Book portrays injustice of immigrants' 1927 executions

Born just months after Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed on Aug. 23, 1927, for murders many thought they didn't commit, Ted Grippo grew up hearing his father's version of what happened.

"He spoke in terms of sadness and fear. He spoke with great emotion about it and that stuck with me," says Grippo, an 83-year-old retired lawyer and author of a groundbreaking new book on a case that still echoes among Italian-Americans, immigrants, and those concerned with civil rights and Homeland Security.

Donato Grippo identified with Sacco because they both were Italian immigrants who not only repaired shoes for a living, but also shared many of the same fears and prejudices in 20th-century America, Ted Grippo says of his father.

The executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, anarchists during an age of frequent and sometimes violent protests against the United States government's crackdown on Communists and others during the Red Scare of the 1920s, fueled protests around the world. Today's anniversary of their executions is still remembered in many circles.

After World War I, Donato Grippo opened a shoe-repair business in Hinsdale that was so successful it led to a chain of stores. He moved to Chicago, where he and his wife raised their daughter and son in a neighborhood where Italian-Americans were a minority.

Ted Grippo says he endured the name-calling, slurs and prejudice that many immigrant groups have faced throughout our history and still face in America. His parents sent him to a Maryland boarding school for high school. He graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in economics, and got his law degree from Northwestern University in 1953. But he remembers having a difficult time finding a job because some law firms told him they didn't want to hire Italian-Americans.

After a stint as an enforcement attorney for the Illinois Secretary of State's office, Grippo eventually became the commissioner of the Illinois Securities Department and went on to success in the private sector working with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and other legal matters for many of the top businesses in the United States and abroad. But the Sacco and Vanzetti case that hit home with his father never was far from Grippo's mind.

"I wanted to study it, but I couldn't get to it because I was too busy raising a family and stuff," says Grippo, who started his intense research for his book after retiring from his Grippo & Elden law firm. Now living in Northbrook, Grippo and his longtime wife, Marlene, have seven children between them and seven grandchildren.

Having read dozens of books and articles on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Grippo used his legal background to start afresh. Searching the web, he found old documents, letters and photos, and purchased a complete six-volume set of the case's legal dockets that once belonged to the Oregon State Library.

"What kind of nerd am I?" chuckles Grippo, who scoured 6,000 dense pages of seemingly routine courtroom summaries and uncovered a nugget he calls "The Rosetta Stone" of the controversial case. Sacco's gun had been tampered with during the trial but still remained a key piece of evidence. In the court dockets, Grippo found entries for appeals about that ruling that apparently disappeared from the other court records. This proves judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, Grippo argues.

"Whoever was responsible for that obstruction neglected to eliminate the Docket Entries," Grippo writes, "the only mistake to an otherwise perfect alteration of the record of this case."

A founder of the American Italian Defense Association, Grippo once lost a lawsuit filed against "The Sopranos" complaining about that show's depiction of Italian-Americans. His self-published book should have a much greater chance of success.

"It is definitely the immigrant story," says Beverly Ottaviano, manuscript chairman of the Tuesday morning Barrington Writers Workshop, where Grippo came for the last two years to get feedback from other writers. Grippo says he also honed his book during Wednesday night meetings of that group.

"We love Ted," says Ottaviano. "We helped Ted get to a place where he could get his story out to a broader audience."

"With Malice Aforethought" is published through iUniverse and is available at iuniverse.com, barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com and bookstores.

"My passion," Grippo says, "is to try and set the record straight."