Page 8 - Italian-American Herald - July 2023

8 ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM | JULY2023 ITALIAN-AMERICANHERALD IN MEMORIAM
Biondi: Remembering Delaware’s ‘larger-than-life’ deal-maker
Continued from page 3
received favorable reviews, yet few of its recommendations were implemented. Nevertheless, du Pont, upon taking office, decided to reincarnate the commission as the Intergovernmental Task Force, with Biondi as co-chair alongside another prominent Delaware attorney, E. Norman Veasey, later to become chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court.
The commission’s extended life led to
the creation of other panels with similar objectives. While many resulted only in the accumulation of huge stacks of paper, they did help build the bipartisan and civic bonds that made enactment of the Financial Center Development Act possible.
A unanimous 1979 U.S. Supreme
Court decision limiting states’ power to regulate interest rates charged by nationally chartered banks opened the door. Soon after, Wilmington city officials told Biondi that out-of-state banks might be interested in setting up shop in Wilmington. In the spring of 1980, Chase Manhattan Bank executives were quizzing the du Pont administration about the chances of passing favorable legislation in Delaware.
When Chase officials, along with Delaware bankers and state and Wilmington leaders, held a meeting at the Wilmington Club to discuss the prospects, it fell to
Biondi to offer a simplified explanation of
the maze of state and federal banking laws. When the meeting was concluded, du Pont determined that the state needed to act and, the next morning, Chase was hiring Biondi to represent the bank in the negotiations.
Talks among the banks and the lawmakers continued quietly through the summer
and fall, with barely any notice from the public and the media, and a first draft of
the legislation, written by Biondi, was ready in mid-December 1980. Meanwhile, New York state had tightened its anti-usury laws, prompting both Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan banks to promise to move operations to Delaware if the General Assembly passed the legislation by the end of January 1981.
It took until Feb. 3, with Biondi testifying multiple times in Legislative Hall – and for eight hours on the day of the clinching Senate debate, for the Financial Center Development Act to win approval. Du Pont’s signature quickly followed.
The law’s passage marked the pinnacle of a life that began as the first baby born in Delaware on New Year’s Day 1933. Biondi grew up on Vandever Avenue, the northern border of an Italian-American community known as the 11th Street Bridge Colony. His father, Ferdinando Biondi, was a laborer at the nearby Pennsylvania Railroad shops.
In 2016, from left: A. Richard Heffron, then-president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, O. Francis Biondi, and then-Gov. Jack Markell.
PHOTOS BY DICK DUBROFF / FINAL FOCUS PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF THE DELAWARE STATE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
His mother, the former Mary Masci, was a seamstress who worked for a while at the Electric Hose & Rubber plant a few blocks away.
Biondi attended Catholic elementary schools in the neighborhood and then Salesianum School when it was still located at Eighth and West streets in downtown Wilmington. Highlights of his childhood included Saturday trips to the Wilmington Library with his mother, sitting on a neighbor’s horse-drawn milk truck as
he made deliveries for Fraim’s Dairy and seeing his otherwise perfect report cards at Salesianum marred by the C’s he received every quarter in gym class. Thanks to his father’s employment, he used a family train pass to commute daily to LaSalle College in Philadelphia. When he headed to Boston College to earn a master’s degree in economics, he prevailed on relatives of one of his Vandever Avenue neighbors to house him in one of their spare rooms. After earning his
master’s degree, he resumed his Wilmington- Philadelphia commute, this time to the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
After passing the Delaware bar examination in 1958, Biondi began his legal career as a $65 a week associate to Joseph A.L. Errigo, then the best-known Italian- American attorney in the state. His early work was quite mundane – wills, small claims cases, documents for small businesses and some family law matters – and he also quickly developed a reputation for writing strong legal briefs. That skill attracted the attention of C. Stewart Lynch, Wilmington’s city solicitor, who hired him as a part-time assistant. That led to a decade of double-duty splitting time between his private practice and City Hall, where he succeeded Lynch after John J. Babiarz was elected mayor in 1964.
In 1966, Biondi’s career took a stunning turn when he discovered evidence that Errigo had been using his clients’ funds for personal purposes. After confiding in some trusted colleagues and the Rev. Roberto Balducelli, the legendary pastor of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Biondi swore out a warrant for Errigo’s arrest. The action was triply courageous, as Errigo was not only his employer and a prominent figure in Delaware’s Italian community but also Wilmington’s commissioner of public safety, making him Biondi’s boss.
Errigo briefly fled the city, but the charges
“He was able to enjoy the trust of and earn the ear of governors who were Democrats and those who were Republicans. Members of about 40,000 families have jobs in the banking industry. That wouldn’t be the case without Frank Biondi.”
–Sen. Tom Carper