Profiles

You’ve got answers? Frank DiPiero has questions: lots of them. An affable and curious guy by nature, DiPiero has turned pride in his Italian-American identity into a shared Internet radio experience with a light-hearted name: “Keepin’ It Real with Frankie D.” For him, it marks another step in his effort to promote education, culture and awareness in the Italian community. “I started ‘Keepin’ It Real with Frankie D.’ in 2013,” says DiPiero, whose father traces his roots to Bugnara in Abruzzo and his mother to Sant’Ambrogio in Sicily. As for the name, “That’s what everyone called me when I was …

    Entrepreneurial roots run deep within event planner Michelle Durpetti. The daughter of Tony and Marion Durpetti, owners of Chicago’s legendary Gene & Georgetti restaurant, and granddaughter of the restaurant’s late cofounder Gene Michelotti, she boasts an impressive hospitality industry pedigree. Never one to rest on her family’s laurels, she co-founded McGowan Durpetti & Associates, later flying solo with Michelle Durpetti Events, a full-service wedding and event production company. Since the inception of Michelle Durpetti Events in 2008, she has planned and produced over 300 weddings and special events, including such celebrity-studded festivities as Chicago Gateway Green’s annual Green …

  Where other Chicago commuters see filthy expressway viaducts or bleak train station walls — that is, if they see them at all — muralist Tony Passero envisions possibilities: outsized felines with piano-key teeth; cubist creatures of red and orange in surrealistic tango; kaleidoscopic owls orbited by Technicolor eggs. Passero’s public artwork enthralls enough to make drivers screech in their tracks to do a double take. Yet to properly assess his work means leaving your assumptions at the nearest exit ramp. For starters, he’s self-taught. And bottom line, the majority of his city mural work is self-funded, with Passero also …

DePaul University has selected a nationally recognized leader in legal education as dean for the College of Law. Jennifer Rosato Perea, an accomplished scholar in family law, bioethics and civil procedure, will join DePaul July 1. When Rosato Perea became dean of the Northern Illinois University College of Law in July 2009, she also became the first Italian-American female dean of any law school in the country. It should be mentioned that she also treasures her Latino ancestry on her mother’s side. Rosato Perea came to NIU from Drexel University in Philadelphia, where she was part of the administrative team …

With his exhibit “Over 50,” which runs through July 10 at Oak Park’s Narrow Gallery, Robert M. Proce pays tribute to the dignity and grace of an older generation. Having worked so long in the painter’s medium, Proce knows well both his craft and the age group he depicts. “The ages range from 50 to 102,” says Proce, 75, whose parents hailed from Calabria and Pomarico. “Actually, I’ve completed 65 portraits to date, and hope to reach 100 by sometime next year.” It’s a prolific level of creativity that would put artists half his age to shame; “Because of space …

  The view out of the Kemper Building at 1 E. Wacker Drive is magnificent, sprawling out to an eagle’s view of the Chicago River and the Loop. But when Deanna Cairo Arthur, now an associate at Goldberg Weisman & Cairo Ltd., would visit her father’s office as a child, it wasn’t the window that drew her attention. It was a desk chair. “I just remember being little and being in my dad’s office, sitting in his chair and always hoping someday it would be my chair,” she says. Her father is Louis C. “Lou” Cairo, senior partner at Illinois’ …

With a great uncle, two uncles and a father serving in World War II, Diana Fecarotta had a tough act to follow. But because of her family’s example, Fecarotta went on to distinguish herself in service to her nation: serving in the Marines from 1966 to 1968 and the Air Force Reserve from 1972 to 1975. Yet her contributions are far from over. Fecarotta is now the first woman to serve as a commander of an Italian American War Veterans post, taking the lead at the IAWV Guido Belmonte Post #4 after a quarter of a century as a member. …

This month we highlight the distinguished career of architect John Vinci. Subjects for this column come to the attention of the author in various ways. An article in the Chicago Tribune about the controversial three sets of copper-clad wood exterior doors at the cost of nearly $670,000 in our state capitol brought this month’s subject to our attention — John Vinci. The article read as follows: “Revenge is sweet, but winning design awards isn’t bad either. Just ask the architects of the much-maligned restoration of the Illinois Capitol’s west wing. “A year ago, citing the state’s pension funding crisis, Gov. …

Frank Fagiano, chief of the Elmwood Park Police Department, has been on the job since 1993. He has solved many crimes, and brought countless criminals to justice. But when asked if any of those crimes stand out in his mind, the answer comes easily. Fagiano instantly recalls a particular crime in 1998, when he was a detective. A young woman was working at a Burger King by herself when a man wearing a mask came into the fast food restaurant, robbed it, and then sexually abused her. Fagiano and another detective found her, handcuffed and distraught. “Within five hours of the …

The general public recognizes thoroughbred racing because of the big-name Triple Crown races: the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes. But the Somone brothers, Tony and Michael, instead gravitated to harness racing as teens. They grew up close to Maywood Park, which with its sister track in Crete, Balmoral Park, is a hub of Illinois standardbred harness racing. “When I was about 16, I went to the harness races with my friends,” recalls Michael, assistant vice president at Amalgamated Bank of Chicago. (He’s also been vice president of the Italian-American Labor Council for the past eight years.) “They (his older …