Sempre avanti!” Aldo P. Biagiotti, Sr., aged 95, passed away peacefully at home on Friday, May 31, 2024.
A Ridgefield native, he grew up in Titicus district, and attended school at the two-room Titicus schoolhouse.
As a boy, he enjoyed fishing and hunting with his father Alfredo, an emigrant along with his wife Giovanna from North-central Italy’s Marche region. Alfredo worked at Wheeler’s Farm in Ridgebury, where young Aldo was encouraged by the farm’s famous owner, publisher and journalist John N. Wheeler, to become a writer. When asked how to improve, Wheeler told him to “read Dickens,” which he would do for a lifetime.
Aldo attended Ridgefield High School, where he played basketball, baseball and football; in baseball as part of a ‘brother battery’ with the late Fabio (Fibber) Biagiotti. He graduated from RHS in 1947, and from University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1951, with a degree in English.
He enlisted in the Korean War and became a special agent for the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. While stationed in the Canal Zone in Panama, his exploration of the surrounding jungles inspired one of his earliest published articles, “In Search of the Golden Frog”.
After the war, he was with the State Department in Italy, worked as an investigator for the New York Waterfront Commission, became a civilian intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Italy and the U.S., and was a federal agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In Ridgefield, he served on the Police Commission, and from 1971 to 1990 taught Italian and Spanish at Stamford High School; he also hosted ‘Buon Giorno Amici,’ a Sunday morning radio show carrying Italian music and cultural news for WREF.
Aldo loved animals and the rural life; in 1968 he and his wife Gloria Perini bought the old family farm on North Salem Road, which would come to be known as Casa di Campagna. Here they raised their family amongst cattle, donkeys, sheep, chickens, ducks, pigs, guinea fowl, and a long series of well-loved cats and dogs. Farming and gardening were reflected in many of the articles Aldo contributed to publications such as National Gardener and Mother Earth News; he invented the character Farmer Fullmoon, whose adventure in ‘300 Halloween Pumpkins’ was one of the most popular of the children’s stories he published in Highlights for Children.
When he retired from teaching in 1990, Aldo began researching and writing Impact: The Historical Account of the Italian Immigrants of Ridgefield, Connecticut. A nearly four-year labor of love, it chronicles the struggles and successes of his beloved hometown’s Italian-American population; as he wrote in the book’s introduction, “They held fast to their dreams… forged new lives, established sound family foundations, and contributed richly to the social, cultural, political, and economic life of the community.”
Aldo himself contributed richly to his community. He was generous with his time, talent, and treasure. Long before the advent of Google Translate, he was frequently asked to translate letters from relatives abroad, and loved to keep in touch with ‘famiglia estesa’ in Italy. He was a willing teacher of the art and science of winemaking, crafting many gallons of both red and white each fall in the stone root cellar set deeply into the Casa di Campagna hillside. Generations of friends and family communed at the Biagiotti farm for celebrations big and small.
Aldo was preceded in death by his wife of nearly sixty years, Gloria Biagiotti.
He is survived by four children: Aldo Biagiotti Jr. and his wife Kate, Paul Biagiotti and his wife Polly, Ted Biagiotti and his wife, Marilyn, and Lisa Lyman. He is also survived by 7 grandchildren - Nathaniel Biagiotti, Hadley Biagiotti, Jakob (Shelby) Lyman, Katie Biagiotti, Jillian Lyman, Olivia Biagiotti, and Grace Biagiotti - and a great-grandchild, Caleb Lyman.
We are grateful for the care given to Aldo by all his medical caregivers, especially those of Harbor Chase in Branford, CT and several rehabilitation facilities where he convalesced in his final years.
Langston Hughes was one of his favorite poets, and of his poems Aldo had a favorite line which he quoted often: “Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly.”
Funeral services and interment will be private. There will be no calling hours. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to ASPCA or the National Humane Society.