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Luigi Invades Brooklyn, New York

NITE-LIFE…CLUBBING…LOTS OF FUN…
The richly seductive, romantic atmosphere offered up decidedly by New York’s night life scene was a magnet pulling Luigi out to “Da Clubs” each and every weekend and he engaged in the club scene wholeheartedly because it provided a multitude of opportunities for him to fraternize with the “brethrens” while scouring the weekly “line-up of beauties”.

With his chiseled, cute facial features and his smooth, elegant verbosity, Luigi had little trouble “ensnaring” the ladies and there were many who became enraptured by his overly loving charm. And so for every one that can “fall in love” with Luigi, there would always be numerous other gazing admirers wanting to satisfy their curiosity as to “…. how that guy have so many girl-friends hanging all over him…?” And so those females that “entered Luigi’s parlor” soon coined their very own version of his nickname….. “MYWEEGIE”

PAINE-WEBBER
Luigi was employed for most of his “New York years” in the Information Technology (IT) business unit of Wall Street Investment Banking giant Paine Webber as a computer technician. He quickly advanced up the corporate ladder from field equipment service tech to central server control board operator and eventually ascended to Shift Supervisor managing all overnight “CPU runs” and central server historian logger of “previous day” transactions.

BROOKLYN RAIDERS
For a long time, a sort of “rag-tag” bunch of yard-men would informally gather during most summer evenings at a specific location in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with the highlight being a very spirited soccer “scrimmage”. This bunch was just begging invitingly for the leadership/organizational “juices” still flowing strongly through Luigi’s veins for him to give some structure and format to the daily gathering. So, Luigi conferred with and harnessed the support of “Neville "Mello” Morgan (Trench Town's first Manning Cup Captain), Val Heron, Balf Morrison, younger sibling Vincent "Vin-Soup", and others to create “The Raiders of The Dark Park”. Luigi recruited and engaged several “forward-thinking” brethrens in drawing up documents to register this outfit as a certified, New York Soccer Association-sanctioned entity complete with a written set of Club-like Constitution & By-laws and gave structure to the “free-lance” gathering by forming a (1) Premier Open team, (2) an over-30 team, (3) an under-19 team, and (4) “feeder” squads wherein younger/less developed talented players could be “blooded/groomed” and nurtured to move into higher quality teams. The Raiders participated in numerous tournaments throughout the New York metropolitan area enjoying a high degree of success.

It should be noted that this is the very same Val Heron who had “breached” Luigi’s goal in that memorable 1967 Minor League Championship Finals and who was to deliver a most stirring, unforgettable vocal tribute at Luigi’s wake. All of Luigi’s immediate family and his friends remain eternally grateful to Val for this. In addition, the Raiders membership at large also paid special, tangible tribute to Luigi!!

MENTORING
Youngest brother Andrew, who had won an academic scholarship to prestigious Ivy League institution Columbia University, became the final sibling who Luigi “placed under his older brother wings”. During Andrew’s undergraduate years, during his Medical School studies, during his internship at Columbia University Hospital and also during his post-Doctoral years, Luigi was sort of a “guiding light” supporting, encouraging, and exhorting his youngest brother to persevere, to overcome, and to aspire to the very highest levels of success in his chosen field.

Luigi would have regular “sit-ins” (informal reasoning sessions), lunch dates, plus more cheerful, light-hearted fun-based rendezvous with Andrew to at times facilitate Andrew re-focusing, “re-loading/re-charging his energy cells”, and relaxing to handle the drudgery of medical school work and the intense time-demands of his internship.

Guess it was a special relationship indicative of the First (Luigi-first son) closely collaborating with the Last (Andrew- the last born son)

MORE KIDS
All told, Luigi eventually “fathered” thirteen kids one of whom (Denise-RIP) had preceded him in death. Seven of his kids were born in New York and of the six originally born in Jamaica some eventually migrated and were close to Luigi up until his final days. First daughter, the beautiful, elegant Audia, did a fantastic job reading the eulogy that had been crafted by first-born sister Sonia with input from other siblings.