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But a few weeks ago, the Museum received a call from a gentleman by the name of Salvatore Americus Vicari (known as “Vic”), 93, from Niantic, in the southeast corner of the state Connecticut. Mr. Vicari, who was named after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (for whom America was named), was on the ship--sort of. He was in utero. He jokes by saying he was a “stowaway” with his parents and two sisters, who arrived at Ellis Island on July 14, 1920 from Palermo. He was born later that year.
On Saturday, Sept 20, Mr. Vicari, whose appearance and voice seem much more youthful than his 93 years, boarded a chartered bus in his hometown for a visit to the San Gennaro Festival, which runs along Mulberry St., the core of New York’s famed Little Italy. Upon entering the Museum, he could barely hold back tears and his eyes fixed upon the majestic wooden model of the Verdi.
“Vic Vicari exemplifies what it means to be a successful Italian American,” said Dr. Scelsa. “In the time I spent with him, I learned so much about him and the struggle of his parents to create a life in America. I was awed and inspired.”
Vicari entered the US military as a Navy Seabee in Guam during World War II, about two years after his mother passed away. Ironically, the SS Verdi, the ship that brought his family to the US, was sold to a Japanese company in 1928 by Transatlantica Italiana and renamed the Yamato Maru. In 1943, it was torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines by a US submarine. The ship would have been 100 years old this year.