Anthony 'Fat' Pellegrini, Activist In Nonantum, 78

[DGH]

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Anthony "Fat" Pellegrini, a salty-tongued community activist who was
the unofficial mayor of Newton's [Massachusetts] Nonantum village for
a half-century, and who had suffered from emphysema and lung cancer,
said his wife, Camille died Tuesday, February 24, 2004, at his home,
at the age of 78.

"There was nobody like Fat," said Newton Alderman Anthony "Sal"
Salvucci, a longtime Nonantum resident, said yesterday. "He would help
anyone. He did a lot of good for a lot of people."

Local realtor Dino Rossi hung a sign in the window of his Watertown
Street offices in Mr. Pellegrini's memory. "Thanks for doing so much
for our community," he wrote. "You'll always be in our hearts."

Rossi said he created the sign out of respect for the man whom he
viewed as a Robin Hood figure, defending the honor of their
tight-knit, blue-collar neighborhood of Italian immigrants nicknamed
"The Lake." As a child, Rossi recalled, many of his Christmas gifts
came from the gala holiday party that Mr. Pellegrini organized every
year.

"He always was watching out for the little guy and The Lake," Rossi
said. "He was the guy who used to make sure we weren't overlooked,
that needy people and children weren't overlooked."

Mr. Pellegrini's passion for his neighborhood -- a corner of the city
so insular that some old-timers created a special dialect of Italian,
Romany, and English -- turned him into a local legend over the years.

He became known as a tough guy with a heart of gold who would tangle
with local politicians -- a man who would happily break a rule, or
law, to help people in need. One night, he and some friends broke into
the local pharmacy to swipe a hospital bed and wheelchair for a dying
neighbor, leaving a promise to settle the debt later.

Mr. Pellegrini admitted to several other brushes with the law. He
attended parochial school at Our Lady Help of Christians as a boy, but
abandoned school for a more exciting, and risky, life running numbers
between local barrooms, he said in a 2001 interview with The Boston
Globe.

Born into an extended Italian-American Lake family, Mr. Pellegrini was
born and raised on Clinton Street, where as a chubby youngster he
earned the nickname "Fat." Although he became a scrappy, wiry young
man, the nickname stuck.

After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II, he returned
home to The Lake, and in 1947, spotted a pretty girl named Camille
Covino at the old Strand movie house in Watertown. He was 22, and she
just 14, "which didn't go over too well with my parents," Camille
Pellegrini recalled yesterday.

The two were close for more than a half-century, and married in recent
years, she said.

Mr. Pellegrini worked for local construction and paving companies,
and, more quietly, as a local bookmaker for many years, his wife said.

But his real passion was hanging out at diners, parks, and doughnut
shops along Watertown Street in the heart of The Lake, talking to
friends and raising money and drafting volunteers for his
philanthropic fund -- the Nonantum Children's Christmas Party
Association.

Before falling ill several years ago, Mr. Pellegrini also organized an
annual senior citizens picnic in Hawthorne Park, and up until the
weeks before his death, sent fruit baskets to local families mourning
the illness or loss of a loved one, friends said.

Mr. Pellegrini was a longtime member of the American Legion, the Sons
of Italy, the Newton Soccer Club, the Newton Elks, and the St. Mary of
Carmen Society. He was also an honorary member of the Hibernians of
Watertown.