My dad was born on December 12, 1913, in the Silver Lake section of Cranston, the second in a family of seven, three brothers and three sisters, named Michael after his mother's brother. For years we thought his name was simply Michael John, until the day we had to go downtown to get a copy of his birth certificate. His full name, registered in the Italian rather than English, was "Michele Giovanni Baptiste Antonio Lanzi"! His father was Vincente Lanzi (always called "Jimmy" by his friends) and his mother was Matilda Verdecchia. The family originally came from the area around Rome.

My dad was kind of a shy kid, not a good thing for an Italian boy way back then, since they were expected to be tough. He still managed to have the usual schoolboy scrapes; one of his favorite stories was the day he snuck out of his eighth grade class with some friends--the teacher had a habit of telling the children to study and then falling asleep!

At age 14, he had to quit school to go to work. He started out learning to polish knives at the Colonial Knife company, where his older brother worked. He was in the National Guard when World War II broke out, and was sent to the European Theatre after training in Jesup, Georgia. He saw action in Germany (the Black Forest) and Austria. For years afterwards he loved to tell how neat and clean the German homes were, despite the carnage going on around him.

When he was demobilized he had planned to go back to Colonial Knife, but came home to find out his job had been taken by a family man that he was loathe to displace. After eight months out of work, he was hired by Trifari, Krussman and Fishel, the great costume jewelry company, as a polisher. In 1956, Trifari made the beautiful tiara Mamie Eisenhower wore to the Inaugural Ball, and their jewelry is still very much in demand by collectors. He worked there 29 years until he was retired.

It was at Trifari that he met my mother, who was working in the gluing-in department. They were married on May 10, 1947. Until they went "housekeeping" in 1951, they lived with my mother's parents.

Unlike your stereotypical Rhode Islander who is supposed to not like to travel far, Dad loved to go away on vacation. We drove to California and to Florida twice, to Virginia several times, and all around New England, upstate New York, and Quebec and Ontario, Canada. We visited to Disneyland, Disney World, Colonial Williamsburg, San Simeon, San Francisco, and even the 1964 New York World's Fair. He was a lifelong John Wayne/Western/war movie fan, but the one movie he paid again to see was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He also loved 2001: A Space Odyssey, and raised eyebrows among co-workers in believing there was life in outer space.

He died on August 1, 1985 and is buried at St. Ann's Cemetery in Cranston, RI.

Most of the following are his war photos.