The ANNOTICO Report

Peter W. Rodino Jr. should be celebrated  by the Italian American
community, and NEVER forgotten.
A man of the people, with great dignity, uncompromised integrity, and an
elevated social conscience.

NY Newsday
By Jeffrey Gold
Associated Press Writer
May 16, 2005

NEWARK, N.J. -- The life of former Rep. Peter W. Rodino Jr., who led the
House impeachment investigation of President Richard M. Nixon, was saluted
Monday as one of wisdom and compassion.

"He was a champion for the underdog. He was a speaker for those who had no
voice," Paula A. Franzese, a professor at Seton Hall University School of
Law, said in eulogizing Rodino, who had joined the school's faculty after
representing Newark in Congress for 40 years.

Calling Rodino "my beloved mentor, my friend," Franzese recalled watching
the Watergate hearings as a 14-year-old girl "transfixed" by the
constitutional crisis unfolding before the nation.

She said U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, in a note to Rodino's widow, Joy, wrote,
"Many of us felt that watching the Watergate hearings we were watching a
founding father in action."

More than 500 people attended the funeral Mass at St. Lucy's Roman Catholic
Church, where Rodino was baptized. Dignitaries included acting Gov. Richard
J. Codey, Sens. Jon S. Corzine, Frank R. Lautenberg, Paul Sarbanes, former
Sen. Bill Bradley, and with current and past House members, including Rep.
Charles Rangel of New York...

The Rev. Nicholas S. Gengaro said, ..."To me, yes, he was a national icon,
but also a bit of a 'household god,' patron of the good name and
self-respect of the vast number of Americans whose surnames end in a
vowel."...

Rodino died May 7 at his West Orange home of congestive heart failure at
age 95. A little-noticed Democratic lawmaker until the impeachment inquest,
he would have turned 96 on June 7.

"If fate had been looking for one of the powerhouses of Congress, it
wouldn't have picked me," Rodino told a reporter at the time.

Rodino became chairman of the House Judiciary Committee just months before
the panel began its historic impeachment hearings in 1974, two years after
the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the
Watergate Hotel.

Pressure had been building over charges Nixon had abused his presidential
powers to conceal connections between the break-in and his 1972 re-election
effort. The hearings brought the first vote in favor of impeachment of a
president in 106 years. Nixon resigned in August 1974.

"He rose above partisanship," former Gov. James J. Florio, who joined
Congress the next year, said outside the church. "He was a living example
of what to do."

Pallbearer Jason Santarcangelo, a Seton Hall law student who was Rodino's
research assistant for the past year, saw a different side of the former
congressman.

"He always took the time to ask about my family and friends," Santarcangelo
said outside the church.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, Rodino recalled the
events that led to Nixon's resignation. He said he wanted to share his
memories with others, especially young people, so the lessons learned from
Watergate were never forgotten.

"People today just don't know what happened, and they should," he said.

In addition to the Watergate hearings, Rodino wrote the Judiciary
Committee's majority reports on which the civil rights bills of 1957, 1960,
1964 and 1968 were based.

He also sponsored the bill that made Columbus Day a Monday holiday, popular
in his district, filled with Italian-Americans. As they moved out and
blacks and Hispanics moved in, Rodino was urged to step aside for a black
candidate.

He won a Democratic primary in 1986 against then-Newark City Councilman
Donald Payne, who is black. Two years later, Rodino decided not to run, and
Payne became New Jersey's first black congressman. Payne, who still
represents the district, was among those who attended the funeral.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/
local/ny-bc-nj--rodinofuneral0516may16,0,55834
89.story?coll=nyc-regionhome-headlines