Word: sapio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Would've Been a Judge." Carmine De Sapio, the first Italo-American leader of Tammany Hall, understands only a few words of Italian (he recently sat next to an Italian diplomat at a dinner, listened politely for an hour, did not learn until later that he had accepted an invitation to visit Italy). He does not remember ever hearing his parents converse in Italian; quick-witted Marietta and hard-working Gerard De Sapio spoke English, tried to teach their son that he was an American, pure and simple. Between them, they established a solid little trucking business, came...
...enduring qualities. As a boy he was quiet and reserved; he still is. He had no capacity then for making intimate friends; he still doesn't. He worked tirelessly; he still does. He helped keep the accounts for the De Sapio trucking firm, hustled new customers, many times was out on the docks at 3 a.m. on hauling jobs. He planned to be a lawyer, took pre-law courses at Fordham and attended night classes for a year at the Brooklyn Law School. But iritis, a chronic eye ailment that was the residue of an earlier bout with rheumatic...
Experience with Frogs' Legs. Foreclosed from the law, De Sapio got into politics. "I never planned politics," he says. "You just find yourself in an environment. You get deeper and deeper. You get activated." As an activated young man De Sapio made himself useful around the Huron Club, long the Tammany stamping ground and ruling place of the Finn family, beginning with "Battery Dan" Finn, then his son, then his son's son, Sheriff Dan Finn. "I carried coal baskets around the neighborhood. I used to go down to the markets, let the merchants know...
Sheriff Finn wangled De Sapio a job as secretary to City Judge Vincent S. Lippe at $3,500 a year, and that put De Sapio in a position to marry Theresa Natale (her friends call her Tess, her husband calls her "Girlie"), a pretty secretary from Hoboken whom he had met at a dance several years before. By now, De Sapio was obviously a rising young pol, and Sheriff Finn, a pallid imitation of tough old Battery Dan, was on the skids. In 1939, egged on by Huronites dissatisfied with Finn's sorry leadership, De Sapio founded...
This was unforgivable. "In those days," recalls De Sapio bitterly, "the Irish leaders used to give the Italians important-sounding jobs-without power-to keep them happy; something with a nice fancy-sounding title, like Superintendent of Sanitation, that an Italian would love." But district leader? Never. Tammany's executive committee refused to seat De Sapio. When De Sapio's followers picketed both the hall and Finn's office, Finn cried foul. "It's in line with all the tactics they've been using," he said. Then, darkly: "I might even say it smells strongly...