(caption and photo provided by GentilleAlouette)
Romeo and my great-grandmother Lucia.

Romeo was born February 15th, 1915 in Rhode Island, and was my great-grandfather. He was a descendant of the Riccitelli family, a family from Caserta, Italy who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. He married Lucia in 1938 and had one daughter, Cynthia (born 23 November 1946).

Romeo was relatively stern and had a dry sense of humor. Unlike his wife he hated his first name; instead he would tell people his name was “Richie”, “Richard”, or “Rick”, as he preferred those alternatives more than his own name. Having grown up relatively poor, he dropped out of school around the eighth grade and from then on worked for the rest of his early life. He was enlisted to serve in World War II but had never left base in North Carolina and as a result was honorably discharged due to mental illness. His English was less than proficient as he had grown up in a time where Italian was primarily spoken in his community and, as a result, never talked much. Around the time he needed dentures, he stopped pronouncing words with “th” anywhere in them due to concerns that the dentures would get pushed forward and fall out, and instead only pronounced the “t” (for example he said “bat-room” instead of “bathroom”)

Following a bladder surgery in the early 1990s, Romeo contracted meningococcal meningitis that arose from an infection due to having undergone the surgery. On April 14, 1992, Romeo Carlos Riccitelli died from his meningitis infection at the age of 72. He preceded his wife in death by approximately twelve years. Romeo passed away one day before my mother’s bridal shower, and no one from my father’s side said anything to her about it until weeks later, because they wanted her to be happy and not have his death take away from her party, but learning this after so much time had passed only made her feel even worse. He died approximately four months before my parents married on June 20, 1992.

He is survived by his daughter Cynthia, his grandsons Barry-Paul (born 26 November 1969) and Christopher Carl (born 30 March 1972), granddaughters-in-law Alicia (born 17 January 1972) and Mariann (born 14 March 1969), and his great-grandchildren: me, (born 18 April 1997), my brother Cameron (born 5 December 1994) and his youngest grandson, Christopher Collin (born 25 January 2005).

Cause of death: meningococcal meningitis.