The kingdom begins to crumble

With Elsa back home in Canada, my parents relocated the Cincinnati, Ohio, my mother’s birthplace. They bought a three-bedroom house in a new suburb on Dailey Rd. It was a nice neighborhood and my parents were considered the richer couple on the block. I am not sure why they chose to go to Ohio, but I am guessing it was the only place my mother felt safe at the time. By June of 1958, my mother was pregnant with my brother, Umberto Jr.

For the next year, my father did not spend a lot of time at home, I am not sure what he did or where he did it. I do know that he had taken a vow to find the killers of my grandfather. What he did to see that vow through, I do not know, nor do I want to know. My brother was born in February of 1959 and for the time being, they lived the life of a typical family in the suburbs. While they still fought a lot, my father was gone enough for my mother to deal with the situation. She became pregnant with me in May of 1960 and I was born in January of 1961.

At that time, from the outside looking in, our family appeared to be the perfect American couple. Nice house, nice cars, nice clothes, and lacking for nothing. That was just one view. On the inside, the story was entirely different. The arguments were an everyday occurrence when my father was home. They fought about everything from money to yard care. I am pretty sure though, money was never a real factor. I remember my father driving a new car every couple of month. I also remember seeing cash in the basement wrapped in aluminum foil. We would vacation in Florida and Atlantic City.

As a coping mechanism, my mother began to drink. I honestly cannot recall a time when alcohol did not play an important part in my mother’s day-to-day life when I was a young child. I also remember the escalation of the arguments. The stress level when my father was at home was thick. At the age of four I remember being in the bathtub and hearing my father scream that my brother and I were not his real children and my mother blocking the bathroom door as he threatened to kill us. My mother’s fear was growing and it would be just a matter of time before everything would collapse.

What I did not understand as a young child is that my mother was also being pressured from another source, federal agents. They harassed her to tell them what my father was doing. Not only was she afraid of my father, but she was beginning to fear for her life and the lives of my brother and I. She quietly decided to seek out an attorney.

Dad's side of the family - The mafia prince

My father grew up in a different environment. As with my mother’s side of the family, his parents immigrated to the U.S., only his father came from Calabria, Italy and his mother from Ontario Canada. Perhaps it’s easier to start with my grandfather. Born and raised in a small fishing village in Sicily. His last name was Anastasia, and immigrated (for lack of a better term) prior to WWI. In 1917, Umberto at 14 years of age jumped ship for fear of being sent back to Sicily. He and his brother swam to a Brooklyn dock in the dead of night, without shoes, and hiding with relatives until he could find work. He worked on the docks and became a longshoreman by the age of 16 but also a member of gang that robbed. He changed his last name to Anastasio to avoid bringing shame upon his family and being identified with them when he was mentioned in newspapers as a gangster, or so the story goes. Eventually, Albert became one of the most well known gangsters in American History. I choose not to go into the details of this history, if you want more information, do a Google search.

In 1937, Albert married Elsa Bargnesi where they settled in New York and then New Jersey. Elsa Bargneti, and Italian woman born in Ontario, Canada, in 1914, entered the United States through Detroit in 1934 and made her way to Brooklyn. She and Anastasia were married two years later, when he was 36 and she was 24. Together they lived the normal life of a Mafia Don and his family. As a family, they attended church, went to movies, and spent quality time together. Elsa bore Albert two children, a son (Albert Jr. , my father), and a daughter, Glorianna.

My grandfather did make an attempt to live an honest life. The beginning of American involvement in the Second World War provided Anastasia with a means to vanish from New York for a while and simultaneously improve his image. He enlisted in the armed forces on May 18, 1942. With his experience on the Brooklyn docks, he proved valuable to the military as an instructor. He was made a technical sergeant and assigned to the education of military longshoremen at Indiana Gap. Pennsylvania. This actually lead to U.S. citizenship.He took advantage of a special act of Congress, which granted speedy naturalization to aliens serving in the American armed forces, to become a citizen on June 29, 1943. He didn't mention any of his previous run-ins with the law on his citizenship application.At the end of the following year, the army discharged him because he was overage. He was nearly 43 at the time.

For the most part, the two children grew up privileged and attended the best schools money could buy. My grand parents built a new, 35-room, 5-bathroom house, valued at more than $75,000 at #75 Bluff Road in Fort Lee. The property was put in the name of Albert and Elsa Bargneti. The hillside mansion overlooked rolling hills and the Hudson River. It was never clear if my father was expected to join the family business, but as the children of first generation Italian immigrants, my father and his sister were expected to marry properly. In those days, it was still common to arrange marriages. From what my mother told me before her death, my father was supposed to marry Anna Maria Albergetti. However, this would never happen when my father and mother met in a New York nightclub.

While I do not have all the details of my Father's life I do know the following:

Completed High School and College
Served in the Military
Met my mother in a New York Nightclub