Of all the stories he knows about Boston’s North End, Gino Mauro’s favorite is the one about his parents and how they met.
It was the early 1950s and his mother Jenny, a North End native, traveled to Italy to visit relatives. While passing through the airport in Rome, she caught the eye of the handsome captain of the airport police force. The dashing officer took her out of the line and held her bags for an intensive inspection while he questioned her about her name and travel plans.
“Technically, he had my mother arrested because he wanted to meet her,” Mauro said.
The police captain charmed the American girl, and when she returned home to Boston, they exchanged letters for the next two years. Eventually, he invited her back to Italy to meet his family, and she returned with a chaperone, her sister Frances, who was studying to become a cloistered nun.
“So, these two Boston ladies get on a plane,” Mauro said. “My father goes to the gate to pick them up with his cousin, another big, dark-haired, chiseled-face Italian guy. Suffice to say, Auntie Frances never became a nun and there was a double wedding in the North End.”
And, a happy ending.
“I love that story,” he said. “I always tell it on a first date.”
Home is Where the Heart is
While he has spent most of his life in Belmont, Mauro’s heart belongs to the North End. Through Sunday dinners with his grandparents and visits to local shops, festivals, cafes, and restaurants, he formed close bonds with those who call the neighborhood home. While attending Belmont High School, he learned to shoot and edit videos, and later worked for WSBK-TV and eventually on the newsmagazine “Chronicle” on WCVB.
After 45 years in the business, Mauro retired and put his energy into creating fundraising videos for nonprofit agencies. He also began his passion project, a video series called My North End, where longtime neighborhood guys Richie Spagnuolo and Joe Testa swap stories and celebrate the neighborhood’s heritage and evolution over the decades.
“I just walk these guys around the North End and record what they have to say,” Mauro said. “I was kind of shocked people would be interested in hearing these two guys just talk.”
Mauro’s desire is to tell stories of the North End that go beyond restaurants and bakeries. To that end, his narrators have visited family businesses, the site of the Brinks Robbery, the crypt of the Old North Church, and tunnels linked to the Underground Railroad. They have explained the tradition of feast day celebrations and the correct way to order cannoli, played intergenerational bocci, and shared stories of famous North End women, including Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, entertainer Sophie Tucker, and Zipporah Potter Atkins, the first African American to own land in Boston.
One episode filmed a rare tour of the steeple of the Old North Church with Julius James, the church’s visitor experience manager. James guided Mauro up several increasingly narrow staircases with stairs barely wide enough for one foot, let alone two, while reciting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” At one point, James took the camera to an outside viewing area to show rooftop views of the North End and the modern cityscape, past Boston Harbor to the open sea.
“This was a rare privilege as it is almost never allowed,” Mauro said. “I loved every minute of the tour and was quite proud of myself that at 65, I was still able to do a shoot like that.”
While the narration primarily belongs to the old-timers and some newbies, the videos also celebrate the changing nature of the neighborhood. New businesses and new faces contribute to the enclave’s liveliness.
“Most people feel the diversity is for the benefit of the neighborhood,” Mauro said. “The only complaint I hear is what it costs to live there now.”
The show has become popular enough for the hosts to become celebrities in their own right.
Spagnuolo was standing out front of the Café Vittoria drinking an espresso when two women ran across the street calling his name.
“He’s like, ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’,” Mauro recalled. “And they say ‘No, no, we’re so happy to meet you, we were hoping we would see you.’ They came from Korea.”
He said Testa also loves the attention and his wife loves it even more.
Mauro knows the ephemeral nature of stories means that they will eventually fade away. He hopes the video series will keep the spirit of the North End alive for as long as possible, even if just on the internet.
“The stories about the North End aren’t as critical as some other historical events, but to a lot of people they’re important and you can learn from them,” he said.
Ultimately, there is one person the series is made for and who is always on Mauro’s mind.
“It makes me think of my mother,” Mauro said, with a catch in his voice. “My mother was the best. She left a mark on me that could not be erased.”
So, the next time you’re in the North End, hoist a cannoli and give a toast to Jenny Mauro, whose love for a handsome police captain inspired her son’s love for storytelling.
Editor’s Note: Gino Mauro and his colleague, Stan Leven, are filming a video focusing on the first year of The Voice.