Anthony V. Riccio, 69

Anthony V. Riccio, the author of the Italian-American experience in New Haven and beyond, has died at the age of 69.

Click here and here to read two previous Independent articles by Allan Appel about Riccio’s work about New Haven’s community.

Following is a tribute written by New Haven’s Phil Langdon:

I was shocked Sunday to learn that my longtime friend Anthony V. Riccio, author of many books on Italian American life in New Haven, Boston’s North End, and elsewhere, had died that afternoon of a heart attack at his home in Westbrook.

I was introduced to Anthony in the mid-1990s by our mutual friend Tom Fisher, then chief editor of Progressive Architecture magazine. Anthony at that time was a manager in the accounting department of Metro North Railroad in New Haven, and within a few years he left there to become circulation manager of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library. Anthony was supremely interested in people and their stories and their lives, so in his free time he interviewed old Italian Americans, capturing their life trajectories, and eventually had the interviews recorded as transcripts.

He had started his years of interviewing in the late 1970s when he was executive director of a senior center in the North End, an Italian section of Boston that was turning over — seeing elderly Italians pass away and younger generations disperse across the region and beyond. Anthony didn’t call them ​“senior citizens” or ​“seniors”; he called them ​“elders,” a word conveying, to his mind, more of the respect he felt they merited.

Years later, after moving back to his hometown, New Haven, Anthony slowly began using those late-1970s-early 1980s interviews to write his first book, ​“Boston’s North End: Images and Recollections of an Italian-American Neighborhood.” Not only did it present vivid stories from long-term survivors, some of whom had been born in Italy. It also featured gripping photos that Anthony had shot. Years later, for SUNY Press, which became his main publisher, he produced a followup volume, ​“From Italy to Boston’s North End — The Photographs of Anthony V. Riccio.” 

After conducting dozens of interviews in New Haven, he wrote a book about life in his native city, ​“The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories.” (I wrote the book’s epilogue.) ​“Farms, Factories, and Families: Italian American Women of Connecticut” was another in the lengthening series of books that Anthony succeeded in producing even while supervising a staff at Sterling Library. 

He had a bachelor’s from Providence College and earned a master’s from Syracuse University, which in the 1970s sent him to Florence, giving him the opportunity to travel in Italy and shoot photos that would make their way into his books and exhibitions.

Anthony became a frequent public speaker, presenting his stories and photos throughout the northeastern US. I was impressed by his productivity and devotion; recounting the Italian American experience became his mission. He was extremely good at it. 

Within the past few years, he retired from Yale and pursued still more book projects. Many times I got together with him to explore part of a city on foot — the somnolent but topograpically striking old downtown of Norwich, CT, was one of our favorite destinations — or to take our dogs on hikes near Stony Creek or elsewhere along the Shoreline. Anthony endured some health crises in recent years, but seemed to have regained his energy and strength, so it came as a shock to hear Sunday that a heart attack had ended the life of this intense, talented man, who had so many books and photos still in him, waiting to be given to the world. 

Anthony is grieved by, among others, Bunny, his wife of more than 40 years, and his son, Al. He will be missed by many, not least those at Aladdin’s/Crown Street Pizza in New Haven, where he held forth in thousands of lunchtime conversations. For more on Anthony Riccio and his work, click here.