AMHS is pleased to start our new year of programs for 2023 with a talk by Nobel Laureate Dr. John C. Mather on January 29, 2023, at Casa Italiana. Dr. Mather will tell us about his exciting work on the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest optical telescope in outer space.

The program is co-sponsored by the Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center and the Casa Italiana Language School. The talk was facilitated by AMHS member Joe Novello, who was formerly a colleague of Dr. Mather at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Before his talk, a delicious lunch will be catered by Fontina Grille.

Dr. Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. In 2007, Time magazine listed Dr. Mather among the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Dr. Mather is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) with George Smoot. That work helped cement the Big Bang theory of the Universe. Dr. Mather is also the senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, a space telescope launched on December 25, 2021.

AMHS members may recall that Dr. Mather gave us a talk in March 2014 and described what it was like to receive the phone call that changed his life and then to be awarded the Nobel Prize at a ceremony in Sweden attended by the Swedish King. 

During that talk, Dr. Mather told us that Italy is one of his favorite places to visit, and he noted that there is a town in Italy that sends flowers to the Nobel Prize ceremony every year (the Ligurian town of San Remo, where Alfred Nobel spent the last five years of his life.) When he was eight years old, he said he received a biography of Galileo from his parents, and from that time on, Galileo became one of his heroes.

During his upcoming talk on January 29, Dr. Mather will tell us about his work on the James Webb Space Telescope, for which NASA led the design and development and partnered with two main agencies — the European Space Agency (of which Italy is a member) and the Canadian Space Agency. 

Recently, the James Webb Space Telescope captured a unique perspective of the Universe, including never-before-seen galaxies described as glittering like diamonds in the cosmos. One research astronomer commented, “the stunning image quality of Webb is truly out of this world.” We look forward to hearing about Dr. Mather’s work on this exciting project.

At a special AMHS luncheon on Sunday, February 12, 2023, we will hear from Chad T. Sarchio who served as the 50th president of the D.C. Bar from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. He was the third Italian-American lawyer to serve in that post since the D.C. Bar was established in 1972, and only the second government lawyer to do so. Chad will talk about his career and growing up Italian. 

The luncheon will be held in the Il Canale Restaurant, 1063 31st St., N.W., Washington, D.C., at 1:30 p.m. Our guest will speak after the lunch is served. A question-and-answer period will follow. For reservations, please email Nancy De Santi at ndesanti7@gmail.com and Sonny Scafetta at joseph.scafetta.jr@gmail.com. Please note that this is not one of the Society’s general meetings. No prepayment is required; attendees will order and be responsible for their own meals at the restaurant.

Chad grew up in New Jersey, about a half hour northeast of New York City. His father worked for the state of New Jersey in human resources and his mother was a high school English teacher. During elementary and high school, he was a member of the Boy Scouts and rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. 

After graduating from high school, he received a scholarship from the National Italian-American Foundation (NIAF) and entered the Public Policy Program at Duke University in North Carolina. He also received a U.S. Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship. After earning his undergraduate degree and receiving his commission as a second lieutenant, he went to law school at George Washington University.

After obtaining his law degree, he served on active duty in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps for four years and stayed in the U.S. Army Reserves for 20 more years. His first assignment was at Fort Bragg, N.C., working in legal assistance and claims positions. Then, in the Fall of 1997, he began a six-month deployment to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a senior foreign claims commissioner. He completed his active service as military counsel to the Army’s Auditor General. During his service, he married another lawyer, the former Christina Guerola, with whom he has two children. 

After leaving active duty, he served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. for more than six years, prosecuting a wide range of violent and white-collar crimes. In the Fall of 2005, he worked on a Senate Select Committee investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina, which had hit the Gulf Coast. As a reservist, he later taught at the U.S. Army JAG Corps School. In the Spring of 2016, he became a military judge. He retired from the U.S. Army and its trial bench as a lieutenant colonel in 2019.

He has worked as an associate chief counsel for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) since 2006 and has lectured in trial and appellate advocacy at George Washington University for more than 20 years. During his spare time, he repairs and maintains classic cars.

The Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise National Park, until recently known just as the Abruzzo National Park, is an Italian national park with headquarters in the town of Pescasseroli (population 2,206 in the 2015 census) in the province of L’Aquila in the region of Abruzzo. It is the oldest national park in the Apennine mountains and the second oldest in Italy.

The idea for the creation of the park came from Erminio Sipari (1879-1968), a member of the Italian Parliament from the province of Frosinone in the region of Lazio. During October and November 1921, the community of Opi in the province of L’Aquila leased five square kilometers of land to a private federation to protect its flora and fauna. Sipari established an organization in Rome to administer the reserve in September 1922. The territory of the park was expanded into adjacent communities until it covered 120 square kilometers in January 1923 when the national park was established by law with Sipari recognized as its founder and its chairman. He further expanded the park to 300 square kilometers over the next ten years until 1933 when the fascist government of Benito Mussolini repealed the legal protections of the park in order to log the ancient trees, pave roads connecting villages, and open a ski resort.

In 1950, the park was re-established and by 1976 was expanded to 400 square kilometers into neighboring Lazio and Molise. Today, the park encompasses 500 square kilometers, i.e., 192 square miles, and includes 25 municipalities: 12 in the province of L’Aquila in Abruzzo; eight in the province of Frosinone in Lazio; and five in the province of Isernia in Molise. As a result of this expansion, to 100 times its original size, the name of the Abruzzo National Park was changed to its current name.

