Mr. Bennett is still talking about growing up in Astoria, Long Island, in the Italian-American community. He has fond memories of that and can’t forget it. In today’s NYTimes (6/26/09), he’s quoted as saying, ” (Astoria) is l the finest place to live…I like it better than any place I’ve ever lived.” When I interviewed him for my book “Growing Up Italian,” he extolled his birthplace, saying, “When I was a kid I always wanted to travel…Now I look back and realize I was around something regal right in my own house and that I had a tremendous upbringing.” He added, “Did you know that Judy Garland was from Queens? Judy and my mother got along beautifully.”
But Tony just doesn’t talk about Astoria; he’s a backer. His latest interest is the new Frank Sinatra School of the Arts , a public school, which he and his wife helped move to Astoria to a brand-new building. He himself attended the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan, where the students went to lunch and returning, found that the ceiling had fallen down on their desks. “We would have been smashed,” he said, “that’s how terrible the building wss.”
