TCNJ

20 SPRING 2017 HIS FAMILY'S STORY IS AN IMMIGRANT EPIC familiar in New Jersey, but in double speed — from steerage to the Supreme Court in two generations. His father, born Salvatore Alati in a tiny village in Reggio Calabria, the southern tip of Italy, was six months old when he arrived in the United States. The family settled in the Italian enclave of Chambersburg in Trenton. Justice Alito's maternal grandfather had a steady job at the Roebling steel mill; his paternal grandfather had a more precarious living as a manual laborer. T he basketball team from what is now known as The College of New Jersey traveled south in January 1935 for a game in Washington, D.C., where something happened that troubled the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper so deeply that he couldn't let it stand without comment. The editorial he wrote, bearing the headline "A Tragedy of Errors," recounted "an embarrassing affair involving the worst in racial animosity and sectionalism." The game was against Wilson Teachers College, an all-white school, but TCNJ — then State Normal School and State Teachers College at Trenton — had one black player. Wilson refused to let him take the court. The State coaches acceded to Wilson's demand and benched him, losing both the game, 39–13, and, the editor argued, the school's moral standing. "A severing of all future encounters with institutions differing on the Negro situation appears to be the only solution," Samuel A. Alito '35 wrote. "He told me about it, but he didn't tout himself because of it," says his son, Samuel A. Alito Jr., an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006. "He did say the college president wasn't too happy about the editorial." The early life of our parents is a story whose themes are embedded within us, but whose plot often eludes us. So, in November 2016, the justice contacted TCNJ, hoping to fill some gaps in that plot. Justice Alito's mother, Rose Fradusco Alito '35, graduated from State in the same class as his father. "I am attempting to gather information about our family to pass on to our children and would like to provide a picture of my parents' college years," he wrote. During an interview in his office at the Supreme Court, Alito echoes the regret of many people who have lost their parents before asking all the questions they wanted to ask. His father died in 1987; his mother in 2013. "I didn't sit down with them and get their stories," Alito says. "I wish I did." The early life of our parents is a story whose themes are embedded within us, but whose plot often eludes us. Alito, describing his mother's mother, who had also been born in Italy. "So for her daughter to go to college was quite a big step." The college that Rose and Samuel Sr. attended had taken a big step, too. They were in the first class to graduate after it had moved to Ewing Township from its original home on Clinton Avenue in Trenton. Green Hall was new when they took classes there, the first building on the new campus, and their diplomas were signed by Roscoe West, the president for whom the school mascot, Roscoe the Lion, is named. Rose and Samuel Sr. lived on the same block, graduated from the same high school — Trenton Central — and trained to be teachers at the same college, but knew each other so casually that his inscription in her 1935 yearbook was distinctly unromantic: "Luck to a classmate and a neighbor," he wrote. "He had a very hard childhood, and he didn't like to talk about it much," Alito says about his father, the oldest of four, who was 13 when his own father died. He keeps a copy of his father's Italian birth certificate on the fireplace mantel in his office, which was previously occupied by two fellow New Jersey–born justices, Antonin Scalia and William J. Brennan Jr. "The information came out in little bits and pieces at various times." Both of his parents were the first in their respective families to go to college. "He had no money and was going to get a factory job, but he got a little scholar- ship," says Alito, referring to his father, who then bought a used suit to wear to class. "It was a big leap." It was a similarly large leap for the girl who grew up the youngest of six siblings on Hudson Street, just around the corner from the Alitos' home on Pearl Street. "My grandmother came from the traditions and habits and mores of rural southern Italy," says Family ties Top: 1935 Seal photos of Fradusco and Alito. Bottom: Alito thumbs through snapshots of his parents.

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