The following is an excerpt from Rudy! An Investigative Biography
of Rudolph Giuliani,
which will be available in New York stores on July 11.
•Harold Giuliani and Helen D'Avanzo met at a party in 1929 or 1930.
The roaring '20s had tapered to a whisper, the Great Depression had
recently cast its vast and wretched shadow, and Prohibition had long ago
confined much of the American social scene to speakeasies.
It was not an auspicious time for romance, and Harold and Helen's dating
life was typically austere: picnics in the park, moonlight strolls,
home-based dances and get-togethers. Occasionally, they would
splurge on a movie at Times Square—tickets were only 35 cents,
if you bought them before 5:30 p.m.
At 5'11", with a solid frame and big-knuckled hands, Harold was a
thickset ruffian who squinted at the world through cumbersome,
Coke-bottle-thick glasses. He had been trained as a part-time plumber's
assistant but had remained financially dependent on his parents into
early adulthood. Much of his childhood had been spent on the streets of
East Harlem, staving off boredom with stickball and other games. At age
15, he dropped out of high school and was soon arrested for burglary
and sentenced to probation in New York City Children's Court.
Emboldened by regular beatings from his father, he took up boxing and,
through a demonstration of sheer feral aggression, persuaded a local
trainer to condition him for a pro career. But because of poor vision,
Harold was kept out of the ring. Instead, he took his pugilistic prowess
to the streets, engaging in countless scuffles. Blinking behind his
half-inch-thick lenses, he would fling a flurry of punches, landing them
anywhere and everywhere, mercilessly hammering his opponent into
submission. The vision problem only compounded his volcanic temper,
mixed in with it, to create a sort of unalloyed, inexorable ferocity.
Taunting Harold with a typical teenage gibe like "four eyes" would
guarantee an immediate pummeling.
Shy and proper, Helen was the perfect antidote to Harold. She was an
excellent student who skipped two grades and graduated from high
school at the age of 16. A dark-featured southern Italian, she would
often bleach her hair blond for social occasions and loved dancing the
Charleston.
Throughout their seven-year courtship, Harold was a persistent suitor
and Helen a hesitant target. Most of her five brothers, at first, turned
up their noses at her inelegant beau, regarding him as a poor match for
their little sister. Helen harbored doubts of her own, she later admitted,
particularly when it came to Harold's "terrible temper." She recalled one
incident early in their courtship. "It was about six months after we met
and we were walking up 123rd Street," she said. "He had his arm around
me and when a car passed by, somebody in it yelled, 'Ain't love grand!'
The car stopped for a light and Harold ran to the corner, pulled the guy
out
of the car, and boom! I yelled, 'Harold, what are you doing, you savage?'
"
But it was not just Helen's honor he was protecting. If Harold overheard
a man on the street utter what he perceived to be a disparaging remark
about a woman, "Harold would smack the guy," Helen said. These
incidents became so common that Harold would affectionately sign all
his love letters with the sobriquet "your savage."
At least four years after they began dating, Harold truly earned his
nickname. In the spring of 1934, just a week after his 26th birthday,
jobless and restless, he resorted to desperate measures.
On April 5, the "savage" was arraigned on armed robbery and assault
charges in the Magistrate's Court for the City of New York and ordered
held on $5000 bail. Before Magistrate Alfred Lindau, Harold Giuliani lied
about his age and address, claiming he was 24 and lived on East 84th
Street. He also lied about his occupation, saying that he was an
electrician. When asked to identify himself, he told the court that
his
name was Joseph Starrett.
On that day, Harold Giuliani (a/k/a Joseph Starrett) pleaded not guilty.
On April 12, in the case of People v. Harold Giuliani indicted as Joseph
Starrett, Giuliani was charged with four felonies: robbery in the first
degree, assault in the first degree, grand larceny in the second degree,
and criminally receiving stolen property.
The crime occurred on April 2, 1934, at 12:05 p.m. in
the unlit first-floor corridor of a 10-family residential
building at 130 East 96th Street in Manhattan. Shortly
before noon, Harold Giuliani and an accomplice
positioned themselves in shadowy recesses near the
stairwell. Within 10 or 15 minutes Harold Hall, a
milkman for Borden's Farms, entered the building to
make routine payment collections. As he began to
make his way up the stairs, Giuliani emerged from the
shadows and, according to the indictment, pressed
the muzzle of a pistol against Hall's stomach. "You know what it is," he
reportedly said. He forced the man into a nook behind the stairwell,
where his counterpart was waiting. The other man plunged his hand into
Hall's pants pocket and fished out $128.82 in cash.
