Collection for person entities.
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Giovanni "John" Mancuso
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He was born in Cosenza, Italy and came to Grand Junction, Colorado with his wife and children in 1909, when he was 25 years old. He worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.
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Giovanni Battista "John" "Bonny" Bonforte
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He was born in Brooklyn, New York to Paolo “Paul” Bonforte and Mattia “Mary” Bonforte, both immigrants from Sicily, Italy. He attended New Utrecht High School there, and then went to New York University, completing his B.S. in Aeronautics. On January 5, 1918, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. His application for an appointment at West Point was rejected. He was assigned instead to a medical corps that served in the Vosges Mountains in France on the German border. He later served in Germany and Poland.
He was an engineer working in the construction field, his lifelong career, although he did spend two years selling securities. Those two years corresponded with his brief stay in Grand Junction, from 1937 to 1939. While in Grand Junction, he joined the Last Squad Club, a group of World War I veterans. He again served in the U.S. Army during World War II, this time in the Aleutian Islands. During his service from January 3, 1941 to November 20, 1945, he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Bonforte also wrote two books on the Greek thinker Epictetus: The Philosophy of Epictetus (1955), and Epictetus: A Dialogue in Common Sense (1974). Both books were published by Philosophical Library, and are still read today.
He married Mary Louise Gamble on March 28, 1982. Together they had two children. He was a member of the Rotary Club, Lions Club, the A.F.A. Officers Association, and the director of the National Association of Home Builders. The most vivid memory he could recall was "standing under a 6-inch gun aboard the Northern Pacific in March 1918 while it was firing at a German submarine."
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Giuseppe "Joseph" Pepe
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An Italian immigrant and farmer who settled in the Loma and Fruita areas in the early Twentieth century. He came in 1885 as a railroad worker for D&RG, replacing the narrow gauge line with a broader one. He then purchased land, built homes, and returned to Italy to meet and marry Angelina Pepe, a woman from the village of Vailo, in an arranged marriage. He returned with her to Mesa County in 1904.
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Giuseppe S. "Joseph" Chiaro
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An immigrant from Italy who came to the United States in 1908. He settled in the Pomona area of Mesa County, Colorado, on a truck farm with bottomland in the Colorado River. He wrote back to Italy asking for a mail-order bride. Rosina “Rose” Paola arrived in June 1913, and they were married on July 20, 1913. Together they had nine children. After picking and washing produce, he and his children sold it out of a truck in areas around Grand Junction. His son and Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Frank Chiaro recalls that Joseph would often park in alleyways, and women would come out and buy vegetables directly off of the truck, with as many as eight or nine crowded around the truck at a time.
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Gizmo the Dog
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Gizmo is a Jack Russell Terrier owned by Matthew Enochs, given to Matt on his 50th birthday by managers at the Old Town Hot Springs. Gizmo accompanied Matt to work everyday at his job as Facilities Director at the iconic downtown Steamboat Springs hot springs.
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