Lida Allegrini dies; she helped build bridges between U.S. and her native Italy

As a girl growing up in Tuscany, Lida Allegrini harvested wild berries and dipped her net into a stream to catch minnows to fry for dinner. She washed her clothes in the river near her hometown of Colognora di Compito.

She was 7 when she first met her father. He was in Chicago, where he’d immigrated ahead of her and her mother and started a wholesale banana business at the South Water Market.

She grew into a stylish young woman who became the May Queen at Harrison High School. Her clerical skills, outgoing personality and command of English and la bella lingua made her a valuable asset when she worked for the Italian consulate in Chicago in the years Italy was being rebuilt after World War II. In addition to helping to manage the consulate and plan parties, she schooled the aristocrats in the diplomatic corps on the mundanities of working-class Chicago — like having to take out the trash for the garbage trucks.

Mrs. Allegrini, 95, who died in March of a heart attack, was one of the last living witnesses to Italian aviator Italo Balbo’s triumphant arrival in Chicago at the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair after a 6,100-mile, 47.5-hour transatlantic journey.

In the days before Balbo’s achievements were eclipsed by his allegiance to fascism and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, he was admired by many for his navigational skills.

In a memoir, Mrs. Allegrini recalled the excitement of the day in July 1933 when more than a million people watched from the lakefront for his squadron of 24 seaplanes.

“The streets of Little Italy were deserted as everyone left early in the day to secure a good place from which to view the approach of the seaplanes,” she wrote. “After what seemed like an eternity to me, I spotted what appeared to be (a) flock of small birds flying in the distance. . . . the birds seemed to get larger and larger and then everyone began to shout, ‘They’re coming!’ ”

The daughter of Lavinia and Ernesto Giometti, she grew up near Lucca, Italy. In 1931, after she and her mother sailed to America on the SS Conte Grande to reunite with her father, she could still recall the football field-sized swath of luggage she saw at Ellis Island.

Like many from northern Italy, the Giomettis settled near 24th Street and Oakley Avenue.

She went to Pickard grade school and Italian classes at St. Michael’s Church on 24th Place. As the No. 1-ranked student at her Italian school, she was awarded a trip to her homeland. But “because she was a girl, the school officials would not let her go,” her son said. “She was still complaining about that injustice into her 90s.”

And because she was blond and blue-eyed, people “kept trying to tell her she wasn’t Italian,” he said.

On warm summer nights, she’d recall how her neighbors sat on their front steps talking with each other before retiring inside to play the card game Briscola and enjoy a biscotti or glass of wine.

Since the Giomettis were one of the first families in their neighborhood to have a phone, she’d  have to relay messages to her phone-less cousin Sylvana. Mrs. Allegrini wrote that she’d “run down two flights of stairs, take a short cut through an alley, across a prairie, cross the street and stand on the sidewalk in front of the building where she lived and holler ‘Silvana’ at the top of my voice until she heard me and opened the window so I could inform her that she had a phone call.”

After high school, she enjoyed dancing at the old Trianon and Paradise ballrooms and worked for Central National Bank, where she met bank examiner Vincent Allegrini. Their first date was at the Empire Room in the Palmer House. The Allegrinis, who lived for decades in Elmwood Park, were married from 1948 until his death in 2004.

In 1947, she saw Italy’s postwar rubble and devastation up close. She and her father flew by plane to visit their relatives, a journey that took 23.5 hours with refueling stops in Detroit, Newfoundland, Shannon, Zurich and Rome. After her return, she encouraged Chicagoans and business leaders to invest in Italy, her son said.

In the 1950s, she landed a job at the Italian consulate.

“She was fashion-conscious until the day she died,” often wearing Italian shoes and a gold bracelet from Italy, her son said.

Mrs. Allegrini, who lived most recently at Brookdale senior living in Des Plaines, is also survived by two grandchildren. Services have been held.