As Giuliani's accomplice frantically stuffed the money into his own
pockets, either he or Giuliani—or both—commanded Hall to
"pull down your pants."
Hall refused.
Giuliani grabbed Hall's pants and yanked them down to his ankles. He
told Hall to sit down. He grabbed the man's hands, pulled them behind
his back and bound them with cord. Squatting, his back to the wall,
Giuliani leaned over his victim and began tying his feet together. Before
he was finished, a police officer, Edward Schmitt, burst in the front door
of the building.
"Throw them up!" yelled Schmitt. Giuliani obeyed.
His accomplice, who, at this point, had the gun and the money, fled
down the stairs to the basement and escaped onto the street.
Schmitt collared Giuliani and took him to the 23rd Precinct. The officer
later told the judge assigned to that case that he had been "tipped off
by a citizen that a couple of fellows were hanging around 130 East 96th
Street for about half an hour, and he finally saw them going into the
hallway. After they went in, a milkman went in, and the citizen suspected
that there was something wrong and he called me and told me about it."
Although Giuliani's family didn't have the means to help him, he had
friends with resources. Three days after he was arrested, a man named
Valentine Spielman put up $5000 to bail him out. Spielman listed his
address as 351 East 60th in Manhattan.
On April 19, a week after the indictment was filed, Hall changed his
statement, telling a markedly different story. This time, he said it was
Giuliani's accomplice who had pressed the gun to his stomach and said,
"You know what it is."
During a hearing on May 23, Louis Capozzoli, an assistant district
attorney, told the judge that Hall altered his story only after he was
threatened. "This milkman tried to change his statement," noted
Capozzoli, "after he was visited at about four o'clock that morning by
several people who threatened him. Then he said he thought this fellow
[Giuliani] ought to get a break."
Hall's coerced reversal may have been effective in reducing his
assailant's prison time. On May 9, before Judge Owen Bohan in the
Court of General Sessions, Giuliani switched his plea to guilty. He was
allowed, in light of Hall's altered statement, to plead to one count of
armed robbery in the third degree. While still a serious felony conviction,
armed robbery drew less prison time than a guilty plea on any one of
the original charges.
At Giuliani's sentencing hearing, his attorney, Robert J. Fitzsimmons,
appealed for leniency. "I believe this is the case that warrants extreme
clemency," said Fitzsimmons, who later explained: "The defendant
realizes his mistake. His home life has been of the finest and he comes
from a wonderful family."
Judge Bohan firmly replied, "I am a very sympathetic judge, but I have
no sympathy for robbers with guns."
Fitzsimmons, yielding, acknowledged that his client "should get some
punishment to make him realize the seriousness of his act."
The judge then addressed Giuliani, bluntly asking, "Who is the other man
that was in this thing with you?"
Officer Schmitt spoke up, telling the judge that Giuliani "gave a fictitious
name and address" and "refused to give us the name and address of the
other man."
Suddenly, Fitzsimmons announced the name of Giuliani's supposed
accomplice, Joseph Podemo. (No one named Joseph Podemo, however,
was charged in connection with this, or any other, crime between 1929
and 1935.)
The judge was suspicious of Fitzsimmons's remark. "I will commit this
defendant," he said. "If he wants to help himself, let him tell us the
name of the man who had the gun."
On May 29, Judge Bohan sentenced Harold Giuliani to two to five years
at Sing Sing state prison.
According to Giuliani's "Receiving Blotter," obtained from Sing Sing
Prison, he started serving his time on May 31. The blotter form requires
answers to standard questions, such as height, weight, and address.
His address is listed as 313 East 123rd Street, across the street from
his parents' building at 354 East 123rd. The criminal act for which
Giuliani was sentenced is described as follows: "Held up man,
hallway,daytime, gun, money." The form indicates that his "habits" are
"temperate" and include "tobacco." He speaks "good" English, the
interviewer observed, and is also semifluent in Italian. His religion is
noted as Catholic, and his church attendance is described as
"occasional." His alias is listed as Joseph Starrett.
