Honor Thy Father Part 26

In 2007, however, I received a call from the newly appointed managing editor of Newsweek Newsweek, Daniel Klaidman, who, after telling me that he had recently reread Honor Thy Father Honor Thy Father, wondered if I would do an updated piece for his magazine explaining how Bill and Rosalie's four children were getting along these days. I immediately telephoned Bill and Rosalie to see if they would arrange a family reunion in Tucson for my benefit, and, after a date had been agreed to in the middle of May, I flew to Tucson to be reintroduced to the four younger Bonannos, whom I had not seen in several years.

The oldest of Rosalie and Bill's three sons, Charles, was now forty-nine. He was a six-foot-two, 240-pound bachelor employed as an interstate truck driver. He told me that he carried all types of cargo coast-to-coast in an eighteen-wheel vehicle in which he also stored his golf clubs, his fis.h.i.+ng tackle, and clothing appropriate for wearing on those rare occasions when he took women to dinner in places more refined than the roadside diners and fast-food drive-ins that he frequented when alone.

After serving his two-year prison term during the 1980s, he remained out of trouble during the following decade while working in a Costco auto-repair shop in Phoenix, and then he quit to become a long-distance trucker. But his surname still shadowed him. One day, after being a.s.signed to deliver merchandise from Fresno to British Columbia, he informed the dispatcher that he was not carrying a pa.s.sport. "Oh, don't worry," came the reply, "you won't need it." At the Canadian border, after submitting his driver's license to a customs official who checked his credentials though a computer, the official turned to him and asked: "Are you in any way related to either Joseph Bonanno or Bill Bonanno?" "They're my grandfather and father," Charles answered, and the response was: "Well, then you're on the nonentry list."

Charles Bonanno returned across the border and, after notifying the dispatcher, he lived in his truck for three days until a second driver arrived with a packed van for him to deliver within the United States while the newly arrived driver took over Charles's van and proceeded with it into Canada.

Rosalie and Bill's second son, Dr. Joseph Bonanno, often bedridden from acute asthma as a schoolboy, made use of his isolation by preparing himself academically for his future acceptance to college and medical school. Unlike the frail youth he had been, Dr. Bonanno was now a robust 46-year-old individual who stood nearly six foot two, weighted 230 pounds, and, physically favoring his father, had deep-set brown eyes, dark hair, and broad shoulders. Since his marriage in 1986, and during the birth of three sons now in their teens, Joseph had practiced pediatrics at a hospital near his home in Phoenix. While treating his young patients and listening to their complaints, he was invariably reminded of how he had felt as an ailing youngster decades before, and he often came to their bedside attired in clothing that he hoped would cheer them up-his s.h.i.+rts and even his neckties depicting a cast of well-known characters from children's literature and Disney cartoons.

He told me that after he had been affiliated with the Phoenix hospital for a year or more, he was approached one day by a senior medical colleague who, after complimenting him on his work, said: "You know, we almost didn't accept you because of your name."

"Well," I commented, "I guess you've overcome your surname."

"I've overcome it," said Dr. Bonanno, "but I didn't escape it."

The third Bonanno son, Salvatore, was now a high-strung and muscular man of forty-four who stood five-foot-eleven-inches tall, weighed 250 pounds, wore a goatee, and had slightly graying neatly-trimmed brown hair. He resided in Scottsdale, Arizona, working as a projects manager with a computer firm, and had been twice married, most recently in 2003. He had four children, two with each wife. His first-born child was now an 18-year-old woman attending college in Oregon, his next a teenaged boy in high school, and his last two a son and daughter of preschool age. Salvatore; his present wife, Christine; and the four children were all at the Bonanno family reunion in Tucson, and, since the gathering took place near the end of the final episode of the long-running television series The Sopranos The Sopranos, I asked Salvatore and the others what they thought of this fictional representation of family life within the Mafia.

Only Salvatore and his brother the doctor claimed to be regular watchers, if not admirers, of the show; and this admission led Salvatore to remind me of how furious he had become during the previous year when The Arizona Republic The Arizona Republic published an article comparing the program's main character, Tony Soprano, to his late grandfather Joseph Bonanno. Tony Soprano as depicted in the show was a vulgar lowlife, Salvatore insisted, lacking any of the courtly shrewdness and dignified demeanor of his grandfather. Salvatore went on to say that when the story was published he was working as a senior projects manager with a company under contract to install security systems within a casino located on an Indian reservation in Arizona. On the day the article appeared, Salvatore said, his boss informed him that he was being s.h.i.+fted from the casino job to another a.s.signment because someone who had read the article believed that it was bad public relations for a casino to be serviced by a member of the Bonanno family. published an article comparing the program's main character, Tony Soprano, to his late grandfather Joseph Bonanno. Tony Soprano as depicted in the show was a vulgar lowlife, Salvatore insisted, lacking any of the courtly shrewdness and dignified demeanor of his grandfather. Salvatore went on to say that when the story was published he was working as a senior projects manager with a company under contract to install security systems within a casino located on an Indian reservation in Arizona. On the day the article appeared, Salvatore said, his boss informed him that he was being s.h.i.+fted from the casino job to another a.s.signment because someone who had read the article believed that it was bad public relations for a casino to be serviced by a member of the Bonanno family.

Salvatore resigned immediately from his ninety-thousand-dollar-a-year position, and would not reconsider his decision even after his employer had offered him a raise.

