WTI Magazine #44    2014 October, 1
Author : Joe Carella      Translation by:

Ever since the Italian American Museum (IAM) in New York City's Little Italy put the original shipbuilder's model of the SS Giuseppe Verdi on exhibit in May, it has been searching nationally for passengers who might still be alive and who were among the more than 70,000 Italian immigrants it brought to America from 1915 to 1928. At best, the museum's president, Dr. Joseph Scelsa, thought these passengers would likely be in their late 80's or early 90's if they were on the ship during its latter years of operation.

The Museum received a few dozen responses, but only from passengers' children and grandchildren, including one woman from Staten Island who even showed up with her father's Italian passport bearing the official stamp of the Verdi.

But a few weeks ago, the Museum received a call from a gentleman by the name of Salvatore Americus Vicari (known as "Vic"), 93, from Niantic, in the southeast corner of the state Connecticut. Mr. Vicari, who was named after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (for whom America was named), was on the ship--sort of. He was in utero. He jokes by saying he was a "stowaway" with his parents and two sisters, who arrived at Ellis Island on July 14, 1920 from Palermo. He was born later that year.

On Saturday, Sept 20, Mr. Vicari, whose appearance and voice seem much more youthful than his 93 years, boarded a chartered bus in his hometown for a visit to the San Gennaro Festival, which runs along Mulberry St., the core of New York's famed Little Italy. Upon entering the Museum, he could barely hold back tears and his eyes fixed upon the majestic wooden model of the Verdi.

"Vic Vicari exemplifies what it means to be a successful Italian American," said Dr. Scelsa. "In the time I spent with him, I learned so much about him and the struggle of his parents to create a life in America. I was awed and inspired."

Vicari entered the US military as a Navy Seabee in Guam during World War II, about two years after his mother passed away. Ironically, the SS Verdi, the ship that brought his family to the US, was sold to a Japanese company in 1928 by Transatlantica Italiana and renamed the Yamato Maru. In 1943, it was torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines by a US submarine. The ship would have been 100 years old this year.

The past year has not been kind to Vicari. Last November, he lost his only son to multiple sclerosis at age 57. Earlier this year, a sister and his beloved wife Laura passed away on the occasion of the couple's 63rd wedding anniversary. Despite these setbacks, Vicari remains quite active and surrounds himself with his many friends. He keeps himself busy by volunteering at a local soup kitchen, and in August, he spent three weeks in the Campania region visiting his wife's relatives.

Although he has been living in Connecticut for about 30 years, he considers himself a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, having lived in The Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn at various times during his earlier life.

The 10-foot-long original shipbuilder's model is on loan to the museum from New York's Rennert's Gallery through Columbus Day. These models, with their incredible detail and meticulous construction, were often symbols of pride for ships' architects and builders, and also served as promotional tools for its operators.