When asked by the interviewer to what he "attributed" his criminal acts,
Giuliani answered "unemployment." He listed two employers under
"Employment Record." The first mentioned was Koch Plumbing, where
he
earned a weekly wage of $30 as a "plumber's helper." But his 1934
employment at Koch lasted only two weeks. The second employer, John
N. Kapp, also a plumber, hired Giuliani at a weekly wage of $24 and kept
him on from 1929—around the time he met Helen—until 1932. Giuliani
described no other employment.
Two weeks before he was committed to Sing Sing, Giuliani underwent
a
psychiatric exam. Benjamin Apfelberg, a psychiatrist with the city's
Department of Hospitals, sent his report to Judge Bohan on May 18.
Although Apfelberg found that Giuliani was "not mentally defective" and
displayed "no psychotic symptoms at the present time," the report
painted a troubling mental portrait.
"A study of this individual's makeup," wrote Apfelberg, "reveals that he
is a personality deviate of the aggressive, egocentric type. This
aggressivity is pathological in nature and has shown itself from time to
time even as far back as his childhood. He is egocentric to an extent
where he has failed to consider the feelings and rights of others."
Noting Harold's "nearsightedness," Apfelberg continued: "As a result of
this physical handicap, especially because of taunts in his boyhood
years, he has developed a sense of inferiority which, in recent years,
has become accentuated on account of his prolonged idleness and
dependence on his parents. . . . His school life was marked by
retardation on account of the mischievous and unruly conduct. Due
to
his aggressive traits and through his excessive aimless idleness, he has
been attracted to haphazard associations which apparently were the
direct precipitating factors in bringing about the present offense. He
is
anxious about his predicament on account of a feeling of guilt. He
rationalizes the motives of his offense in a self-pitying way in order
to
obtain sympathy."
Helen Giuliani worried about husband Harold's "terrible temper."
(photo by Fred W. McDarrah)
Apfelberg concluded his report with this recommendation and caveat:
"From a purely and strictly psychiatric standpoint, without considering
the social, environmental and other factors in this case, the findings
indicate that the social rehabilitation possibilities are favorable for
eventual readjustment but are rather dubious as to the prognosis in
regard to improvement in personality."
After a year and a half at Sing Sing State Prison, Harold Giuliani was
released on September 24, 1935. A year later, while on parole, he
married his long-courted sweetheart, Helen D'Avanzo, at St. Francis
of
Assisi Church in Brooklyn. On May 5, 1939, more than two years after
he and his new wife had moved into a house they shared with her
mother, he completed his parole.
It took the Giulianis six years and one miscarriage to have a baby.
"Helen had the miscarriage early in the marriage," recalled Anna
D'Avanzo, one of Helen's sisters-in-law. "The next time I saw her, she
was crying. Harold always looked at the good side, 'We'll have another
one.' " Eventually, Harold was right. On Sunday, May 28, 1944, Helen,
age 35, gave birth to her long-awaited and only child, Rudolph William
Louis Giuliani. After receiving the news, Harold frantically ran up and
down the steps of every building on his block, handing out cigars.
Named after his grandfather Rodolfo, little Rudy (then spelled Rudi) was
considered by his verging-on-middle-age parents to be a blessing from
God, an answer to countless prayers.
It was Helen's mother, Adelina D'Avanzo, who spent the most time with
"the little prince," as some relatives referred to him. Adelina was not
only the Giulianis' emotional bedrock; she was also the family's financial
foundation. She owned 419 Hawthorne Street, the building in East
Flatbush, Brooklyn, to which Harold and Helen had returned that Sunday
with their newborn. A modest, two-family red and tan brick house, 419
was indistinguishable from all the others in the unbroken, block-long row
of fused-together buildings between New York and Brooklyn avenues.
Harold, Helen, Adelina, and Rudy lived on the second floor, in a narrow,
six-room apartment with parquet floors, decorative moldings in the
plaster walls, and high ceilings.
At the time of Rudy's birth, Harold was working in the Brooklyn Navy
Yard as a plumber's assistant, the trade he had learned before prison.
