Our
brother Anthony Righino was born in
Taganroff
,
Russia
in 1904. He was the son of
Florentine parents, who moved to
Russia
, where his father worked as a mining engineer. After the death of his mother
and his father’s illness, the family moved back to
Florence
,
Italy
. In 1921, they immigrated to the
United States
and lived in
Hurley
,
Wisconsin
.
Tony
graduated from
St.
Norbert High and joined the Order in 1925 and was solemnly professed in 1930.
In 1927, he began his career at the college, teaching Spanish, French and
Latin. When a student would make a
grammatical error, he would remark, “You Boobie, where does your mother tend
bar?”
Tony
served as a U.S. Army chaplain in the Pacific theatre, with the rank of 1st
Lieutenant, during World War II. After
the war, he returned to the college faculty.
Showing up one day in the community room, after a full day of teaching,
with a cleanly shaven head, he suddenly announced:
"The confrere living next to me has cooties, and they are coming into my
room through the drain!”
In
1956, he was made pastor of St. Joseph in Champion, and then to Namur, where he
moved all of the gravestones from the cemetery onto a small plot of land to make
room for a larger parking lot. “The dead won’t mind,” he said!
Tony
died on Wednesday, April 28, 1971 at the age of 67.
