The life of an eminent Cantabrigian was cut short in 1980, when Anthony Galluccio, Sr. succumbed to cancer at the age of 63. This past Saturday at St. Peter’s Church in Central Square, friends and family members recalled the remarkable life of the Italian immigrant who went on to become a Harvard-educated lawyer, labor counsel for the state, World War II veteran, JFK cohort, Cambridge School Committee member, Red Sox farm team catcher, South Boston Polar Bear Club swimmer and, devoted and much-loved husband and father.

At the service, wife Nancy and children Anthony, Lo and Lissa shared memories and reflections of patriarch “Tony” as Reverend Gareth Evans and Minister of Music Matthew F. Burt led a heartfelt mass, providing a warm sanctuary from the unseasonably wet and chilly weather that lurked beyond the church’s wide-open door.

City Councilor Anthony Galluccio Jr.,who has a law degree from Suffolk and served as mayor of Cambridge from 2001-2002, and Lissa Galluccio, a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Rutgers who is married to Geoffrey Pardo, led gospel selections; Lo Galluccio read the poem “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, while mother Nancy, who is Chief Administrator for the Harvard/Smithsonian Astrophysical Institute, watched from the front row.

Tony Galluccio came over from Italy in 1923 on a boat with his adopted mother Cecelia, who dressed him in a monk-like St. Anthony-style garment for protection. His original name, Guerriero, meant “warrior,” according to Lo Galluccio. “The idea of being a warrior, to fight for a cause, to see life as a battlefield and not simply a garden or a journey, was passed down to us,” she said, adding that she often lights a candle to his memory in the downtown shrine to St. Anthony. “In those moments, the sense of mystery, the limits and the possibilities of a life can seem immense.”

Tony Galluccio graduated Harvard on a full scholarship in1939 and Harvard Law School in 1947 (while concurrently serving in World War II from 1941-1945). He marshaled the Italian vote in Cambridge for JFK’s first congressional race and became one of his special campaign advisors in 1952; he and wife Nancy attended JFK’s 1961 inauguration for their honeymoon. Initially appointed by Governor Furcolo, he served as attorney for the Department of Labor and Industries in Massachusetts from the late 1950s through the late 1970s and on the Cambridge School Committee for four terms. In 1959, he successfully took the Cambridge Election Commission to court over the right to list incumbent status on ballots. He belonged to the Polar Bear Club in South Boston, where men braved sub-zero winter temperatures to take a dip and then run along the beach. It is said, though, that his real dreams were, equally, to run for a higher public office, or to play major league baseball with the Red Sox.

The lengthiest commentary was provided by daughter Lo, a vocal artist and writer who followed her father’s tradition of a Harvard education attained by full scholarship.

“He showed us how sensual, emotional and intellectual elements come together, even in the great and sometimes strange and stressful world of America,” she said, noting that her father was never merely out to achieve or make a buck. “He wanted his life to stand for something against the 9-5 norm. And he was expressly Italian in his sensibilities and emotions.”

She recounted his sneaking her out to the movies in snowstorms or for ice-cream cones, and shedding tears at the national anthem before a baseball game. “I'll never forget him belting out part of an aria when he was shivering from that terrible disease,” she said. "’I could have been an opera singer’, he told me.” She went on to read “Chain,” by French poet Rene Char: "there is no absence that cannot be replaced." “I think Tony, at his most mediterranean would agree with the overall idea that the earth flows on, through grief and even tragedy, perhaps reinventing itself in unseen ways,” she said. I would say, in some ways, he never left us.”

Brother Anthony’s first election speech to the City Council, she observed, reflected her dad’s dedication to education and grassroots leadership. Lissa, she said, had excelled in her work with memory in infants, and was devoted to raising her son, Louis Anthony. “Lissa is gifted with the kind of practical and unflinching love that my mother has shown us through the years,” she said, noting that her mother’s devotion had been both brave and consistent. “While I have felt at times my own anger and sadness were so extreme over losing Dad, Lissa’s simple strength and ties to others have been a source of loyalty to me.”

Galluccio attributed her artistic bent to her father’s visionary temperament. “If it hadn't been for his death, I would surely have chosen a more conservative path. Becoming an artist was a way to reach Dad magically, through words and song.”

She quoted from El Desdichado, a poem by French writer Julia Kristeva from her book Black Sun about loss and grief, and also read a poem, "The Disinherited Poet," by 19^th century French poet Gerard de Nerval:

“Surely the sea of Italy was my father to me,” she concluded.