World War II had lasted more than four and a half years. D Day was just
nine days away. Headlines had then heralded a "Nazi Escape Road" into
Europe. The only member of either the Giuliani or D'Avanzo family who
served in the war was Harold's brother Charles, stationed in New Guinea
for four years until 1948. Harold's younger brother, Rudolph, born on
December 13, 1926, was too young to be drafted. Four of Helen's
brothers were excused from service because they were cops; her
youngest brother, Roberto, entered the police force on November 21,
1942, in the middle of the war.
Harold told relatives and friends that he wasn't drafted because of his
poor eyesight and ulcers. What, in truth, protected him from military
service, however, was his criminal record. The record was almost
impossible to find—then and now—because it is filed in the name of
Joseph Starrett. Harold apparently helped the local draft board locate
it.
On April 18, 1941, Morris S. Ganchrow, secretary of the Selective
Service System's Local Board #217 in Brooklyn, wrote a letter to the
Court of General Session, inquiring into Harold's criminal background.
The letter read:
Dear Gentlemen:
We understand that Harold Angelo Giuliani, using the alias
"Joseph Starrett," a registrant in this Board, was convicted
of Attempted Robbery, 3rd degree, on April 24, 1934.
In order that he may be properly classified by members of
this Board, will you please give us the details of his Court
Record, as to the charge—whether a misdemeanor or a
felony, and if sentenced, the period he was confined.
Enclosed is self-addressed envelope for reply.
The charge was, of course, a felony, and anyone guilty of a felony
was
barred from wartime service.
The D'Avanzos and Giulianis still discussed the Allies' great campaign
over dinner. The fact that their homeland was an Axis country did not
diminish Helen Giuliani's sense of patriotism. "Helen was a little sticking
up for the Italians, a little on the Italian side," recalled Anna. "She
liked
Mussolini and things like that."
On July 2, 1944, just a few days over a month old, Rudy was baptized
at St. Francis of Assisi Church on the corner of Lincoln and Nostrand
avenues, six blocks away from his home. Although Rudy's father was
reputed to pray every night before a small altar on the dresser top in
his room, his wife and mother-in-law were not as enthusiastic or routine
about their worship. On Sunday mornings, Helen would escort Rudy to
mass, but allegedly only on Harold's orders. Harold's sister-in-law Evelyn
Giuliani recalled that Helen was "not very religious."
At five years old, Rudy was enrolled in the church's kindergarten—if not
solely for the religion, then for a generous dose of discipline. Founded
in
1909, the school served children of the parish, providing stern,
regimented instruction from kindergarten through eighth grade. Wrist
rappings and ear boxings were as commonplace then as detentions and
demerits.
One afternoon in 1948, as Helen's younger brother Leo (a/k/a Tullio)
D'Avanzo was coasting down Kingston Avenue in Brooklyn in his taxi,
hunting for customers, he noticed that an old neighborhood bar on the
corner of Kingston and Rutland had been closed. He talked to the owner
of the building, Philomena Mandelino and, within a few months, made a
bold career move: He bought the bar and reopened it. The deed to the
property wasn't filed in his name, though; it was listed under his wife's
name, Veronica "Betty" D'Avanzo. And the business license wasn't in his
name either; that was conveniently registered under the name of his
brother Vincent D'Avanzo, who happened to be a patrolman in the 67th
Precinct. Since nothing was ever in Leo's name, the reincarnated
watering hole was named after Vincent.
With ornate tin ceilings and a commodious dining area that stretched
nearly half a block, Vincent's Restaurant could accommodate upwards
of 150 revelers. A 12-block walk from Ebbetts Field, it was located in
what was known in the '30s as "pig town"—a poor, highly populated
area in which many Italian immigrants raised pigs in the yards of their
often ramshackle, makeshift homes. Convenient and familiar, Vincent's
drew a hearty clientele of firemen, fishermen, bookies, sanitation
workers, and others. The bar was also a roost for a roster of wizened
regulars, sardonic old Italian and Irish guys who drank rye whiskey with
rock candy and had nicknames like Ippy and Stumpy.
Most important, Vincent's Restaurant became the headquarters of Leo
D'Avanzo's loan-sharking and gambling operations, ventures he ran with
a partner, Jimmy Dano, who was a made man. Dano had once worked as
a runner for the powerful numbers-racket operator and narcotics
distributor James (Jimmy the Clam) Eppolito. He and Leo had a secret
wire room tucked in the back of Vincent's and employed a small army of
as many as 15 runners. "There was a lot of booking and numbers and all
that nonsense," said Leo's former mistress of nearly 30 years, Elizabeth
Mandelino, who was the daughter of the prior owner, Philomena. (The
Mandelinos were related by marriage to the Eppolitos). "That's how they
survived."
