To know this dean at St. Joseph’s is to know his grandmother

Joseph A. DiAngelo, 76-year-old dean and professor of management at St. Joseph’s University in Merion, Pa., was the first person in his family to obtain a doctorate degree.

Camille DiAngelo sits with her grandchildren, from left: John, Louis and Joseph DiAngelo Jr.

When he was growing up, his paternal grandmother Camille DiAngelo wanted him to become an accountant so that he could always find work preparing people’s income taxes, and his brother to become a doctor. Ironically, the two brothers traded places. Each May however, Dean DiAngelo shakes hands with talented, newly minted accountants, ready to prepare filings for family businesses, not unlike Joe & Tony’s, the Italian grocery store once run by his dad and uncle. 

Dean DiAngelo described the store as a mini-Wawa that sold pasta (Ronzoni), meats and cheeses – prosciutto, salami, ricotta, and provolone, as well as canned goods, which he restocked regularly at 8 years old. If he did a good job, he got two scoops of Breyers Vanilla Ice Cream in a sugar cone.

The store in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia was a family affair, and his grandmother watched Dean DiAngelo and his two younger brothers, so that his parents and aunt and uncle could work.

DiAngelo said the store his dad and uncle ran was like a miniature Wawa that sold pasta, meats, cheeses and canned goods. If he did a good job stocking the shelves, he’d get two scoops of Breyers in a sugar cone.

“My grandmother used to always say to me in broken English, ‘Giuseppe, you’re going to go to college and you’re going to go to work with a shirt and tie and you’re going to get an education because they can never take that away from you,’ ” he said.

Unfortunately, Camille died of a stroke when Dean DiAngelo was only 10 years old, but he told me she had the greatest influence on him pursuing his education, proudly earning his bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s in 1970, followed by his MBA from Widener University in 1975, and doctorate from Temple University in 1986.

At his graduation from Temple, his dad put his hands on Dean DiAngelo’s shoulders and told him: “Just because you’re educated, doesn’t mean you’re smart. If I give you a hammer, you’ll still hit your hand.”

Dean DiAngelo says that his parents and grandmother were the smartest people he knew, even though they weren’t formally educated, although his dad studied training and development for a period on Hawk Hill. As it happens, that was the dean’s concentration in grad school. Like father, like son.

In 1962, when the store closed, Dean DiAngelo’s dad took a job with Food Fair, becoming the manager of the grocery section, training students graduating from St. Joe’s in the Academy of Food Marketing how to run retail/grocery stores.

“My dad was scared to death when Food Fair sent him to campus to earn college credit, because he only had a sixth-grade education,” DiAngelo said. “Him and his brothers and sisters had to drop out of school and go to work, after their dad died in a quarry of a heart-attack.”

DiAngelo never got the chance to meet his paternal grandfather, but he spent a lot of time with his grandmother in their row house in West Philadelphia, just off Fairmont Park.

“Out of that neighborhood, came many doctors, lawyers, CEOs of companies, skilled tradesmen, and major contractors because it wasn’t just my grandmother with the mindset that we should make something of ourselves,” he said.

Born in Abruzzo, she and her six best friends came over on the boat and settled on the same block. Once a week, the “band of seven,” as she and her friends were called, gathered to play Bingo, talking about their kids and how they were going to go to school.

They were part of the large immigrant, Italian, Catholic community, that led Mother Cabrini and her missionary sisters to found St. Donato’s, the Parish in the then- Haddington/Overbrook section of the city where Dean DiAngelo worshipped with his parents, brothers, grandmother, and classmates.

Dean DiAngelo’s kept in touch with several members of his eighth-grade class, who were either children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Retired now, they all started their own businesses or went to college.

“A lot of my classmates from St. Donato’s went to St. Joseph’s at night for years because there was no financial aid then. There were no Pell grants or state grants either,” he said. “I came to St. Joseph’s on a food marketing scholarship from Food Fair. The tuition was $900, and I used to have to go to work in the summertime to earn the rest.”

After graduating with his bachelor’s, instead of working for Girard Bank, now affiliated with Wells Fargo, Dean DiAngelo accepted a full-time teaching position at his high school, thus kicking off a career in education, now spanning more than four decades. It’s all thanks to the emphasis his grandmother placed on getting an education.

The rest of the story – where he taught and coached baseball, and everything in-between, is all about the connections Dean DiAngelo made along with the way with other Italians, especially, whose grandmothers used to tell them to never forget where they came from.

So many of us owe a debt of gratitude to our parents and grandparents and our friends and neighbors, for being courageous enough to come to this country, without speaking the language and with very little but the clothes on their backs. I have no doubt Camille DiAngelo would be proud of her grandson, if she could see firsthand, his many contributions to academia – as an exemplary teacher, scholar, and longest-serving dean in the Philadelphia Metro region.

Most importantly though, is how Dean DiAngelo credits his Italian roots – Camille’s love, especially, with instilling lessons in him that continue to influence so much of what he does on campus at St. Joe’s, and at home, with his wonderful wife, kids, and grandkids.

Nikki Palladino is a writer, instructor, and wine enthusiast living in South Jersey. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines as well as online poetry collections. At-work on her debut novel about first-generation Italian Americans whose parents own competing Italian restaurants, Nikki is also an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s University and a Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas. Follow her @nikki_pall.