[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 21 (Wednesday, March 2, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO MARIANO LUCCA
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HON. JOHN J. LaFALCE
of new york
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, March 2, 1994
Mr. LaFALCE. Mr. Speaker, a longtime friend and constituent from
Buffalo, NY, Mariano A. Lucca, passed away this week at the age of 92.
He was a man short in stature but tall in achievement.
Throughout his lifetime, Mariano Lucca was an activist, deeply
involved in a variety of community improvement efforts, political
affairs, fund-raising events for good causes.
He was particularly active in preserving and promoting Italian-
American culture, of which he was most proud. That certainly led to his
fascination with Christopher Columbus and eventually resulted in the
Federal holiday--Columbus Day--we have observed in October each year
since 1971. Mariano Lucca founded the National Columbus Day Committee,
opened an office in Washington in 1966 and relentlessly campaigned,
cajoled, and crusaded through the Halls of Congress in support of
legislation to create that Federal holiday honoring Columbus. He was
irrepressible, dogged, sometimes charming, sometimes irreverent; and,
in the end, Mariano Lucca successfully championed Columbus' cause.
Unquestionably, Columbus would have discovered America a lot earlier
than 1492 if he had had an advocate of Mariano Lucca's caliber and
persistence in the Spanish court.
Mariano was a fascinating man, who left an indelible mark on his
community and his Nation. The following article which appeared in the
Buffalo News on February 28, 1994, describes in more detail his many
activities and accomplishments during a lifetime well spent:
Mariano A. Lucca Dies; Columbus Day Champion
(By Mike Vogel)
Mariano A. Lucca, a longtime crusader who championed a
series of causes in a lifetime that took him from one of the
toughest streets in the world to audience halls of Europe,
died Sunday (Feb. 27, 1994) in his West Side home after a
long illness.
Lucca, the man who made Columbus Day a national holiday,
died surrounded by family members in the 7th Street house he
had turned into a Columbus and Queen Isabel museum. He was
92.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered in Holy Angels
Catholic Church at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Burial will be in
Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Lucca was born in 1901 on Canal Street, near the end of
that storied street's long tenure as one of the toughest
streets in the world.
His father, Sicilian immigrant Francesco Lucca, had taken
over management of the Only Theatre, scene of an infamous
1890s murder, at a time when Italians were starting to
convert the crime-ridden waterfront district to a poor but
respectable ``Little Italy'' that would be renamed Dante
Place. As a child, Lucca and a friend discovered a large
mound of human bones in the building's basement.
``I was born at 104 Canal St.,'' he told the author of a
recently published waterfront history. ``My mother cut meat
until two hours before my birth--my mother had nine children,
and my father was a widower with five kids.''
In later years, Lucca would claim to have been present at
the assassination of President McKinley. Lucca's mother, the
month before his birth, had gone to the Pan-Am Exposition to
watch his father play the cornet in a band, and Dr. Charles
Borzilleri--a pioneer Italian physician and founder of
Columbus Hospital--later gave him a certificate attesting to
his attendance.
Assassination aside, Lucca's early years sparked a lifelong
fascination with politics and the Democratic Party. As a
child, he would grab a ginger ale and hide in a stack of
casks or flour sacks in his father's saloon to listen as
Francesco and influential local and state candidates
discussed political affairs.
He was befriended by a young Alfred F. Smith, and much
later developed friendships with Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
John F. Kennedy and others.
In 1924, after his marriage to the former Clara L. Gugino,
the couple honeymooned at the Democratic honeymooned at the
Democratic National Convention in New York City. Lucca, who
staged five unsuccessful congressional bids in the 1950s and
1960s, attended every presidential inauguration since Herbert
Hoover, and President Clinton played a saxophone tune for
Clara at his inauguration festivities last year.
As a teen-ager, Lucca briefly managed the Only Theater
while his father returned temporarily to Sicily for a health
cure. As a young man, Lucca investigated workmen's
compensation abuses for the U.S. Labor Department.
Soon after his marriage, the diminutive crusader began
publishing his own weekly newspaper, the ``Warder.'' His work
prompted Buffalo Evening News Editor Alfred H. Kirchhofer to
publish his reporting and to send him twice to Europe to file
stories for this newspaper.
In 1933, he filed a series of stories from Italy, in the
form of letters to his father. The stories detailed
conditions in that nation and included interviews with
Italian Premier Benito Mussolini, King Victor Emmanuel, Pope
Pius XI and the papal secretary of state who would later
become Pope Pius XII.
Lucca confronted Mussolini, during a private audience, by
vowing that he wouldn't lower his eyes before the premier,
but ``only to God!'' Mussolini picked the small man up,
hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks, and cried, ``A real
Italian!''
``No, your excellency,'' Lucca responded, ``an American of
Italian heritage, of which he's proud!''
In 1935, a second trip abroad took him to Germany and
interviews with Adolf Hitler and his top aides.
Resigning from The News shortly afterwards, Lucca began
free-lance advertising and public relations work, and founded
the Buffalo Publicity Bureau. During World War II he worked
as a production expediter at the Curtiss-Wright aircraft
plant here, and in the late 1940s began a 12-year career as
publisher of the Buffalo Beacon, a weekly newspaper that
championed the cause of the underdog.
Always active in promoting Italian culture in this area,
Lucca also began a multinational annual series of Mardi Gras
pageants in the 1930s to showcase Buffalo's varied ethnic
traditions.
He also organized the Buffalo Famine Emergency Committee to
aid war-ravaged regions of Poland and Greece in the 1940s,
and guided a relief effort to help residents of Rimouski,
Quebec, after a devastating fire leveled that town. In 1980
he mobilized clothing collections as the Order of the Sons of
Italy moved to aid victims of a massive earthquake in Italy,
and he and his wife traveled to that nation to make sure the
aid got to the 97 communities in need.
Perhaps his greatest career achievement, though, came in
the 1960s, when he successfully campaigned to make Columbus
Day a federal holiday. Jucca founded the National Columbus
Day Committee and opened an office in Washington in 1966. Two
years later, after long and hard lobbying by the crusader
from Buffalo, Congress passed Columbus Day legislation and
the holiday was inaugurated in October, 1971.
Lucca remained a champion of Columbus and Queen Isabel, and
was working on expanding his front-parlor museum at the time
of his recent illness and eventual death. The committee
staged annual or twice-yearly banquets in Buffalo, with Lucca
singling out dozens of local and national figures to honor
their community contributions.
Surviving are his wife, Clara, 98, whom he repeatedly
described at banquets as the ``bundle of sweetness'' who had
made all his work possible through the years; a son, Fran, a
Buffalo-based freelance television producer long associated
with WNED-TV; nine grandchildren; seven step grandchildren;
25 great-grandchildren; and two great-great grandchildren.
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