Tag Archives: Linda Iovino

  Playing the accordion for hospital patients. Working as a crossing guard. Dog sitting for 30 clients. At age 71, Linda Iovino likes to keep busy, never forgetting a quote she read at the bookstore when she was in high school: “It takes 12 muscles to smile and 72 muscles to frown.” While the numbers may or may not be accurate, the underlying message exemplifies how Iovino continues to live her life. “With what is going on in our world today, people are having a hard time getting through the day,” she says. “We all need to do things that …

  Badly wounded in the early days of the War in the Pacific, Neil Iovino nevertheless survived the Bataan Death March and 44 months in jungle prison camps. The youngest of eight children, Neil Philip Iovino was born on the West Side of Chicago on Jan. 3, 1918. His parents, Domenico and Richetta Serpico Iovino, came to Chicago from Scisciano, near Naples. A graduate of Notre Dame Grammar School on Flournoy Street, he attended only one year of high school, but my dad was street smart. When people asked him where he went to school, he would say Notre Dame …