Professional Portfolio

This month, we highlight the Di Silvestro family, two generations of Italian-American lawyers helping people and being leaders of the community. The patriarch of the family, the late Robert F. Di Silvestro, passed on a legacy of respect, integrity and leadership to his two attorney sons, Robert J. Di Silvestro and Stephen P. Di Silvestro. His wife, Theresa, survives him. Dad was Jesuit-educated, attending Saint Ignatius High School and Loyola University for both his undergraduate and law degrees. He began his professional career as an attorney in 1955, assisting others until his death in 2003. During his distinguished career, he …

This month we highlight the distinguished career of John G. Locallo, who in 2007 was the seventh Italian American since 1972 to be elected as third vice president of the 34,000-member Illinois State Bar Association. Like those before him, he worked his way up in automatic ascension and was sworn in as president in June 2011. He succeeds these prominent folks from our community over the last twenty-five years or so, including the late Lawrence X. Pusateri and Michael Coccia (both former Justices of the Illinois Appellate Court), and Ralph Gabric, along with this author, Cheryl Niro and Joseph Bisceglia. …

This month we highlight the distinguished career of a very successful and renowned entrepreneur, a successful landscaping businessman, Frank Mariani. Since he was in first grade, Mariani helped at his grandfather’s nursery — John Fiore & Sons in West :ake Forest, Ill. “The school bus stopped at the garden center, so I would get off the bus and work with my grandmother there.” The Fiores, Mariani’s mother’s family, have been in the nursery business since the late 1800s. Mariani’s father, Vito Mariani Sr., worked there well before carving a niche in high-end residential landscape maintenance in 1958 and starting Mariani …

Dr. Richard F. Marinello credits an Italian-American dentist as his role model and mentor in pursuing his professional goals in the field of dentistry. “My interest in dentistry was brought about by our family dentist, Dr. Joseph Propotti, whose encouragement prompted me to pursue dentistry as a profession.” A Roseland native, he attended and his family were parishioners of St. Anthony of Padua. A Catholic high school guy, Dr. Marinello graduated from Mendel Catholic on the South Side, followed by two years at Loyola University in the Pre-Dental program. The lengthy commute from Roseland to Loyola’s Lake Shore campus via …