Italian American Digest Winter Digest 2018 | Page 6

WINTER 2018
PAGE 6
(cont. from pg. 5)
culinary innovations. But
even though the industry has
changed, Rouses has stayed true
to its Louisiana roots and
commitment to the local com-
munity. “I’m very relaxed,” Donny
says. “I let my team do their job,
and I don’t micromanage them.
I have high expectations, and
as long as we’re achieving that,
everybody’s happy.”
Donny lives in Thibodaux, his
family’s beloved hometown, with
his wife Kara and three children.
CIVIC AWARD
GASPER J. SCHIRO
2019 LAISHF Honorees
HONORARY CHAIRPERSON
VIVENNE M. HAYNE, MD
AMERICAN VETERAN
AWARD
MERRILL FERRARA
G
asper Schiro has given over
30 years of service to New
Orleans as the elected Register
of Conveyances, a record keep-
ing office dating back to French-
colonial Louisiana. He held the
position from 1978-2008.
A native New Orleanian, Gas-
per was born in 1935 to an im-
migrant family from Contessa
Entellina, Sicily. Gasper, and his
father Joseph, served as presi-
dent of the Contessa Entellina
Society, established by Sicilian
immigrants from the region.
Gasper attended St. Rose de
Lima School, graduated from Je-
suit High School, and then went
onto Loyola University where he
earned an undergraduate degree
in history. While at Loyola he was
a member of Alpha Delta Gamma
national Catholic college frater-
nity. He then earned a law degree
from Loyola Law School.
Gasper is well-known across
the city and state as a rigorous
participant of over 100 civic,
political, and religious organza-
tions. He has credited his vitality
and success to “prayers, parties,
parading and politics.”
Italian American Digest
M
errill Ferrara was born in 1917
in New Orleans to an Italian-
born father and a primarily Irish-
American mother. (Besides being
second-generation Irish by three
grandparents, his mother was also
second-generation Italian by one
grandfather, who immigrated from
Rome.) Like many Sicilians who
immigrated to Louisiana in the late
1800s, his family set up a corner
grocery in New Orleans. From
this small store grew a business
that became New Orleans’ oldest
family-owned grocery until it was
destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in
2005, just shy of its 100-year anni-
versary.
Merrill’s grandfather,
Rosolino, and grandmother, Li-
brolia, brought the family to New
Orleans from Alia, Sicily. Rosolino
started the grocery at the Chartres
Street location in 1906.
Merrill’s father, Salvatore, bought
the business from his father in 1923.
Merrill grew up in an apartment
above the family grocery and
attended Warren Easton High
School. In 1940, he bought the
family business from his father,
but in 1943 he left the store in his
father’s hands in order to serve
in the U.S. Army. He was awarded
a Bronze Star in Africa, his first
Silver Star at the Battle of Troina,
Sicily, and a second Silver Star as
well as a Purple Heart on Omaha
Beach in Normandy, France.
After returning home from the
war, Merrill resumed the grocery
business, married Lena Nasca of
Baton Rouge and started a family.
Among his effects is a photograph
of the 1946 annual dinner of the
First Division Field Artillery taken
at the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel in New York. That
trip to New York was his and Le-
na’s honeymoon trip, from which
it was important enough to him to
take off one evening in order to
attend the dinner.
Taking advantage of his veteran
status, he obtained one of the first
licenses to sell fresh meat in a pri-
vate market in New Orleans and
built a reputation for his stores’
meat markets.
Merrill Ferrara died in
Baton Rouge in 2005, at age 88.
DR. JOHN ADRIANI
MEDICAL AWARD
JON D. CELINO, DDS
DDS
A
fter graduating from
Louisiana State University in
1988 he received his dental de-
gree from Louisiana State Univer-
sity School of Dentistry in 1992.
He has attended lectures at
most of the major dental
meetings throughout the country:
American Academy of Cosmetic
Dentistry (San Diego and New
Orleans), Hinman Dental Meeting,
Greater New York Dental Meeting,
American Dental Association
Annual Sessions (Chicago,
Orlando, Las Vegas, and San
Francisco), Annual New Orleans
Dental Conferences, Discus
Dental Extravaganza (Las Vegas),
Chicago Mid-Winter Dental