D Alesandro

On April 23, 2004, JOSEPH T., SR., youngest son of the late Annunciata and former Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Jr. and devoted father of Joseph T. D'Alesandro, Jr.; dear brother of former Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro, III, Franklin, Nicholas, the Honorable Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi and the late Hector. And he will be sadly missed by devoted relatives including 15 nieces and nephews and many grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Funeral services will be held at the family owned JOSEPH N. ZANNINO JR FUNERAL HOME, 263 S. Conkling Street (at Gough)

After nearly 35 years as a columnist, it's time for me to find some new material. I've written many columns about shad roe, sour beef and peach cake. Same goes for columns about Great-Aunt Cora's spring cleaning rituals and summer trips to Rehoboth. I know they were popular, and I won't stop writing about great Baltimore traditions and the people who taught me about them. But I ran short of ways of telling the old tales. In fact, it's time for a confession. In many of my columns, I repeated sentences and entire passages from past columns that I considered my old standbys.

Nancy D'Alesandro, the matriarch of a Baltimore family that sent loved ones to City Hall and Congress, died Monday at Mercy Medical Center after a heart attack at her lifelong home on Albemarle Street in Little Italy. She was 86.Mrs. D'Alesandro was a traditional Italian wife from the Old Country who nevertheless raised a namesake daughter who now represents California's 5th Congressional District.Her husband, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., was the legendary mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959 and served multiple terms in the House of Representatives.

James Peter Lazzati, who owned a utility-supply company and was the patriarch of a family with 11 children, died Tuesday of pneumonia at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Towson resident was 90. Born and raised in Little Italy, he was a 1935 graduate of Loyola High School and earned a bachelor's degree at Loyola College. As a young man, he boxed at St. Wenceslaus Hall in East Baltimore and in 1981 was inducted in the Maryland Boxing Hall of Fame. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was assigned to the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard as an instructor.

Hector D'Alesandro, a retired court clerk whose father and brother were mayors of Baltimore and whose sister is a congresswoman, died early Saturday of cancer in his late parents' home on Albemarle Street in Little Italy. He was 60.Mr. D'Alesandro was a lifelong resident of Baltimore who worked in the Office of the Clerk of the Baltimore City Circuit Court for 38 years. He retired in 1993.Mr. D'Alesandro may have been best known for his family name, which has become synonymous with politics.

FOR MARYLAND, Rep. Nancy Pelosi's rise to the second-highest office in the Republican-controlled House had a bittersweet quality. On a vote of 118-95, she became Democratic whip at the expense of another talented Marylander, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer. Mr. Hoyer would certainly have had more power to wield on behalf of this state had he won, but his value to the House and to his Southern Maryland district should be undiminished. Although this is the second time he has failed to win this post, he would not have drawn 95 votes without considerable respect from his colleagues.

WITH SOME key statewide political races looking unpredictable this fall, the pundits probably will call some of the races "hard fought" after the elections.But probably no contest will equal what many view as the hardest fought local election in recent history. It was the 1938 Democratic primary election when Tommy D'Alesandro Jr., in his first race for Congress, beat 3rd District incumbent Vincent Palmisano. That campaign had everything -- wild electioneering, premature victory celebrations, calls for recounts.

HE TOOK the morning tugboat out from Thames Street at the foot of Fells Point and started looking when he got near the Key Bridge. He was searching for a great ship, but also for pieces of his history. The ship was the Amerigo Vespucci. His history includes a father who first boarded her nearly 70 years ago. "And then," Tommy D'Alesandro III was saying at week's end, "somebody said, `She's coming,' but I couldn't see her. We were bouncing around in the water. They said she was hidden behind this pillar of the bridge.

In the summer of 1992, in a gesture of high political honor and long family friendship, Nancy D'Alesandro invited William Donald Schaefer to sit at her table for a neighborhood spaghetti dinner at St. Leo's Roman Catholic Church in Little Italy. The governor of Maryland accepted. Then Nancy D'Alesandro changed her mind.Days after the invitation arrived, Schaefer made the colossal political blunder -- to Mrs. D'Alesandro, and to other Democrats -- of endorsing George Bush for president. The earth slipped its axis.

Tommy D'Alesandro III has something he wants to say about the great Baltimore riot of 30 years ago. He wants to clear up misunderstandings about how it affected him, and why he quit as mayor after only one term. And a few other things.D'Alesandro has been thinking a lot about the riot lately. It was sparked by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., 30 years ago today.Baltimore was among the hardest-hit cities in the 1968 violence -- six people died, 700 were hurt and $13.5 million worth of property was destroyed.

