Annamaria de Nicolais Napolitano
Feb. 15, 1937-Feb. 13, 2006
Stanford, California
Annamaria de Nicolais Napolitano, an icon of the Bay Area Italian and Italian-American community, died February 13, two days before her 69th birthday, after an 18-month battle with cancer.
A vibrant woman of seemingly endless energy, Ms. Napolitano co-founded several Italian language and cultural institutions in the Bay Area, most recently the Istituto Educazione Italiana, located on the Menlo College campus in Atherton.The nonprofit institute was launched in 2003 as a center for Italian language and culture studies, and Ms. Napolitano served as its academic program director and treasurer even while directing Stanford University's Italian language program.
Ms. Napolitano began her teaching career after graduating from the Istituto Orientale in Naples, Italy, where she was born. After marrying, she and her husband immigrated to the United States, settling in the Bay Area. Her husband died after a lengthy illness, but she continued to immerse herself in the life of the local Italian and Italian-American community.
She was hired as a junior lecturer in Italian at Stanford in the early 1970s, eventually becoming a senior lecturer in the Department of French and Italian. She retired from Stanford last month "after a career spanning 35 years of accomplishments," according to her husband, Mario Fusco.
Among her accomplishments was the 1976 opening of Casa Italiana, a residence for Stanford students interested in Italian language and culture. Ms. Napolitano was its first director, and "during her tenure the Casa became famous for the activities it sponsored, the personages it hosted from Italy, the caliber of the Stanford students who resided there, and, not least, the excellence of the cuisine," Mr. Fusco said.
"Annamaria was also key in ensuring the success of Stanford's Florence campus, and coordinated important exchanges between Stanford and Italian entities," he said. Ms. Napolitano, who lived in Emerald Hills, near Woodside, wrote an authoritative Italian grammar manual that is still used in a number of universities worldwide, according to Mr. Fusco, who also teaches the Italian language. She published her first collection of poems in "Sextet 1, Six Powerful American Voices." And last year, she introduced her book of poems, "Of Deserts and Rivers," with a reading at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in San Francisco.
She was active in numerous Bay Area Italian cultural organizations, including the San Francisco branch of COMITES, a volunteer group that helps Italian citizens living abroad.
Diagnosed with liver cancer in July 2004, Ms. Napolitano was given six months to live. "It is a tribute to her strength and endurance that she has beat this estimate by a year," her husband said.
In addition to Mr. Fusco, Ms. Napolitano is survived by a brother and two nieces, who live in Naples.
Tags: teacher/educator
