John Anthony Lanzaro
Photo found on Ancestry.com
I spoke to John on the phone a few times in the 1990's. He spoke about the family rumor that the Lanzaro name means Lance Makers and that the family originated from the Spanish island of Lanzarote. This conversation sparked my curiosity, so I did some research. Lanzarote is one of the Canary Islands, lying off the northwestern coast of Africa, in the Atlantic Ocean. It was known for its beautiful gardens and fruit trees until a series of volcanic eruptions lasting over 2000 days between 1730 and 1736 forced massive evacuations of the populace. Could our ancestors have made their way through the Straits of Gibralter into the Mediterranean and on to Italy? I posed this question to the Giuseppe Lanzara who currently lives in Nocera Inferiore, the Italian town where our Lanzara ancestors came from, and he claimed he never heard of any such story.
Following a series of strokes, John died at New York Community Hospital in Manhattan on June 22, 2000, two weeks before his sister Elizabeth. He was 78 years old. He is buried with his brothers Frank and Fred at Ocean View Cemetery on Staten Island.
