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Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Saturday, April 8, 2023. This is the first chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Welcome. Give us a little bit about you. Tell us your date of birth, your
place of birth, and a little bit about your family, starting with your
grandparents.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My name is Katherine Aquino Mazzaferri. I was born May 14, 1947, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My maternal grandparents were Michael
(Michele) Aquino and Rebecca Kaplan. Michael was born in Italy in 1880,
and he came here when he was just 16. On the ship manifest, it says he
was a peasant. My grandmother, Rebecca Kaplan, was born in Brooklyn.
She and my grandfather met somehow in New York City. I don’t know
exactly how. Her parents disowned her for marrying my Catholic
grandfather.
On my dad’s side, my paternal grandmother, Antoinette Venturi,
was born in Italy in 1893, and she came here with her parents, Rocco
Venturi and Angela Mormando when she was just 6. My paternal
grandfather, Domenic (Domenico) Santo Mazzaferri, was born in Pisticci,
Italy, in 1881. He was 21 when he came to this country.
MS. STEWARD: Your grandmother was disowned because she was Jewish and married a
Catholic peasant?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right.
MS. STEWARD: Can you tell us a little bit more about how that impacted your family?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. It was I think a point of great sadness for my mother that she never
got to know her mom’s family. There was one aunt who would come to
visit occasionally, but that was it. My uncles attempted to see their
grandfather, but he refused them. I think in those days in particular, those
religious differences were significant.
MS. STEWARD: Can you tell us how old your grandparents were when they married and
about the family that your mom grew up in?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. My grandmother was either 16 or 17. The marriage license is
partially torn. My grandfather was 24. They wound up having twelve
children. They purchased three plots of land in Brooklyn, so they were
able to plant vegetables and plant fruit trees providing enough food to feed
the family for the year. My grandfather would put the boys to work
planting, and my grandmother would put the girls to work cooking and
cleaning.
MS. STEWARD: How many children were in the family?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were twelve in all. They were able to survive the 1918 pandemic
and through the financial hardships of the Depression. It was an interesting
time. This family worked hard and stayed together. My grandfather
worked in a shoe factory, and he was very productive. When the labor
union was starting, management tried to convince him not to go with the
union but to be part of management. However, he felt it was important to
be with his colleagues, so he declined. But he did learn on his own how to
make shoes for deformed feet. He would pick up pieces of leather from the
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floor in the factory and experiment on how to make shoes for a foot that
was deformed. He wound up opening a shoe shop on his home property.
Of course, he and my grandmother would argue about how much to
charge. My grandfather had a soft spot for people and didn’t want to
charge too much, but my grandmother pointed out they had many mouths
to feed. My grandmother started a candy store on the property, so the two
of them were industrious, figuring out ways to support the family.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s talk about your dad’s side of the family.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My grandfather, Domenico Mazzaferri, was an inspector for the fire
department. He was also very hard working, and my grandmother and he
had three children, my dad, and his two sisters. They also had a garden in
the back of their house. They had a house on 57th Street in Brooklyn.
Sadly, my grandfather Domenico was inspecting a building and there was
a fire. He was overcome. So, he passed away when my dad was just 15.
My dad, who had dreamt of going to medical school to become a doctor,
abandoned that idea and dropped out of high school and went to work for
a printing company. He learned every aspect of that business and later
started a lithography company. His sisters also ultimately worked as well.
My grandmother, whom I called “Gram,” was the grandparent that
I saw the most growing up. She was a wonderful, warm, kind woman who
cooked a lot, baked a lot, had great stories about Italy. She was a
wonderful person to have in one’s life.
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MS. STEWARD: Both of your grandfathers came from Italy. Did your family have
connections with Italy back and forth during this time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Not a lot during this time. I guess what I know most about is my
Grandmother Mazzaferri who corresponded with my grandfather’s sister
in Italy over many years. In fact, many years later when I was in college, I
took a trip to see the family, to see my grandfather’s sister, my great-aunt
in Italy.
MS. STEWARD: Your parents met because they grew up in the same neighborhood. Can
you talk more about your parents?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. They both attended the Catholic church just around the corner on 57th
or 56th Street. They knew each other from the neighborhood. My mother’s
name was Rose, and my dad’s name was Joseph. I think he was intrigued
by this creative gal, and my mom thought he was very handsome. They
ultimately got married and moved to New Jersey and later to Philadelphia
for my dad’s work. He stayed in the printing industry. He learned the
business, as they say, and, in fact, became quite knowledgeable to the
point that he developed new ways to do lithography. He wrote books on it.
He was very industrious, very creative.
My mom, for her part, was incredibly creative. She loved art from
the beginning, from high school on. She painted in oils. When my parents
moved to Philadelphia, she studied modern dance. She even did
choreography. They were both engaged, involved individuals, and my dad
would talk a great deal about his work and business to my mom, so she
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enjoyed hearing about it even though she didn’t have any first-hand
experience.
MS. STEWARD: Your mom’s mom, your grandmother, was a voracious reader by all
accounts, and she also was interested in art, and that was passed down to
your mom. Can you talk about both of those experiences and how it
impacted you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Indeed. It’s said that my maternal grandmother read every book in the
local public library in Brooklyn. My mom would read all the time. She
loved to read, and she loved art. I didn’t so much learn art as I did music.
Although my mom didn’t know music herself, she felt it was important for
us, my sister Valerie and me, to be educated in music. She got us piano
lessons, my sister also had voice lessons, and I studied the cello. My dad
loved Villalobos, and there was a particular cello concerto that he loved
and that he’d play a lot on the record player. I decided when I was in fifth
grade to study the cello, and that instrument has been with me all these
many, many years.
