Heres an obituary I wrote for my father, who just died: Alfred Joseph deGrazia passed away at his retirement home in Colmar, France, following a lengthy illness. He was 94 years old. Dr. deGrazia, a well-known NYU professor, political scientist, publisher and writer during the Fifties and Sixties, was born in Chicago (on the South Side) and educated there, as well (The University of Chicago). As he once said, he grew up with Al Capones machine-gunners spraying the streets outside his home. However, he also spent several decades in Princeton, where he kept a house for his wife and family. A veteran of WWII (four full years), he was an Italian-American intelligence officer in Italy, and served under General Patton. He was a first-hand witness to the results of the atrocities at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Poland, and testified against Nazi war criminals in the decades that followed. He served on President Ronald Reagans Council of the Arts and Humanities during the 80s, and assisted the FBI in their anti-corruption efforts at nearly the same time. Though considered a Chicago public school conservative by many, he became increasingly radicalized over time, and wrote readable political primers for grass-roots political movements with the aim of empowering those who might be termed disenfranchised. His work was a wake-up call to the Democratic party who stood to lose should his Republican populist works have become widely known and accepted by the Republican leHeres an obituary I wrote for my father, who just died: Alfred Joseph deGrazia passed away at his retirement home in Colmar, France, following a lengthy illness. He was 94 years old. Dr. deGrazia, a well-known NYU professor, political scientist, publisher and writer during the Fifties and Sixties, was born in Chicago (on the South Side) and educated there, as well (The University of Chicago). As he once said, he grew up with Al Capones machine-gunners spraying the streets outside his home. However, he also spent several decades in Princeton, where he kept a house for his wife and family. A veteran of WWII (four full years), he was an Italian-American intelligence officer in Italy, and served under General Patton. He was a first-hand witness to the results of the atrocities at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Poland, and testified against Nazi war criminals in the decades that followed. He served on President Ronald Reagans Council of the Arts and Humanities during the 80s, and assisted the FBI in their anti-corruption efforts at nearly the same time. Though considered a Chicago public school conservative by many, he became increasingly radicalized over time, and wrote readable political primers for grass-roots political movements with the aim of empowering those who might be termed disenfranchised. His work was a wake-up call to the Democratic party who stood to lose should his Republican populist works have become widely known and accepted by the Republican leadership. Donations in his memory should be sent to the charity of choice, or to the Princeton Welfare Department.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 23:41:07 +0000
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