When Garibaldi Society member Paul Troglia went into the basement office of Club Garibaldi to look at a malfunctioning dehumidifier, he found a poster rolled up on the floor. Upon unrolling the crackled, damp, musty document, he discovered an honor roll of Bay View’s Italian Americans who joined the armed forces at the dawn of World War II.

Many of the names on the roll are still familiar in Bay View: Groppi, Cialdini, Bontempo, Cupertino, Zanchetti. Some names in the lower right hand corner were worn away. “Several of the names were not all readable. They had just molded away with time,” Troglia said. “I thought, ‘This is terrible! This looks like a nice thing.’”