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6 <br /> <br />Frank Rizzi, who grew up at 1401 Cannon and served in World War I with the 44th Army <br />Infantry, became a leader in Louisville at a time when the town was transitioning from being a <br />coal mining town to a modern city. His terms as mayor were from 1956 to 1960 and 1962 until <br />1970. He was also a councilman for 18 years. According to his 1991 obituary, it was during his <br />civic tenure that the residents of Louisville got paved streets, sewers, and a new City Hall <br />building. He was also instrumental in obtaining more water rights for Louisville. In recorded oral <br />history interviews from 1977 and 1990, he stated that his parents always had a garden and that <br />he remembered playing on an informal Little Italy baseball team with eight boys fro m the <br />neighborhood; they had to find a ninth player from town to make a full team. <br />For his occupation, he started working as a coal miner at age 16 and later worked for Fischer <br />Construction. He married Annie Jasko in 1923 and they lived one block from his parents, at <br />1401 Courtesy Rd. (Highway 42), in a house that he built. <br />The following photo shows Frank Rizzi in the 1970s. He died in 1991 at the age of 94. In 1995, <br />the Historical Commission selected him to be the recipient of the 1996 Louisville Pioneer <br />Award. <br /> <br />Joe Rizzi married Christina DiGiacomo and they lived on Grant Ave. in Louisville. Their daughter, <br />Rita Ferrera, was born in 1924 and was available to be interviewed for this report. She <br />remembers many family gatherings at her grandparents’ house at 1401 Cannon when she was <br />growing up, particularly on Sunday nights and holidays. She stated that on Christmas Eve <br />following Midnight Mass, her grandfather, Tom Rizzi, would cook sausage for all of the relatives <br />to enjoy at the house at 1401 Cannon. She recalls that Little Italy was almost all Italian when <br />she was a child and remembers a big garden and an outhouse in the back yard. A “shanty,” or <br />summer kitchen, was also in the back yard for cooking and eating in the summertime to keep