And in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, it was Leo's show. If you needed
money, you went to Leo. If you wanted to place a bet on a horse, he
was the man to see. "Everybody in Flatbush knew Leo," said Mandelino,
who had lived in an apartment above Vincent's with her mother and
would later move into a nearby eight-family apartment building Leo
bought on Beverly Road.
Tall and thin, with fingernails as white as piano keys, Leo D'Avanzo was
an immaculate dresser, hair never out of place, shoes always freshly
shined. Often taking drags on a cigarette—he smoked a pack a day
easily—he would tell his mistress about his shylocking business and
extorting people and having to "break their legs." But he'd never kill
anyone, he assured the woman 16 years his junior. He'd never kill for
money.
In family circles, Uncle Leo was the shadowy black sheep. "Everybody in
the family said, 'Don't be like Leo,' " recalled Rudy's cousin Gina
Gialoreta. "Leo was Mafia, bad, bad. . . . Uncle Leo lived by his
wits—that's what my grandmother used to say."
On August 17, 1951, at age 38, Leo was arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal
Court on felony "criminal receiving" charges, but the case was
eventually dismissed. Seven years later, in April 1958, he appeared in
Brooklyn Gambler's Court, arraigned on bets and bookmaking charges;
he put up a $500 bond and was discharged by Judge Anthony Livoti.
Even Leo's cop brother Vincent found himself on the receiving end of an
arrest on a few occasions. On October 15, 1954, he was arraigned in
Gambler's Court on minor charges related to the Alcohol Beverage
Control Act, but was discharged. On February 14, 1961, Vincent was
arrested with 12 other defendants by an officer from his brother
Roberto's precinct, the 71st, for a violation of the New York City
administrative code that appeared to be related to gambling; given a
choice in district court between one day in jail and a $2 fine, Vincent
paid the fine.
Since New York State criminal records before 1970 are not
computerized and, therefore, either unavailable or extremely hard to
locate, these incidents may not represent the totality of Leo D'Avanzo's
criminal career.
Behind the mahogany bar at Vincent's Restaurant, puffing on a cigar
while he drew pints and fixed cocktails, was Harold Giuliani. The
40-year-old father of a four-year-old son had a patchwork employment
history of a few on-again, off-again jobs. Nearly two years after prison,
in July 1937, at the age of 29, Harold had applied for a Social Security
number, listing his job status as "unemployed." At some point in the late
'30s or early '40s, he tried his hand at door-to-door salesmanship,
hawking tablecloths and bedspreads, before going on to work briefly at
the Navy Yard. Now what Harold needed most was security and a
weekly paycheck. The one man who could provide both was his
brother-in-law, whose illegal operations were fronted by his other
brother-in-law, the cop. "My father-in-law [Leo] was kind of close with
Harold," noted Lois D'Avanzo, who would later marry Leo's son Lewis.
Like his brothers-in-law, Harold was a snappy dresser, usually attired
in
a starched shirt and tie and wearing a hat. Relatives described him as
an affectionate man, who hugged as tight as a vise and kissed old
ladies and children. Because of his stomach ulcers, the gray-eyed,
bespectacled bartender often drank milk while his customers knocked
back scotch. In case anyone got too rowdy, he kept a baseball bat
behind the bar and a .38 caliber pistol next to the cash register. An
opinionated and voluble Yankees fan in Dodgers-land, a man who
reputedly hated most politicians, Harold would engage in heated
arguments with his customers, his voice booming sometimes out into
the street. If there was a bar fight, it was Harold who broke it up. If
a
customer had let his tab go for too long, it was Harold who went with
his baseball bat to collect.
But bar tabs weren't the only debts Harold collected. He had come a
long way since the spring day more than 14 years ago when he mugged
a milkman. Now the crimes he committed were part of an organized
criminal enterprise. Known as the "muscle" behind the loan-sharking
operation, Harold was Leo's collection agent, recouping money that had
been loaned out and was now overdue.
