Once upon a time, in the spring of 1911, a 14-year-old boy embarked on the ship Madonna from Naples, Italy. Per the instructions of his mother Francesca, his destination was Ellis Island, America. Luigi was never to see his siblings, his parents nor his homeland again.

The combination of desperation and dreams, plus the promise that America held for peasant farmers in Calabria, was reason enough to make the hopeful journey. Shortly after his arrival in Pittsburgh, he enrolled in a correspondence school to learn the English language.