Angelo F. Coniglio (born August 21, 1936) is an American civil engineer, educator, genealogist and author. He was in the first graduating class (BSCE,1961) of the School of Civil Engineering established by Robert L. Ketter at the University of Buffalo (UB) in 1956. He attended a post-graduate semester at the University of Illinois where he was a student of renowned hydrology theorist Ven Te Chow. He also earned a master's degree from UB (MSCE, 1970).[1]
As a civil engineer, he is an expert in the hydrology and water levels of the U. S. Great Lakes, and is credited, along with his team on the Lake Erie Wastewater Management Study at the Buffalo District of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the development of a plan that helped restore Lake Erie to more pristine conditions in the 1970s.[2] He is an expert in Lake Erie ice formation and management. He taught as an adjunct professor in Civil Engineering at UB for twenty-five years, receiving the New York State Society of Professional Engineers' Engineering Educator of the Year award in 1993.[3] He holds a Professional Engineer (PE) license from the State of New Hampshire.
After his retirement from the engineering field, Coniglio, a first-generation Sicilian American brought up on the East Side and then the West Side of Buffalo, became an experienced genealogist, researching the Sicilian origins of his own family (from Serradifalco, Sicily), and numerous others. His experiences in researching and traveling to Sicily led to his authorship of the book The Lady of the Wheel (La Ruotaia), which tells of the lives of poor Sicilian foundlings and sulfur miners in the late 1800s in Racalmuto, Sicily.[4] Since 2017, Coniglio has been a technical consultant on foundlings for Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s PBS television series Finding Your Roots.
Coniglio writes genealogy columns for several monthly magazines and Italian/Sicilian American newsletters, and gives frequent lectures on the topic.[5][6] In 2013 he received a first-place NAMPA award for his column "Breaking Down the 1930 Census: The Search for Our Ancestry" in the monthly magazine Forever Young.[7] He also writes for L'Italo Americano, a U.S. West Coast bilingual weekly. Coniglio is currently working on his first full-length novel, to be entitled The Mountain of the Hawk (La Serra del Falcone), a fictional account based on the history of his ancestral town of Serradifalco and its inhabitants. He has web pages devoted to Sicilian genealogical records,[8] foundlings,[9] and the Sicilian language.[10]
Coniglio has been a vocal social and sports activist. In the early 1970s, he brought a class action suit against the National Football League over its policy of charging full regular-season prices for meaningless exhibition games mandatorily included in season-ticket packages.[11] The suit failed after being raised to the U. S. Supreme Court, prompting Coniglio to remark "I learned that the Anti-Trust laws don't protect the public from avaricious businessmen, they protect avaricious businessmen from each other!"
Coniglio has lobbied strongly for greater recognition of Buffalo's role in the establishment of the Erie Canal, which established New York City as a major port. He proposes an Ellis Island-inspired Buffalo Erie Canal Museum and Visitor Center which would describe Buffalo's role as the Western Terminus of the Canal, and the nexus for the country's great western migration of pioneers.[21]
He is a strong advocate for recognition of Sicilian heritage, actively writing and posting articles about the history of Sicily, its language and its contributions to world culture, which he maintains far outweigh negative elements often emphasized in popular media.[22] His love for Sicilian culture led him to become a minor investor in a full-length documentary film by author and producer Mark Spano. The film, originally entitled 'Re-imagining Sicily', is 'Sicily: Land of Love and Strife'. After its April 2018 world premiere in Spano's home town of Kansas City, Missouri, the film then went to its Canadian premiere in Hamilton, Ontario, on June 20.[23]
Coniglio collaborated with Spano to present the film's East Coast premiere in Buffalo on June 25, 2018. The event was a sellout and required a second showing. Coniglio remarked "Attendees saw a film that extolled the beauty and culture of Sicily, without the foolish glorification of criminal elements that has come to be expected in films about my homeland. I commend Mark Spano for creating such a film."
Coniglio's first language was Sicilian, and combining his experience as an educator and his knowledge of the language, in September 2021 he instituted Buffalo's first class in the Sicilian language, "Conversational Sicilian for Beginners" at the new location of the Buffalo Italian Cultural Center. Due to popular demand "Conversational Sicilian for Beginners - Part 2" is now also being offered. In January 2022, under Coniglio's direction, the Center initiated the CCI Genealogy Station, with on-line access to genealogy sites, and hands-on instruction to assist Buffalo's Sicilian and Italian Americans in tracing their ancestry. Shortly after its inception, Coniglio successfully applied to the Mormon service FamilySearch to have the CCI Genealogy Station admitted as a FamilySearch Affiliate Library.
Coniglio also led a successful fight to have the name of his alma mater retain its major reference to BUFFALO rather than 'New York' as proposed by now-departed UB Athletic Director Danny White, who had no ties to the Buffalo region.[24]
Coniglio and his wife had two children, both of whom predeceased him: Angelo Raymond and Angela Yvonne, a 2021 inductee to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame.[27][28]
References
^Coniglio, Angelo F. "UB Classnotes". State University of New York at Buffalo. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2012-05-10.