Most debtors would pay at the bar, slipping an envelope to Harold
across the counter. In the mid to late '50s, Harold collected as much as
$15,000 a week, tapping dozens of debtors. The "vig" usually began at
a stifling 150 percent and rose with the passing of each week. Many
people borrowed money to pay rent or foot a business expense and
would pay back four or five times the amount they borrowed. There
were no excuses for being late.
One afternoon, a man reluctantly entered the bar to apologize to
Harold, saying that he didn't have the money—could he have just one
more week? Frowning, Harold reached under the bar, out of sight, and
gripped his baseball bat. As the man before him continued pleading for
an extension, Harold swung the bat, cracking him flat across the face,
sending him back a few feet. "Don't be late again," Harold said,
according to an eyewitness.
That was the gist of Harold's job: enforce Leo's law through threats or
violence. He shoved people against walls, broke legs, smashed
kneecaps, crunched noses. He gave nearby Kings County Hospital a lot
of business.
"People in the neighborhood were terrified of him," said a frequent
customer at Vincent's, who was one of Leo's son Lewis's best friends
and whose family borrowed money from Leo.*
*This source, referred to subsequently as "Lewis's friend," provided critical
details of
the criminal histories of Leo and Lewis D'Avanzo and Harold Giuliani, including
the fact
that Harold had "done time" at Sing Sing. Court documents and other records
confirmed more than a half-dozen pieces of information he supplied. None
of his
information proved to be incorrect. A close friend of Lewis's, this source
is also a
convicted felon, with a criminal record dating back to the '60s.
He remembers what happened early one Saturday morning after his own
father failed to make a payment. "When I was a kid, my father borrowed
money from Leo," he said. "He couldn't pay, so Harold came to collect.
He knocked on the door and yelled, 'I want the money now, or I'm going
to break both your arms!' "
After Harold calmed down, an agreement was worked out. "They talked
to Leo and straightened it out," he said.
While in high school, Lewis's friend did occasional chores around the
bar, and his brother took a job in the wire room, charting bets on the
numbers boards. Many years later, after opening his own business,
Lewis's friend borrowed $90,000 from Leo and paid back $160,000, a
fairly modest repayment total. "It would only take me four to five weeks
to pay him back," he said, adding that his brother once borrowed $5000
and ended up paying back $20,000.
Gambling, loan-sharking, and booze weren't the only sources of income
at Vincent's. A black man who worked in the payroll office at a local
hospital would stop by the bar every week or so to give Harold several
dozen fake paychecks. The checks were made out to a host of
fictitious employees and were drawn on the hospital's bank account.
"Harold would cash them in the bar," said Lewis's friend. "There would
be several thousand dollars' worth of checks every week. Harold would
get half, and the black guy would get the other half."
Harold told his confidant, Jack O'Leary, A Christian Brother who was one
of Rudy's teachers, that one reason he left Brooklyn in 1951, moving to
Garden City, Long Island, was "to get away from my in-laws." He didn't
want his son exposed to what went on at the bar, he explained, and
vowed that his boy would not end up like Lewis, Leo's boy, who hung
around the numbers charts and lived with his family in the apartment
above the new bar.
Sometime in the late '50s, Harold stopped tending bar full-time at
Vincent's. On January 12, 1959, two and half months shy of his 51st
birthday and shortly before Rudy's 15th, Harold Giuliani got his first
on-the-books, legit job.He was hired for $3300 per year as a
groundskeeper for Lynbrook Public High School in Lynbrook, Long Island,
where Helen's younger brother Edward lived with his wife, Anna, and
their three children.
Perhaps in connection with that job, Harold requested information about
the cloud that had hung over him since 1934. A notation in the General
Sessions court file indicates he sought copies of the "complaint and
certification" of the criminal case against Joseph Starrett. The notation
lists Giuliani at his Garden City address, indicating that copies of the
key
documents were sent to him there.
As a member of the buildings and grounds crew for the Lynbrook
district, Harold spent his day maintaining sports equipment, buffing the
terrazzo marble floors, grooming athletic fields, and, in the winter,
salting parking lots and driveways.
In October 1959, the Giulianis migrated once again. Harold, after only
10
months on the job at Lynbrook High School, took out a $162-per-month
mortgage on a new, comparably capacious split-level ranch house in
Bellmore, closer to Lynbrook. Fixed in a tidy row of similar houses on
a
short block called Pine Court, the Giulianis' new home, replete with a
deck and a two-car garage, was Harold's castle.