Salvatore's sister, Felippa, youngest of Rosalie and Bill's four children, was perhaps the only member of the family who seemed not to have experienced personal humiliations as a consequence of having the surname Bonanno. As a girl she had a somewhat sheltered existence, attending ma.s.s regularly with her mother and devoting herself as she got older to Catholic teachings of the most binding belief: she was decidedly pro-life. She and her husband, whom she met when she was twenty and was operating a day-care center in a town near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, had raised ten children together, and, at the age of forty-two, Felippa was expecting another child a month after the reunion. She told me the job she most enjoyed as a schoolgirl in San Jose was babysitting.

Never at odds with her faith, she attended ma.s.s and received communion every day, she said, adding that she and her husband prayed together with the children at home and as a family ventured out in the community to partic.i.p.ate in charitable and humanitarian activities. Although she was no longer known as a Bonanno since taking her husband's name in marriage, she had always been guided by her mother's often repeated warning to her and to her three brothers when they were growing up in San Jose: "You are not ordinary children. You have to try twice as hard to be good. You have to be better than everybody else. The world won't give you a second chance because of your name."

Rosalie and Bill's four children, with the exception of the bachelor Charles, not only had children of their own (seventeen in total at the time of my visit in May 2007) but a few grandchildren as well. And again, except for Charles, none of the Bonanno offspring had ever been, as their father often referred to it, "a guest of the government."

At the conclusion of the family reunion, Rosalie and Bill escorted their children outside the house and onto a gra.s.sy field across the street to pose for the Newsweek Newsweek photographer. They arranged themselves in the same order they had posed forty years before in a family snapshot that I had obtained in 1970 for use in photographer. They arranged themselves in the same order they had posed forty years before in a family snapshot that I had obtained in 1970 for use in Honor Thy Father Honor Thy Father. This old photo, together with the one taken at the reunion, ill.u.s.trated my article that appeared in the June 25, 2007 issue of Newsweek Newsweek.

I saw to it that copies of the recently posed photo were mailed to members of the Bonanno family, and in the months that followed I called Tucson on two or three occasions to chat with Bill Bonanno-the last time in late December to thank him for the Christmas card that he and Rosalie had sent, and also for his accompanying note in which he expressed satisfaction in our having known one another for more than forty years. He said that he and Rosalie were planning to be in New York sometime after the holidays-he would let me know when-but first they would be driving up to northern California to spend time with their daughter and her husband, adding that the couple's hillside home fortunately was large enough to accommodate their ten resident children and and had private quarters for the children's grandparents. had private quarters for the children's grandparents.

Late in the afternoon of January 2, 2008, I received a call in New York from Dr. Joseph Bonanno's wife, Kathleen, in Phoenix. She said that Bill Bonanno had died suddenly of a heart attack in the early morning of New Year's Day. As I listened in stunned silence and sadness she explained that he had felt well enough on New Year's Eve to dine with Rosalie and a few friends in Tucson, then he had gone to bed and did not wake up. He was seventy-five. Kathleen said that the funeral ma.s.s would be held on January 7 at the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Tucson.

I flew to Tucson a day early in order to attend the evening viewing, and, on the following morning, I joined hundreds of mourners in pews crowded with people from Arizona as well as New York, California, other parts of the country, and also Canada. Those in attendance belonging to the Bonannos' immediate and extended family amounted to nearly one hundred people. Some of the grandchildren and the cousins served as gift bearers and pallbearers. Television cameras were posted outside the church, and extra police were added to oversee the arrival of lines of limousines at the curb and the steady stream of cars pulling into the church's parking lot.

Lengthy obituaries and articles about the funeral appeared in national newspapers and weekly magazines. The New York Times The New York Times's correspondent, seated with other reporters in the rear of the church, noted in the next day's edition: "There were several men in impeccable black suits, and some women wore fur coats on a chilly, bl.u.s.tery day.... Mr. Bonanno's widow, Rosalie, walked behind the casket wearing a black lace veil to cover her face." The Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times printed above its obituary a subhead quoting Bill Bonanno: "When I got up in the morning, my goal was to live to sunset. And when sunset came, my second goal was to live to sunrise." printed above its obituary a subhead quoting Bill Bonanno: "When I got up in the morning, my goal was to live to sunset. And when sunset came, my second goal was to live to sunrise."

Dr. Joseph Bonanno, who delivered one of the eulogies from a rostrum near the altar, began his remarks with: "Well, Dad, you did it again. You managed to get all of us to drop everything in our lives and come together to be with you today." After explaining that the name Bonanno means "Happy New Year" in Italian, he said, "It is probably fitting that Dad was taken from us on New Year's Day. I will think of him always on this day for the rest of my life." He then concluded: "I don't know why he had to go so soon. All I can say is that Grandpa probably called and as usual Dad came running."

-Gay Talese 2009.

About the Author.

GAY TALESE is a bestselling author who has written eleven books and has contributed to the New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker New York Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's Harper's, among other national publications. He lives in New York City.

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Books by Gay Talese

A WRITER'S LIFE (2006)

THE GAY TALESE READER (2003).

THE BRIDGE.

(REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION, 2003).

THE LITERATURE OF REALITY.

(WITH BARBARA LOUNSBERRY, 1996).

UNTO THE SONS (1992).

THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE (1980)

HONOR THY FATHER (1971).

FAME AND OBSCURITY (1970).

THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER (1969).

THE OVERREACHERS (1965).

THE BRIDGE (1964).

NEW YORK-A SEREN DIPITER'S JOURNEY (1961)