L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2014 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 11 Dear Readers, June jottings with an Italian connection: Author RoseMarie Terenzio's book "Fairy Tale Interrupted", a memoir describing the unlikely friendship between a blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr., is a book I know my lovely Readers will enjoy. RoseMarie Terenziowas his personal assistant, John's gate- keeper, controlling access to someone whom everyone want- ed time with, his publicist and one of his closest confidantes during the last five years of his life. Funny, moving, and fresh, her memoir is a unique account by the woman who was with him through dating, politics, the paparazzi, and his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Her street smarts, paired with her loyalty, candor and relentless work ethic and made her the trusted insider to America's most famous young man. After John and Carolyn's tragic, untimely deaths on July 16, 1999, RoseMarie's whole world came crashing down around her, along with her hopes for the future. Only now does she feel she can tell her story in a book that is at once a moving tribute and a very real picture of her friend and employer. Many books have sought to capture John F. Kennedy Jr.'s life. None have been as intimate or as honest as Fairy Tale Interrupted, a true portrait of the man behind the icon- patient, protective, occasionally thought- less and self-involved, yet capa- ble of extraordinary generosity and kindness. She reveals what John really had in mind for his political future, how he handled media attention, and the reality of life behind the scenes at George magazine. She also shares how she dealt with the ultra-secretive planning of John and Carolyn's wedding on Cumberland Island- and the heartbreak of their deaths. Fairy Tale Interrupted is a deeply loving story and a fasci- nating adventure, filled with warmth, humor, insight, and five years' worth of unforgettable memories and a few unexpected Italian connections. RoseMarie Terenzio was John F. Kennedy Jr.'s executive assistant from 1994 until his death in 1999. The founder of a public relations and talent man- agement firm in New York City, she served on the board of Reaching Up, a nonprofit orga- nization founded by John F. Kennedy, Jr. in 1998. Visit her websites: www.fairytaleinter- rupted.com and www.rmtprman- agement.com. *** Benevento (meaning Good Winds), a city of some 65,000 "abitanti" always triggers mem- ories of my father, Vincenzo, in his happy host role on Sunday afternoons offering "liquore" to his visiting "paesani". And, since I could ready pretty well, I would note on the bottle label that the content of a couple of his favorite liqueurs had come all the way from across the Atlantic, from Benevento, Italy where it had been produced and bottled at the "Ditta Giuseppe Alberti". I do not drink much "Strega", but for nearly half a century I've always kept a bottle around, just for old times' sake. Benevento, unlike Naples, looks thoroughly landlocked. The city sits on a plateau between two rivers, the Calore and the Sabato, in the middle of a fertile plain with Apennine ranges, covered with snow in winter, all around. One mountain to the southwest, the 4,095-foot Taburno, has suggested the shape of a sleeping beauty (la bella addormentata). Benevento today depends to a large extent on the farms and orchards that surround it and on its food and light manufacturing industries. Torrone packaged in those little fancy square boxes or crunchy nougat sticks, and the yellow, anisette-flavored Strega liqueur are Benevento specialties, popu- lar all over Italy. The liqueur's distillers sponsor one of Italy's major literary prizes, the Premio Strega, which is presti- gious and provides good publici- ty. Strega means "witch", a reminder that sorcery is a recur- rent theme in old Benevento folktales. *** Credit Thomas Jefferson, our third president (1801-1809), for introducing new Italian crops, cheeses and wine to the United States. In April 1787, after a brief stay in Paris, Jefferson had hurried on to the great seaport city of Marseilles, in order to study the port's com- merce. He went down to the docks, hunted up American mer- chant ships, interviewed Marseilles merchants and tried to find out how many American ships had called in four years of peace. From them he learned about the sources of an impor- tant trade in rice funneled through Marseilles to Paris. Two varieties of rice were being sold, small amounts of Carolina rice from the United States, preferred only for serving with milk and sugar, and Piedmont rice, from the high northern plains of Italy, preferred for almost all cooking with meats or oils because fewer grains had been broken. As hon- orary vice president of the South Carolina Society for Promoting and Improving Agriculture, Jefferson wanted to report back to its rice-growing members. He learned that the Italians had developed a special machine for husking the rice without break- ing it. He also studied the culti- vation and species of dried raisin, which he was sure would succeed in South Carolina and spent whole days talking to gar- deners. From them he learned about new varieties of figs, olives, capers, pistachio nuts and almonds. Jefferson arrived in Turin, the capital of the king- dom of Sardinia, which extended from Geneva, Switzerland, to the Mediterranean Sea and included Nice and Sicily, in April 1787. Passing up the opportunity to visit the resplendent palaces around Piazza San Carlo, he vis- ited the museums of antiquities and vineyards in the countryside: From Turin he drove out into the rice country, quickly mak- ing two discoveries. First, the rice region was not the Piedmont, it was farther east, in Lombardy. He struck out on excursions to Moncalieri, Stupinigi, Superga to study the rice fields, which lay on either side of the road. He also made an excursion to Lake Como. He then headed toward Milan, studying the great rice fields between Vercelli and Pavia, stopping to talk to peasants in the fields and interviewing own- ers. He drove on to Novara, where there were fields of rice all along the road. Permitted to see the husking machinery, he later sketched it from memory to illustrate a long memorandum describing rice processing. He made excursions to Rozzano, saw how Parmesan cheese was made, and studied their icehouse to learn how the cheese was stored all year in snow. He toured the dairies that produced the cheese. Here he learned how to make and store ice cream at Monticello. He discovered mas- carpone and an Italian Count showed him how it was made. Jefferson's second important discovery in Italy was that is was not only the husking machine that accounted for the superiority of Piedmont rice. Piedmont was a different species. Despite the fact that taking any of the unhusked rice out of Italy to a place where it could be used to plant a crop in competition to the Piedmont was a crime punish- able by death, Jefferson was determined to take some Piedmont rice seed to his rice grower friend in South Carolina. Young Jefferson, not yet presi- dent of the United States, knew that it was illegal and that the exportation of rice in the husk was prohibited. Bribing a man enough to make the risk worth his while, he took measures with a muleteer to run a couple of sacks across the Apennines to Genoa, where he could take it by boat to Nice. In case the mule- teer was caught, Jefferson decid- ed to "bring off as much as his coat pockets would hold". Weeks later, he shipped the contraband rice off to South Carolina. His pockets stretched as he carried out daring agricul- tural espionage, Jefferson hur- ried on as fast as his carriage would take him over the moun- tain roads of the Appenines to Milan, where he made many sketches of architectural gems that caught his fancy. *** "Dino", born Dino Paul Crocetti on June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio is the only entertainer honored with his own National day in the U.S.A. Many celebrities have only been hon- ored by their home state. Dino helped stop racial segregation in Las Vegas, Nevada by quietly but effectively informing the big "formaggios" at The Sands that unless his friend Sammy Davis Jr. was allowed to eat and sleep at that same hotel, Dino would refuse to perform in the Sands showroom. The bill, sponsored by the House of Representative from Ohio Eileen Krupinski, passed and the Senate passed the bill unanimously. The former senator from Ohio, later Governor Bob Taft, proclaimed June 7th as Dean Martin Day, and it was signed into law. ***

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