NEWSWEEK Exclusive

NEWSWEEK Exclusive

Guest Essay: Gay Talese, Author

Chronicler of Bonanno Crime Family Catches up with Children of Boss; All Leading Full Lives; Son Joseph Bonanno, a Doctor, on Life With His Last Name: 'I've Overcome it, but I Didn't Escape it'

Son Salvatore Takes Offense at People Comparing Tony Soprano to His Grandfather; Says Soprano is a Vulgar Low-Life, Lacking Shrewdness and Dignified Demeanor of his Grandfather

NEW YORK, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Gay Talese, author of "Honor Thy Father," his 1971 book about the Bonanno crime family, writes in an essay in the current issue of Newsweek that he sometimes wondered what would happen to the four children of Bill Bonanno and his wife Rosalie in their later years. "Would they inhabit homes without bodyguards?" he writes. "Who would then protect them from their inherited notoriety? Would the younger Bonannos change their surnames? Would they deny their parents' backgrounds? To what degree could offspring of the Mafia later find social acceptance if they conformed to the laws of the larger community?"

(Photo:

http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070616/CLSA011 )

The essay, a rare piece by the famed non-fiction author who is credited by many with inventing new journalism, appears in the June 25 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 18). Talese updates the lives of the children- Charles, Joseph, Salvatore and Felippa-and tells of some personal humiliations they've had with their last name and what they think of HBO's "The Sopranos."

Talese met the children recently at a reunion at their parents' home. Rosalie continues with her bridal-veil business in Tucson, and she also sells what's left of the late (Bill Bonanno's father) Joseph Bonanno's personal property on eBay, such as canceled checks bearing his signature. During dinner, Talese had the chance to comment to Bill's son Joseph, who is a doctor, "'Well, I guess you've overcome your surname'," Talese writes. "'I've overcome it,' he said, 'but I didn't escape it.'"

Joseph Bonanno became a doctor after seeing the attentiveness and care of a doctor who treated him for his acute asthma when he was growing up, Talese writes. He entered the University of Arizona as a premed student in the fall of 1978, and in 1987 he returned to Arizona as an intern in pediatrics at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. "There he treated many young patients who reminded him of how he had felt as an ailing youngster two decades before, and he often comes to their bedsides attired in clothing that he hopes will cheer them up-his shirts and even his neckties depict a cast of well-known characters from children's literature and Disney cartoons. After he had been associated with the hospital for a year or more, he was approached by one of his senior medical colleagues, who, after complimenting him on his work, said: 'You know, we almost didn't accept you here because of your name.'"

Today, Charles Bonanno is an interstate truck driver, a job he took after working in an auto-repair shop in Phoenix for 10 years. "But his surname shadowed him. One day, after being assigned to deliver merchandise from Fresno to British Columbia, he informed the dispatcher that he was not carrying a passport. 'Oh, don't worry,' came the reply, 'you won't need it.' At the Canadian border, after submitting his driver's license to a customs official who checked his credentials through a computer, the official turned to him and asked: 'Are you in any way related to either Joseph Bonanno or Bill Bonanno?' 'They're my grandfather and father,' Charles answered, and the response was: 'Well, then you're on the nonentry list.'"

Salvatore Bonanno grew up to become an ill-tempered and combative youth "who might have been a candidate for the Mafia (in the opinion of his father) if the Mafia had not evolved into what his father believes it has become -- a moribund way of life, a feudal tradition adhered to mainly by senile senior citizens who are kept alive only by mythmaking Hollywood directors and television series such as 'The Sopranos'. Although both Salvatore and Dr. Joseph Bonanno have been regular watchers, if not admirers, of 'The Sopranos,' Salvatore was quick to take offense when The Arizona Republic in March 2006 published an article comparing the Tony Soprano character to his late grandfather. Tony Soprano is a vulgar low-life, Salvatore insists, lacking any of the courtly shrewdness and dignified demeanor of his late grandfather."

Salvatore graduated from the University of Arizona and is currently a computer-systems executive with his own firm in Phoenix. "At the time of the 2006 piece in The Arizona Republic he was working as a senior projects manager with a company under contract to install security systems within one of the casinos in Arizona located on an Indian reservation. On the day after the article appeared, Salvatore said, his boss informed him that he was being shifted from the casino job to another assignment because someone who had read the article believed it was bad public relations for a casino to be serviced by a member of the Bonanno family. Infuriated, Salvatore resigned immediately from his $90,000-a-year position, and would not reconsider his decision even after his employer had offered him a raise," Talese writes.

Felippa Bonanno "is perhaps the only member of the family who seems not to have experienced personal humiliations as a consequence of having the surname Bonanno. As a girl she had a somewhat sheltered existence, attending mass regularly with her mother and devoting herself as she got older to Catholic teachings of the most binding belief: she is decidedly pro-life," Talese writes. She and her husband have raised 10 children together, and, at the age of 42, Felippa expects another child in October. She also founded her own day- care center.

"Although she is no longer known as Bonanno since taking her husband's name in marriage, she has always been guided by her mother's often repeated warning to her and to her three brothers when they were growing up in San Jose: 'You are not ordinary children. You have to try twice as hard to be good. You have to be better than everybody else. The world won't give you a second chance because of your name'," Talese writes.

(Read essay at www.Newsweek.com)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19263306/site/newsweek/

Photo: NewsCom:

http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070616/CLSA011

AP Archive:

http://photoarchive.ap.org

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PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

Source: Newsweek

CONTACT: Brenda Velez of Newsweek, +1-212-445-4078

Web site:

http://www.newsweek.msnbc.com/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19263306/site/newsweek

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