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NIAF Mourns Passing of Board Director

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:   Elissa Ruffino (NIAF) 202/939-3106202/939-3106 or elissa@niaf.org


(WASHINGTON, DC– June 10, 2002) The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) mourns the passing of George L. Graziadio, one of its board members and recipient of the Foundation’s 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanitarian Service, who died of cancer on Thursday, June 6 at his home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

According to long-time friend and NIAF President Joseph R. Cerrell, “We are grateful and appreciative for the friendship George provided NIAF over the years through his family’s scholarship and his tremendous support of other NIAF programs. He will be deeply missed.”

“There are very few who were more generous in supporting education and the youth of our nation than George Graziadio. He lived the American dream, but more importantly, provided it for others,” said Frank J. Guarini, NIAF chairman.

Graziadio co-founded Imperial Bancorp, one of Southern California’s largest financial institutions, in 1963 to serve small and medium-sized businesses. In 1996, Graziadio donated $15 million to the business school at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California – at the time, one of the largest gifts ever to a business school. The school was later renamed The Graziadio School of Business and Management and today, is recognized as one of the best in the nation. His contribution allowed the business school to increase the size of its faculty by 30 percent and help it become the largest such school west of Chicago. Graziadio also donated more than $650,000 to Cal State Long Beach to create a Center for Italian Studies, which bears his name and a chair for Italian language studies.

Born in Vernon, CT to Italian and Irish immigrants, Graziadio grew up living above his grandfather’s Italian grocery. At 14 years of age, he began working for his father, a real estate auctioneer. Graziadio settled in California after World War II, which is where he met long-time business partner, George Eltinge. The two men went on to build about 100 shopping centers in California and elsewhere in the West, mostly for Kmart stores. The “two Georges” founded Imperial Bancorp by collecting $1.25 million from family and friends. The bank’s entertainment division grew to be the largest finance of feature films in the world, and Imperial was an early lender to a web portal that became Yahoo! Inc.

Over the years, Graziadio was honored for his charity work by dozens of organizations. He often said and lived by personal motto: “You earn your living by working, you earn your life by giving.” Over the past five decades, he was honored numerous times for his philanthropic efforts. Most recently, he received the “Horatio Alger Award” in Washington, DC on April 5, 2002 . Later that month, Graziadio and his wife Reva accepted the “Humanitarians of the Year Award” from the House Ear Institute. He was also the recipient of the prestigious “Grand Ufficiale” award in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy; was awarded The Ellis Island Medal of Freedom and the Albert Schweitzer Leadership Award from the Hugh O’Brien Youth Foundation; and was the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Humanitarian of the Year. He was a founding director of the Torrance Memorial Medical Center Health Care Foundation and a member of many local boards including the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles. He also served on the Governor’s California Italian American Task Force.

Graziadio is survived by Reva, his wife of 59 years, three children, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.