Although open-minded and mild-mannered, Brother O'Leary was no softy
when it came to discipline. When Rudy made a wisecrack in the middle
of an afternoon lecture, his homeroom teacher marched over to the
lisping upstart and cuffed him on the side of the head. In October 1959,
the beginning of Rudy's junior year, at a Bishop Loughlin Memorial High
School open house, O'Leary was surprised when Harold and Helen
Giuliani tentatively approached him and thanked him for smacking their
irreverent son. "They asked me if I remembered the time I punished
Rudy. I said yes. They said, 'We want to thank you, because he
became a much better student after that.' "
From that encounter, a relationship blossomed. Since Rudy and his
friend Alan Placa were, in their earlier years, misbehaving to the
detriment of other students, O'Leary "would report to my father on my
conduct every week," Rudy said. This weekly check-in system soon
evolved into a friendship with the Giuliani family. The young Catholic
brother would join Rudy, his parents, and his grandmother for spaghetti
dinners at their house in Bellmore.
The devoted Catholic brother would become one of the most important
influences in Rudy's early life. "He was terrific," Rudy said. "He spent
a
lot of time with me, developing interests that I had that I wasn't
comfortable about. Like reading and opera, things that I wouldn't talk
to
my friends about, because they would think I was a sissy."
Some evenings after dinner at the Giulianis', Harold, O'Leary, and Rudy
would excuse themselves and take a stroll in a nearby park. They would
discuss news, politics, matters of religion. Rudy might prattle on about
Jack Kennedy or jaw with his father and teacher about the Yankees.
Sometimes the high school senior would tread a few paces ahead or lag
a few paces behind, and when he was out of earshot, Harold might
broach other, more serious, matters with O'Leary. In the spring of 1960,
during one of these walks, while Rudy tagged behind them, Harold made
a sudden, cryptic confession to his confidant.
"I've done things in the past that I've paid for," Rudy's father said.
The men continued walking, wordlessly, the sounds of their feet on the
path suddenly loud in the wake of Harold's comment. Keeping silent,
O'Leary waited. He would let Harold offer an explanation, pour his heart
out if needed. And O'Leary was ready for whatever this hard, vexed
man had to tell him.
But Harold Giuliani said nothing more. As the dusk enclosed them, Harold
shunted the conversation back to generalities, and Rudy caught up with
them and the three sauntered together through the dark back to the
house.
The following fall, Harold Giuliani REceived a letter from Richard P.
McLean, the assistant superintendent of the Lynbrook Public Schools.
Dated December 7, 1961, the letter read:
We have heard no word from you concerning your return
to work in the Lynbrook Public Schools. The custodial staff
is presently shorthanded one man. May I ask that we
resolve this issue as soon as possible. . . . Your immediate
response to this letter will be appreciated.
McLean was writing Harold because he hadn't been to work in months.
Nearly two weeks after the first letter, the assistant superintendent
sent the 53-year-old, AWOL custodian a second letter, terminating him.
Harold lost his job just as Rudy was finishing up his first semester at
Manhattan College. Asked a few months earlier—in his February 1961
application for a scholarship from Italian American Charities—what he
planned to do if financial assistance was not granted, Rudy had written:
"My father will, of course, help to pay towards my college education as
much as he can. Then I expect to work this summer. However, this will
not be enough. I must, of necessity, have some outside aid in order to
complete my education." He had listed his father's job as a custodian.
With scorching ulcers and a nascent heart problem, Harold Giuliani was
no longer the swaggering, hearty man readily disposed to put the
knuckles on someone for looking at his wife the wrong way. But the
reason he had failed to report to work since the previous spring was not
a physical one. "Harold had something of a nervous breakdown,"
explained his confidant Jack O'Leary. "He wasn't working at the time."
Harold told friends that one of the events that triggered his breakdown
was an incident in a Long Island state park in the spring of 1961. For
the first time in many years, he was arrested, a chilling, jolting
experience that abruptly exhumed old memories. The offense was trivial
but embarrassing. Harold had long suffered from severe constipation.
One afternoon, while strolling in the park, he suddenly felt the need to
go. By his own account, when he found a public rest room, he pulled his
pants down and began doing deep knee bends outside the stalls to
expedite the process. A police officer happened to walk in right then.
