Early Years
Lombardi was born in Brooklyn to Enrico "Harry" Lombardi and Matilda "Mattie" Izzo on June 11, 1913. Harry's mother and father, Vincenzo and Michelina emigrated from Salerno, Italy. Mattie's father and mother, Anthony and Loretta, emigrated from an area several miles east of Salerno. Henry had three siblings and Matilda had twelve siblings. Vince would be the oldest of five children, Madeleine, Harold, Claire, and Joe. The entire Lombardi and Izzo clan settled in Sheepshead Bay.
Matilda's father, Anthony, opened up a barber shop in Sheepshead Bay prior to the turn of the century. At about the time of Lombardi's birth, Harry, and his brother, Eddie, opened a butcher shop in the Meatpacking District. Throughout the Great Depression, Harry's shop did well and his family prospered. Lombardi grew up in an ethnically diverse, middle-class neighborhood.
Church attendance was mandatory for the Lombardis on Sundays. Mass would be followed with an equally compulsory few hours of dinner with friends, extended family members, and local clergy. He was an altar boy at St. Mark's Catholic Church. Outside of their local neighborhood, the Lombardi children were subject to the rampant racism that existed at the time against Italian immigrants. As a child, Lombardi helped his father at his meat cutting business, but grew to hate it. At the age of 12 he started playing in an uncoached, Sheepshead Bay, organized football league.
Read more about this topic: Vince Lombardi
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)