The highest mountain within the park is Petroso at 7,379 feet in a part of the Apennine range known as the Monti della Meta. Four rivers rise in the park of which the largest is the Sangro that empties into the Adriatic Sea east of the park. There are also eight large lakes in the park, of which the largest is the artificial Barrea. 

The flora in the park includes more than 2,000 plant species, without including lichens, algae, and fungi. The most well-known flower in the park is the rare lady’s slipper, a yellow and black orchid. The beech tree covers about 60% of the wooded area in the park. The other 40% is covered by the silver birch, the black pine, and the mountain pine.

Six types of raptors inhabit the park, most notably being the golden eagle, which has been reduced to only six breeding couples at the last count. Three types of owls haunt the night sky: the little owl, the barn owl, and the tawny owl. Woodland birds include the European green woodpecker and the rare white-backed woodpecker. Cliffs harbor the red-billed chough and the alpine chough. Barren mountain tops are inhabited by the rock partridge and the white-winged snow finch. Streams provide habitat for the grey wagtail and the white-throated dipper.

The main attractions of the park are the fauna, in particular, the Marsican brown bear and the Italian wolf. Due to poaching, the bear population has been reduced to only about 30 and the wolf population is about 40. In thicker areas of the forests, red deer, roe deer, and wild boars browse in greater numbers. Other reclusive inhabitants of the forests include the European pole cat, Eurasian badger, Eurasian otter, the pine marten, and the beech marten. The Etruscan pygmy shrew is the smallest known extant mammal by mass, weighing only about .063 ounce, with a body length of about 1.6 inches, excluding the tail. High above the forest, a species of goat-antelope known as the Abruzzo chamois and wild sheep known as mouflon live in small groups. Animals easier to see are the emerald toad, the red fox, the European hare, the least weasel, the European mole, the western European hedgehog, the garden dormouse, the red squirrel, the snow vole, and the European wild cat. Found only in the Molise part of the park is the Italian Mediterranean water buffalo which numbered 745 in the last count made in 2013.

If you are driving from Rome to your ancestral family home in either Abruzzo or Molise, you may want to stop in the park along the way to admire the mountains, rivers, lakes, flora, and fauna.

Sources, all accessed July 12, 2022:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abruzzo,_Lazio_and_Molise_National_Park
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescasseroli
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erminio_Sipari
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrusican_shrew
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamois
• https://animalia.bio/mouflon
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Mediterranean_buffalo

The flood barrier system in Venice had its first real “stress test” on November 22, 2022, when all 78 of the MOSE dams were raised to save the Italian city from flooding. But this successful project was developed over a period of years, and with the assistance of former AMHS President Dick DiBuono and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

With sea waters reaching more than 1.7 meters above the normal level, an estimated 82 percent of the canal city’s footpaths would have been under water without the protective floodgates.

It was the third-highest water level since records began in 1923, according to Italian news reports, after the devastating “acque alte” of November 4, 1966 (1.94 meters) and November 12, 2019 (1.87 meters). First planned in 1984, the multi-billion-euro MOSE project was operated for the first time in October 2020. It is designed to protect Venice from tides of up to three meters.

The project’s official title is Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MOSE) but it also carries a reference to the biblical prophet Moses who parted the waters of the Red Sea.

Dick DiBuono noted that back in the 1990s, a group of engineers from Italy, who were working on the planning and design of these barriers in Venice, came to Washington to visit with him and some of his colleagues at the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers where he was senior hydraulic engineer and water control manager.

He explained that they did so because of his agency’s experience with the design, construction and operation of several hurricane barriers along the coastline of the New England states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. He noted that the Italian engineers particularly liked the method chosen for the Stamford, Connecticut, barrier and used that concept in their design.

Dick commented: “Roads, aqueducts, ports, harbors, fortifications — our Roman ancestors were the forefathers of today’s civil engineering profession. They were builders, not destroyers, and their genes, apparently having been passed down the generations, must be why I chose to be one.”

He added that in listing the major Roman roads on the Italian peninsula, the list should include Via Flaminia, the major road/route north out of Rome to the Adriatic Sea where it terminates in the center of the city of Fano, where some of his relatives live. Its construction was ordered by Caesar Augustus, he noted, and this road is still in use today. It passes by Spoleto on its way to Fano. Dick said he has driven it two or three times, adding that one Roman-built bridge is still used on that road.

Approximately 60 AMHS members and guests came to Casa Italiana on November 20, 2022, to sample the craft of Washington Winemaker John Paul Maye. Attendees also enjoyed a delicious lunch catered by the always popular Three Brothers Restaurant.

The November meeting featured a short business session at which AMHS members formally elected three new members of the Board of Directors. Assuming office in January will be Julie Finigan Dal Forno, John Iazzetti and Teresa Margaret Talierco. We thank the outgoing board members, John Dunkle, Chris Renneker and Joseph “Sonny” Scafetta, Jr., for their service during the past three years.

AMHS President Ray LaVerghetta thanked his predecessor, Maria D’Andrea-Yothers, for her tireless service over many years to the Society of which her parents, Lucio and Edvige D’Andrea, were founding members. Maria stepped down from her current responsibilities as of the end of 2022, but she will remain an active member as she looks forward to her retirement in 2024 and a subsequent move away from the area. AMHS Vice Presidents Nancy DeSanti and Lynn Sorbara added their thanks and appreciation.  

Our thanks go to Jim Gearing of Washington Winemakers, and all those who organized the lunch, including Lynn Sorbara, Frank Bonsiero, and Mark Lino. And a big thanks to all those who bought donated raffle prizes and bought tickets for the raffle.