Harold was arrested for "loitering" and hauled down to the local police
station. The charges were eventually dismissed, but the experience
haunted the 53-year-old.
"The last time I saw Harold," recalled O'Leary, "he was practically
bedridden. He was sitting out on a lawn chair in the backyard all pale
and terrible-looking."
In October 1978, Harold and Helen sold their split-level house in
Bellmore for $52,000 and rented a three-bedroom apartment in Bayside,
Queens, for $600 per month. A sedentary middle-class neighborhood,
their section of Bayside was populated with clusters of retired Italians,
Irish, and Germans. The Giulianis' apartment building on the corner of
218th Street and Horace Harding Parkway would have been just as
peaceful and quiet as Pine Court if not for the relentless roar of the
Long Island Expressway less than 50 feet from the front door.
A friendly Italian couple, Joe and Lina Merli, owned the building, living
in
the first-floor apartment. The Giulianis, who lived upstairs, would often
join the Merlis for dinner, bantering in Italian over Lina's sprawling
pasta
feasts.
"Harold, he was so funny man, a very familiar person," recalled Lina, an
82-year-old retired hotel housekeeper, who still struggles at times with
her English. On Saturday afternoons, Lina and Harold would often share
stories, lolling in lawn chairs on her small garden patio, just a chain-link
fence and a few lilac bushes away from the drone of the LIE. Harold
proudly predicted that his lawyer son Rudy would go on one day to
become president of the United States and, perhaps as evidence,
carried with him a photo of Rudy standing next to President Ronald
Reagan. He once told Lina how happy he would be if Rudy married her
beautiful daughter, Luchana.
On one of these afternoons, Harold also shared with his new landlord his
views on race. "Giuliani's father," recalled Lina, "was disturbed by
colored people." The polite woman listened as Harold expounded on the
differences between whites and blacks. "Harold say, 'God separate the
colored and the white.' He say, 'Because all the world is white, except
Africa.' " Harold's explanation for why blacks are black? "God said the
colored were not mature," Lina remembered Harold telling her. "So God
put them in the oven to make them mature. But God, he forget to take
them out, so colored people came out black."
Because of his progressing prostate cancer, Harold had to urinate
frequently, and often while out in the garden with Lina, he would
stagger into a corner, unzip his pants and moan with relief as he pissed
into the weeds.
Rudy, then a full-time partner at Patterson, Belknap, earning $160,000
per year, frequently visited his parents in Bayside and even had his own
room in their apartment. Lina remembered that the third bedroom in
Harold and Helen's apartment had been made up for Rudy, who would
occasionally stay for as long as a week at a time.
At 70 years old, Harold was commuting by bus to a part-time custodial
job at the Gotham Building Maintenance Corporation on 28th Street in
Manhattan. A man whose sporadic 50-year work history was made up
largely of off-the-books jobs was back on the books again, part of a
300-man fleet that, among other things, waxed floors, shampooed
carpets, and washed windows in city buildings.
On the weekends and on Harold's off days, he and Joe Merli would
usually walk three blocks down Horace Harding to the Bayside Senior
Citizens' Center, a flat, maroon-brick building where they would spend
the afternoon playing pool and poker with the grumbling, ill-tempered
old-timers. It was a familiar setting for Harold, its fluorescent lighting,
dull, salmon-colored linoleum floor tiles, and bright, multicolored plastic
chairs reminiscent of a high school cafeteria. It was a place to hang
out, chew the fat, get away from the house. Everybody had chores,
though, and Harold and Joe would usually end up washing dishes. As
they sponged plates one afternoon, Harold suggested to Joe that if
they only did a so-so job washing these dishes, maybe they could
escape dish duty in the future.
After more than a year living in Bayside, Harold suffered such severe
pain from his prostate cancer that he had trouble walking. He quit
Gotham Maintenance. His routine checkups at North Shore hospital
became more frequent. Lina remembered Harold telling her about his
doctor's warnings. "The doctor, he tell him, 'You have to be operated
on,' " she recalled. But when it came to surgery, the proud man was
obstinate. "Nobody is going to touch my balls!"
Harold declared to Lina one afternoon in the garden.
On some nights, racked with pain, Harold would roll out of bed and fall
onto the floor, helpless, unable to move. Helen would rush downstairs
and rouse Joe Merli, who would help hoist the stubborn, tortured old
man back into bed.