Profiles

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 …