Angelo F. Coniglio

Angelo F. Coniglio (born of Sicilian parents on August 21, 1936 in Buffalo, New York) 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 also earned a master's degree from UB (MSCE, 1970).^[1]

As a civil engineer, he is an expert in the hydrology 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]

After his retirement from the engineering field, Coniglio, a first-generation Sicilian American, 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]

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 the newspapers The Italian Tribune, one of the largest Italian-American weeklies in the United States; and 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!"

As an avid American Football League (AFL, 1960 - 1969) fan, Coniglio lobbied successfully to have the Kansas City Chiefs wear a ten-year AFL shoulder patch in the fourth and final AFL-NFL World Championship game. He has been a proponent of wider appreciation of the American Football League and its players, lobbying for more AFL players to be inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and prompting Professional Football to acknowledge the legacy of the AFL during its fiftieth anniversary season in 2009.^[12][13][14] He appeared in the 2009 Showtime television series Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League. Coniglio's Remember the AFL website is among the most-referenced sites for information, images and statistics relating to the AFL.^[15] He is acknowledged as an expert on the history of the league, and lectures on the AFL and its influence on modern Professional Football.^{[16][17][18][19]}

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's 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.^[20]

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.^[21] Coniglio also leads a fight to have the name of his Alma Mater retain its major reference to BUFFALO rather than 'New York' as proposed by new UB Athletic Director Danny White, who has no ties to the Buffalo region.^[22]

He is a distant cousin of the late Indy car driver Al Loquasto, and of set designer Santo Loquasto. All are descendants of Libertino lo Guasto,^[23] a foundling born in Serradifalco, Sicily in 1796. Coniglio and his wife Angela summer at their cottage on Crystal Beach Hill in Ontario, Canada.

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