Thomas J. O'Donnell Sr., a former reporter for The Sun who later was a longtime aide to Baltimore Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., died Tuesday of heart failure at Easton Memorial Hospital. He was 95 and a resident of Wittman in Talbot County. Mr. O'Donnell was born in South Baltimore and moved with his family to Hampden in 1913. He attended St. Thomas parochial school and City College. "He really had little formal education and was largely self-taught. After his father's death, he left school to help support his family during the Depression," said a son, Frank J. O'Donnell of Kensington.

Franklin D. Roosevelt D'Alesandro, a retired city courthouse clerk and member of the family that includes two former Baltimore mayors and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, died of cancer yesterday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Hamilton resident was 73. Known as Roosie, he was born in Baltimore on March 7, 1933 - shortly after the first inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for whom he was named. He was the second son of Annunciata and Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., who was mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959 and earlier served in the House of Representatives.

Mary Violet "Vi" Piracci, matriarch of a well-known Baltimore family, died of complications of old age Thursday at Brighton Gardens in Towson. The former Baltimore resident was 90. The daughter of a streetcar conductor, she would often regale her grandchildren with stories of riding the rails with her father, Harry Campbell, who would introduce her to the passengers. She attended Baltimore public schools. Mrs. Piracci was the widow of Dominic A. Piracci Sr., a contractor who built many of the area's public buildings, including the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre and the Hirshhorn Museum at the Smithsonian Institution.

Baltimore native Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has received considerable coverage in The Sun - and will continue to be in the spotlight for years to come. The Sun's Washington bureau has written extensively about her legislative agenda and political career, including her prominent role last week in expressing her party's opposition to President Bush's decision to increase the number of American troops in Iraq. Metro reporters have explored in detail her Baltimore political roots - she is the daughter of former Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. and the sister of former Mayor Thomas L. D'Alesandro III - including a Jan. 6 article about her celebratory return to the Little Italy section of the city where she grew up. But no article about Pelosi, a California Democrat, has generated as much reader response as Sun fashion reporter Tanika White's Jan. 4 Today section centerpiece examining the House speaker's fashion sense and personal style.

She grew up at 245 Albemarle St. in Little Italy, the daughter of Baltimore's legendary mayor, Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. Now incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's name will be permanently etched into the streets of her native neighborhood as the city intends to formally rename the 200 block of Albemarle St. "Via Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi." The renaming will formally take place at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Albemarle and Fawn streets. Pelosi will be at the event, and her brother, Thomas J. D'Alesandro III, who also served as mayor of Baltimore, is expected to attend.

Around the narrow streets of Baltimore's Little Italy yesterday, the O'Malley and Ehrlich placards were still hanging proudly in the windows of restaurants and Formstone rowhouses. But no one was talking about the men who duked it out in the race to become Maryland's next governor. Instead, neighbors were buzzing with pride about one of their own, Nancy Pelosi, who is likely to become the nation's first female speaker of the House. They remembered the shy girl who wasn't allowed on a date without one of her five brothers along as chaperone.

On September 11, 2005, SHIRLEYMARIAN (nee Humphreys), beloved wife of Charles E. Grim; devoted mother of David Grim and Jennifer Miller; sister of Richard and Ronald Humphreys and La Verne D'Alesandro. Visiting at the Lassahn Funeral Home, Inc., 7401 Belair Road (Overlea) on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral Services will be held on Saturday at 11 A.M. Interment Parkwood Cemetery.

In Baltimore's Little Italy, where Nancy Pelosi began the political education that propelled her to the peak of power in Washington, there was one person more feared and better-organized than her legendary father, Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. That was her mother, Annunciata, a statuesque woman also known as Nancy, who juggled six children with serving as precinct captain, strategist and all-around enforcer in her husband's storied Democratic machine....

Some of my readers might want to know if you miss Baltimore," I said to Rep. Nancy Pelosi Wednesday night. "And if you say you do, the rest might want to know why." Pelosi laughed at my little joke. (I was joking. A little.) Then she answered. "I love Baltimore," she said. "It's a great city. I'm going to be there this Sunday." Pelosi's recollection of her native town came as she discussed her role as U.S. House of Representatives minority leader at a dinner meeting with seven journalists from the Trotter Group, an organization of black newspaper columnists.