After guarding the Korean DMZ for most of his tour of duty in the Army during the Vietnam War, Luco Clarizio watched over fallen soldiers returning to the States, escorting their caskets from the airport to the cemetery.

The oldest of two sons born to Dominick and Mary (Viola) Clarizio, Luco was brought into this world by his maternal grandmother in a fourth-floor walk-up on Loomis Street in Little Italy. “I was born blue, and my grandma put me in the oven,” he says. His parents were born in Chicago, and his grandparents emigrated from Calabria and Bari.