MS. STEWARD: There’s an artistic creative side of your family but tell us about your aunts
and your uncles and more extended family. What kind of people were
they?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My aunt in Philadelphia, my Aunt Carolyn and her husband Dan, were
very much activists in the community. When I was young, they took me
on a housing demonstration not too far from where we lived. I didn’t
understand it, but my aunt explained what was going on. There were some
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white people in the neighborhood who had dogs that were barking, and
people were shouting, and Aunt Carolyn explained to me that it was
important to be brave. She told me that we had the law on our side, and we
needed to demonstrate and show that we were in support of the black
people who wanted to be able to live in that neighborhood. She explained
racial covenants to me in a very simple way that helped me understand
how serious and problematic they were.
MS. STEWARD: How old were you at that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was probably about ten. I had another aunt, my Aunt Florence, who lived
in New York City, whom I got to know well when I went to college at
NYU. She was very creative and active. She was an actress, and a
playwright. One play she wrote was called “The Winner.” It was a play
about young people who are debating about whether to stay in school or
not and having this dilemma in their lives about how to move forward. I
don’t really know how she got started, but she worked with young people
who were in the Job Corps and had them help her with this play. They
would act in the play. She had some other adults in the theatre,
specifically, she engaged two of my other aunts to be in the play. She had
some other individuals as well, and I participated when I could. I would
help her. I’d do anything that had to be done. I would tutor some of the
kids. I would help sweep the floor. I would act in the play. She performed
this play from high school to high school in some of the toughest
neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. During the
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intermission, she would invite some of the students to the stage to act out
the second half, to see how Tommy, the protagonist, should move forward
in his life. Should he stay in school, or should he drop out? She and her
co-director, Amelia Romano, would meet with this new cast who would
decide how they wanted to end the play. The house would go dark, the
lights would come up, and the students from the school would act out the
second act, how they would end the story.
Later, Florence’s team would act out the play the way it was
written. But what it showed was there are so many paths one can follow in
one’s life. It was a remarkable play and experience, and my aunt was a
special individual who gave me a lot of ideas about how to live.
MS. STEWARD: On the one hand, you had your parents, your dad the printer is into
lithography and your mom’s into the creative, the arts, the dance, the
literature, then you have this Aunt Carolyn who’s this activist, then you
have your other Aunt, Florence, who takes both of those and mixes them
together in terms of using plays and creative ventures to create more
activism and to illustrate the point. So you really had a very interesting
family upbringing. You mentioned your sister Valerie earlier. Can you say
a little more about growing up with her?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My sister Valerie is two years older. We were best friends growing up. It
was so great to have her in the school ahead of me because the teachers
already knew the Mazzaferri family. I didn’t have to break the ice, and she
was well-loved.
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My parents decided to send us to a Quaker elementary school. So,
my kindergarten through fourth grades were spent at Greene Street Friends
School in Germantown. Val was there through the sixth grade. It was
really a remarkable experience. I think it was the grounding for me to
understand the importance of diversity, to accept people as they are and
how to be kind. It was a very wonderful start to school life.
There was a Quaker Meeting every Wednesday morning, so we’d
all go to the meetinghouse. It was a very quiet, peaceful place. We’d bring
our bibles. I had my Catholic bible, other people had their Jewish bibles,
or what have you. We all went with our own religious books. The Meeting
was really a place for people to speak if they were so moved. Normally the
students did not, but people could. You would rise if you wanted to speak
and say what you needed to say.
The principal, Ms. Branson, was a very respectful, respected
individual. I’ll never forget her and what she was like and what she
represented for that school.
MS. STEWARD: You grew up going to this Quaker school. What was your family life like
with your immediate family?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My dad loved woodworking. I think he taught himself how to craft things.
He made what we called a “contraption” for Val and me. It was like a
wagon, and it was made from wood. We lived in a twin house at that
point, and there was a long driveway that ran behind the houses, and all
the kids would want their chance to be on the contraption.
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When Val and I went to overnight camp one summer, my dad and
my mom created a little theatre in our basement. My dad took apart a giant
desk, making the top of the desk the floor of the stage. He made wooden
boxes to hold up the “stage floor.” My mother sewed drapes for the
curtain. So, we had a real live stage for the neighborhood. It was the cat’s
meow. It was so much fun. We would put on plays. We’d have the parents
come. It was quite remarkable. My parents spent a lot of time helping us
have good times.
My mother was very creative, as I mentioned, and she decorated
the house in ways that were very interesting. She bought a Danish modern
table that I still have today as my dining room table. It’s just beautiful.
MS. STEWARD: I do happen to know that your mom was into gardening. Can you talk a
little more about that, and this later plays a role in your life, so can you
talk more about the outside of your house?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. In this house, it was the first place where they had space to plant, so
my mother got a mulberry tree from her dad’s, my grandfather’s, house in
Brooklyn, she got a fig tree cutting from the family house in Brooklyn,
and she planted tomato plants as any good Italian family should do.
From that house, we moved to a larger house. It was my father’s
dream house. It had almost two acres of ground. My dad created a big
vegetable bed where he planted all kinds of vegetables. My mother tended
the formal flower garden. It was a beautiful piece of land with magnolia
trees, pine trees, azaleas, and all sorts of interesting, beautiful plantings. I
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think I learned in part from that experience and later experiences with my
mom how important the garden is, and I really loved the garden being part
of my life.