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‘We had a parade; I tell you that street was loaded with people, celebrating, hollering and screaming.’ (They were fortunate; a similar union rally in Chicago on Memorial Day 1937 led to the police massacring men, women and children after indiscriminately firing on the unarmed crowd.)
    Those fateful hours in Aliquippa genuinely transformed the lives of those who took part, and the story of how the people took on the might of the company, and won, was passed on from generation to generation. A decade after union recognition, the whole town was transformed, the community redefined. As the industrial historian Lynn Vacca, has noted: ‘For the first time, the immigrant workers who made up the majority of Aliquippa’s population began to think of themselves as authentic American citizens, with real recourse to the civil and economic rights they had up until then only heard about.’
    Gaetano himself took an active part in the strike, and, young as he was, Silvio is bound to have absorbed, consciously or unconsciously, the change in the communal climate. Like thousands of other children of immigrants, he was imperceptibly and inevitably growing apart from his parents. Born in America, he spoke Italian at home but learned English at school; he took part in the traditional Italian festival celebrating San Rocco’s feast day in August, but he played baseball in the street with his friends.
    A devout Catholic boy, bright, studious yet conformist, Silvio went to Saint Joseph’s church every day and, with his brothers, attended the Catholic school on the church grounds. Like many sons of steelworkers, Silvio had an aptitude for sciences, mathematics and engineering. Yet within the close-knit Italian community, education was seen as a curse as well as a blessing. While few steelworkers wished for their sons to follow in their own footsteps, they felt that education was a dangerous source of cosmopolitan ideas threatening traditions and ethnic values, and it was with reluctance that they recognized that only through education could their offspring escape the iron demands of the foundry floor.
    Indeed, it is an extraordinary achievement in men like Gaetano Ciccone that they triumphed against all the odds. Most learned English after a fashion, they worked hard, taught their children, nourished their churches, helped to build the labor movement and kept faith in the American dream, which eventually most realized in the careers of their children and grandchildren. How far Silvio’s ambition to stay in school, rather than work full-time, created conflict within the family is difficult to judge. Madonna has articulated her father’s dreams and desires. ‘It’s not that he was ashamed, really, but he wanted to be better,’ she has said. ‘I think he wanted us to have a better life than he did when he was growing up.’
    The reality was not quite so sharply defined. With the Korean War looming, and with it the promise that the military would take care of a young man’s education, Silvio signed up to the Air Force Reserve. As a teenager living through the Second World War and seeing his brothers go off to fight – his brother Peter served with the US Navy – he was eager to do his bit. He rose through the ranks to become a sergeant and, after a short period stationed in Alaska, was sent to the huge Goodfellow airbase outside San Angelo in Texas, where he worked in the control tower overseeing pilots learning to fly jet fighters. He used his time wisely, and while waiting for his discharge studied at the nearby San Angelo Junior College. After completing his military service in 1952 he returned to his hometown in Pennsylvania, commuting from his parents’ home to Geneva College, a Christian institution founded in 1848, located not far away in Beaver Falls.
    Earnest and steadfast, he remained deeply committed to his Catholic faith, going to church every day and attending Bible classes as he actively integrated his Christian faith and