St. John's Middle Village
The men and women are interred at the St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens County, New York.
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Emile Ardolino was born on 9 May 1943 in Maspeth, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for Dirty Dancing (1987), Great Performances: Dance in America (1976) and He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983). He died on 20 November 1993 in Bel Air, California, USA.Plot: Family plot- Angelo Siciliano was born in Acri, Italy, and emigrated to the US at age 11 with his family, which settled in Brooklyn, NY. He had always been a frail and sickly child, often picked on by neighborhood kids. One night when he was 15 he was on his way home when he was jumped and severely beaten by a neighborhood bully. Angered and depressed over the incident and feeling powerless because of his weak condition, he brooded over it until one day he caught a look at a statue of the Greek hero Hercules, which he had never seen before. Impressed with the statue's physique, he started attending a local gym to exercise and lift weights in order to make his body stronger. However, he discovered that the more weights he lifted, the more tired he became and the more his muscles and body hurt. While visiting the local zoo one day, he became fascinated with a lion lying in his cage. He wondered how the animal maintained such a powerful, muscular physique while cooped up with virtually no exercise. Then he saw the animal get up and stretch its body. Watching it pit one muscle against the other gave Angelo the idea for a process that was to change the world of bodybuilding forever: "Dynamic Tension".
Employing and refining the principles he observed in the lion--nowadays called "isometrics"--he developed a finely sculpted body, and in 1922 won a national contest to find "The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man" run by publisher and fitness enthusiast Bernarr Macfadden. Someone told Angelo that he looked a lot like the statue of Atlas outside a local bank. It was then that he decided to change his name from Angelo Siciliano to Charles Atlas.
Through a friend he got a job as a "life" model, where artists would pay to draw his body while he posed. He was earning the princely (for the time) sum of $100 a week, and he got the idea that if people would pay money to see him, they would probably pay even more money if he would show them how they could look like him. He began a correspondence course in bodybuilding using his techniques. The business was mildly successful until a friend who worked in an advertising firm gave him some ideas on how to promote his business. Atlas began performing such stunts as pulling six cars chained together for a half-mile, and he once towed a 72-ton railroad engine more than 100 feet along the tracks with a rope. Those kinds of things got him a lot of press coverage, which in turn caused his business to grow exponentially. However, his most famous tactic was the ads that he would run in comic books (whose readership was almost exclusively young teenage males, a prime market for his course) showing a puny man at a beach having his girlfriend taken away by a stronger bully who proceeds to kick sand in his face. Angered and humiliated, the young man sends away for the Charles Atlas course, and in the next panel he's musclebound, buff and goes back to the bully, kicks sand in HIS face and gets his girl back. The ad worked beyond his wildest dreams, and brought him millions of customers from all over the world.
In addition to his bodybuilding course, Atlas also started a string of successful gyms. He practiced what he preached, and even into his 60s was working out in a gym every day, his body sculpted and toned to a degree that put to shame many men half his age.
Charles Atlas died in 1972 at age 79. - Actor
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James Barton was born on 1 November 1890 in Gloucester City, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950) and His Family Tree (1935). He was married to Kathryn M. Mullin and Ottilie Regina Kleinert. He died on 19 February 1962 in Mineola, Long Island, New York, USA.Plot: Section 12 - Row X - Plot 92- Frank Christi was born on 16 July 1929 in New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Terminal Island (1973), Toma (1973) and The Don Is Dead (1973). He died on 9 July 1982 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Geraldine A. Ferraro was born on 26 August 1935 in Newburgh, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Contact (1997), Murphy Brown (1988) and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995). She was married to John Anthony Zaccaro. She died on 26 March 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
- Born in Sicily, Carlo Gambino came from a family that had been involved in the Mafia for centuries. Although he was thin and somewhat frail-looking, he was also single-minded, ruthless and tough as nails and made a name for himself as an enforcer in local Mafia circles before he was out of his teens. In fact, he was made a full member of the organization on his 19th birthday. Shortly afterward he left Sicily for New York, where he already had family connections, the Castellanos. He went to work for them in their bootlegging business. He started out as a truck driver, worked his way up the ladder and moved over to the family of Giuseppe Masseria, aka "Joe the Boss", an old-time gangster who at the time was engaged in a war with another old-timer (collectively - and derisively - known by the younger hoods as "Mustache Petes") named Salvatore Maranzano. Gambino became friendly with another Masseria hood named Lucky Luciano, whose ambitions were to get rid of both "Mustache Petes". In 1931 Masseria was assassinated in a restaurant while meeting with Luciano, and Luciano hooked up with the Maranzano gang. Soon, however, Maranzano himself was dead, having been murdered in 1931 on orders from Luciano, leaving him the #1 boss in New York. Luciano divided up New York among five Mafia families, and Gambino was assigned as second in command to the Brooklyn family run by Vincent Mangano. Although ambitious, Gambino was patient and built up his fortunes and his influence over the years. In 1951 Mangano mysteriously vanished and his family was taken over by Albert Anastasia, a much feared killer, who made Gambino his underboss, leading many observers to believe that both Gambino and Anastasia had something to do with Mangano's disappearance. Anastasia himself met his end in a New York City barber shop in 1957 and, much as Anastasia took over the assassinated Mangano's empire, Gambino took over the assassinated Anastasia's empire.
