. Papa Minichiello, a stern disciplinarian, confined his son at home nights. The one time Raff defied this parental decree he was soundly beaten...
...when Raff was 13, Papa Minichiello moved his family back to the U.S. and settled on a farm outside Seattle, where the old man had relatives. The abrupt transition was traumatic for Raff. He could neither speak nor read English. Classes at Foster High School became a routine torture; he fell hopelessly behind and, without his father's knowledge, regularly played hooky...
...Raff dropped out of school for good. A young man who had never dated a girl, he found a job polishing and arranging fruit in a Seattle supermarket and took some satisfaction in it. But his failure in school, tugging remorselessly at his conscience, drove him to the Seattle public library. For hours on end, unable to fathom the printed mysteries of its stacks, he pored over the illustrations. In a way that he still does not understand, pictures of airplanes and weapons of war fascinated him. And his thoughts slowly turned to the other culture of modern society where...
After Camp Pendleton, where helpful Marine buddies polished some of the rough edges off his English, Raff was sent to Viet Nam in December...