Will Florio’s pride for his Italian heritage served as a vanguard for Italian Americans who brought their generational culture and talents to Valley Stream and etched them deeply into the village’s public life. Florio died on May 3. He was 72. Born in 1951 to two first-generation Italian immigrants, living in Dyker Heights, Florio would not stay in his native Brooklyn for very long.

In a matter of years, Will and his family would leave their Italian neighborhood and make their home in suburban Long Island. Droves of other Italians, Brooklyn-bred or otherwise, were destined for the same future. This movement was part of a larger societal shift for Italian Americans. The currents of anti-Italian and anti-Catholic sentiment that characterized the 1920s and ‘30s was, for the most part, in the rearview mirror.