Well, as i just returned from california and visiting family, i was in a curious mood. I borrowed a cool book from my dad Amore Di Sicilia which is a book of poetry written in Sicilian dialect with Italian translations. Reading this in the airport got me thinking about doing a little family history research, so i decided to googlewhack around for the name "Buccola" which was my grandmother's maiden name on my dad's side. To my surprise one of my more infamous relatives came up

Filippo Buccola was my father's uncle great-uncle, so I guess that makes him my great-uncle, - though I'm not actually positive of this, he might actually have been my Grandmother's uncle, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense as she died in 1966 and Zio Fifi (ok i think irishman just blew beer up his nose) died in 1992 or so. I'm pretty sure he was her older brother (he was 103 when he died). Anyhow, the pic was the first google hit, then I refined to Filippo Buccola and found this on a gaming site forum board

"Filippo “Phil” Buccola, head of the mafia in the area following the demise of Gaspare Messina in 1924, ran bootlegging, racketeering, and loansharking operations in the area through the 1930’s. These were limited operations, due to the dominance of the Irish boss from South Boston, Frankie Wallace. With the successful murder of Wallace and the end of prohibition, Buccola scrambled to take the opportunity to invest in more legitimate fronts for his racketeering. These involved all sorts of things, but the book mainly details Buccola’s construction and property interests. Buccola became aware of precisely how much revenue could be gained (and laundered) in construction costs when he saw how long it took to construct the nearby Sumner tunnel. Beginning in 1934, the year Sumner Tunnel opened, Buccola bought much of the property in the area that Pickman’s place was supposed to be, usually badgering the current Italian-American landowners to bring the costs down, and tore down all of the older ramshackle structures, replacing them with sturdier brick apartments. Much of the construction expenditures used in the process were actually a means to launder illegitimate earnings and turn it into viable capital, with which Buccola then invested in legitimate interests all throughout Boston, while continuing with racketeering, numbers, and loan-sharking. The book, though written in the 1990’s, doesn’t get much past the 1950’s, presumably because there has been little change in North End construction since that time, save for the construction of the Callhan Tunnel, which opened to the public in 1961. By this time, Buccola had retired to Sicily, but his successor, Ray Patriarca, successfully acquired a share of the construction interests in building the second, sister tunnel to the Sumner.[Note that these are well traversed commuter tunnels, veering somewhat to the southeast of the North End and have nothing to do with the ancient tunnel systems Pickman described to Thurber]." From: www.enworld.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-58773

This led me to another site which had more:

"Phil Buccola is the first New England Mafia leader that much is known about. Buccola arrived from Sicily just before 1920 and became boss within a few years. His organization was constantly challenged by the larger Irish gang but was able to hold it's own especially within Boston's North End.. According to O'Neil and Lehr, in their book, "The Underboss" (not the Gravano book), a key event happened in 1931 that preserved the independence of the Cosa Nostra Family. A large Irish gang, led by Frank Wallace, was attempting to intimidating the Italians in order to establish Irish dominance. Wallace and some subordinates were ambushed and killed at a clarification meeting. This, the authors claim, preserved the independence of the Cosa Nostra gang, which then could go on, over the ensuing decades, to achieve their own exalted position.

"Things were different in Providence, Rhode Island, which later became the headquarters of the New England Family. In contrast to Boston, Providence was predominately Italian. Unhindered by competition, the Italian gangsters quickly established their authority and most importantly, began influencing politicians and corrupting police. These were, and still are, the keys to any long term strength of a criminal organization.

"But in Boston, Buccola was the top mobster. And when The Commission was formed in 1931 following the Castellammarese War among mob families in New York, The Commission formally recognized Bucola as boss of all New England. With the backing of more than 20 other Cosa Nostra Families across the United States, Bucola becamse a much more formidable leader than he had been.

"Buccola, however, gradually became tired of the constant strife in the life of a Mafia boss and by the mid 1950's, when Senator Estes Kefauver began making noise and establishing committees to investigate organized crime, Buccola had returned to Sicily where he lived quietly for decades.

"The 1950's would see a number of events unfold within New England's Cosa Nostra that would seriously increase it's power. The unambitious Buccola was replaced by Raymond Patriarca…" From http://www.ganglandnews.com/column44.htm

It is tradition in Sicilian families not to talk about the family to people outside the family, and especially never to talk about family members in other sorts of families outside of your own family, so I knew as much about Zio Fifi and was never supposed to talk about it. Which always made it strangely ironic whenever people would tease me about being Sicilian "eh mafiosi" and whatnot. My grandmother kept her brother and her brother's influence away from my dad and his brothers and thankfully the blight of la mafia in my family died with Zio Fifi, though his legacy actually aided my uncle for awhile when he first opened his restaurant in Palermo (he wasn't bothered by people in the protection rackets out of "respect" for my infamous relative).

My memories of him are those of a nine year old. In 1978 we lived in Madrid, which afforded us the first opportunity to visit my Dad's side of the family in Palermo. We went to Palermo for both Easter and Christmas that year, and while we were at my Uncle Carmelo's house for Easter, my father brought us over to visit Zio Fifi (Uncle Phil) - a paying of respects so to speak. My father was not eager for us to visit, nor was my mother, but it would have been extremely disrespectful for us not to pay respects to Uncle Phil as he had never met my sister or myself. Much later, about ten years ago, I found out why my father was angry with Phil at the time, and also came to understand that Filippo Buccola was a selfish man who put himself above everyone, including family.

I knew none of this at the time; I met an old man who had a wheelchair, but could walk around with a cane; a man who had a big German Shepard that he loved; a man that had an oxygen tank, a live-in nurse, and a very fiftiesesque home that was next to the big rambling old villa that my father had grown up in. He gave us candy and smiled at us and took me and my sister for a walk in the garden. He spoke to my father in Italian and me in English - I wish I remember what he said to me, I remember his arm on my shoulder and pointing at the orange trees in the backyard, but that's about it. My father stayed with us, and now that I know what was going on, I think he was giving my father a ration of shit over money.

Filippo Buccola must have been around 90 years old when I met him. We did not see him when we came back for Christmas later that year (at least I don't remember going over to the house, but my mother and father probably "had to" go over to visit).