Gambino, unlike many other mobsters, always kept a low profile, making sure to stay out of the spotlight, and lived unostentatiously in a modest row house in Brooklyn. His frail, grandfatherly appearance made it difficult to believe that at the time he was the single most powerful organized-crime figure in America - and one of the most ruthless. Although both federal and state authorities had been after him for years, his secretive and illusive nature thwarted their efforts. Finally, in 1969, he was charged with planning the armed robbery and hijacking of a truck. Legal wranglings delayed the case for several years, during which time Gambino's wife died and his health began to deteriorate. When federal authorities discovered that Gambino had never become a US citizen and, in fact, had been smuggled into the country, they instituted deportation proceedings against him. His doctors claimed that his heart problems meant that he was too weak to make the journey from the US to Italy, and his case was delayed time and time again, amid rumors that the Gambino family had paid off two U.S. senators to help delay the proceedings. In 1976 Gambino was in his Long Island summer home watching a Yankees game on TV when he had a heart attack and died.Plot: Cloisters - The man once described as the most powerful organized crime gangster in American history was born in Italy in 1897. His first arrest came at the age of 20 in New York City for weapons possession. The coming of Prohibition was a stroke of luck for Genovese, as he graduated from being just a street gang member to professional killer. He worked his way up the ranks of organized crime, and by 1930 was partners with top gangster Lucky Luciano and Giuseppe Masseria -- aka "Joe the Boss" -- an old-timer who ran most of the crime in the city. The partnership didn't do Masseria much good, however, as on April 15, 1931, after a lengthy dinner with his pal Vito, Masseria was surprised by Luciano, Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel and Carlo Gambino, who promptly shot him full of holes. Luciano took over Masseria's operations, and he and Genovese expanded them to reach every corner of the country and to get their hands into every racket imaginable, from drug smuggling to gambling, from prostitution to bootlegging, and everything in between. Shortly before World War II the authorities began looking into the murder of a Mafia gangster named Boccia -- a murder Genovese had contracted years before -- and he fled to Italy, where he promptly cozied up to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. During the invasion of Italy in World War II Genovese made himself invaluable to the American military police authorities by informing on local black market rings and drug and weapons dealers; what the MPs didn't know was that as these men were arrested, Genovese replaced them with his own. His scheme was thwarted, however, when an MP investigator -- who had been a New York City detective in civilian life -- recognized Genovese as being wanted for involvement in the Boccia murder, arrested him and had him sent back to the U.S. Unfortunately the only witness in the case was found dead, and Genovese was acquitted.
After the war Genovese built up his drug trade, although many Mafia leaders, including Luciano, thought it was a dangerous business to get into and tried to talk him out of it. Their efforts were in vain, however; there was just too much money in it for Genovese to give it up. By the early 1950s he was head of one of the five New York Mafia families, and began to think that he should be head of all of them. He tried to take over the families of Anastasia and Frank Costello by having both men killed. Costello escaped the attempt on his life and retired, but Anastasia wasn't so lucky and met his end in a New York barber shop in 1957. Eventually Genovese's plan worked, and he was made the "boss of bosses", but unfortunately for him it didn't last very long. Several of his underlings turned on him when they were arrested and began to spill the beans about his heroin-smuggling operation. After an investigation into those activities, Genovese was arrested by federal authorities on drug charges, tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in a federal penitentiary. He died in prison in 1969. - John Gotti was born on 27 October 1940 in Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Victoria DiGiorgio. He died on 10 June 2002 in Springfield, Missouri, USA.
- US gangster and racketeer. Born Charles Salvadore Lucania in Sicily, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1906. In 1907 he started shoplifting. He was given his nickname by childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky for his luck with betting on racehorses, but it also could have applied to the many times he avoided imprisonment and prosecution as a Mafia "godfather" who operated successfully and profitably in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1930 the Castellammarese War broke out between the gangs of Giuseppe Masseria (aka Joe the Boss) and Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano sent some men to "rough up" Luciano, and when they caught him they not only beat and stabbed him, but addition severed the muscles of his right cheek, leaving him with a droop in his right eye. He was left for dead under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he lived up to his nickname and survived. Recovering, he sided with Maranzano in the conflict. By 1931 Masseria had been assassinated and Maranzano had won. He named himself "boss of bosses" (capo di tuti capo), but that title proved to be short-lived. Luciano and Lansky's had their men visit Maranzano in his office, disguised as government agents, and assassinated him. Luciano followed that with anywhere from 40 to 90 additional murders during the series of killings that came to be called the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers". Luciano was now the undisputed boss of a "new" Mafia. His business included narcotics-peddling, extortion and, especially, prostitution, including everything from low-rent streetwalkers to high-priced call girls. Luciano, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime, was arrested 25 times between 1919 and 1936 but convicted only once. When three prostitutes finally agreed to give evidence against him, he was arrested (1936) and found guilty of compelling women to become prostitutes. Even from prison, he retained control of his Family, setting up the Crime Syndicate of Mafia Families. During World War II he helped U.S. military intelligence through his Mafia connections in Italy and was given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the US. In 1946 he was released from prison and deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. He returned to Naples, Italy, where he lived out his life in luxury. Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He was only posthumously allowed to return to the USA, where he was buried at St John's Cemetery in New York.
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Robert Mapplethorpe was born on 4 November 1946 in Queens, New York, USA. He was a director, known for Breathless (1983), Lady (1984) and Patti Smith: Still Moving (1978). He died on 9 March 1989 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.Plot: Section 48, Range B Lots 131-133- Salvatore Maranzano was born on 31 July 1886 in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Italy. He died on 10 September 1931 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Section 25