Mario Biaggi

Mario Biaggi (October 26, 1917 – June 24, 2015) was an American politician, attorney, and police officer.

Subsequently, in 1934 during the height of the Depression, he graduated from Haaren High School in Manhattan.

In 1940 he married Marie Wassil (who died in 1997), and they moved to the Bronx and had two daughters, Barbara and Jacqueline, and two sons, Richard and Mario Jr.

After working as a shoeshine boy and a stint as a factory worker, at age 18, Biaggi became a substitute letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, for 65 cents per hour.

Later, he became a regular letter carrier; his mail route included the home of one of his heroes, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

He served nearly six years with the Post Office and, in a preview of things to come, became an activist in Branch 36 of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

In 1942, Biaggi joined the New York City Police Department (NYPD), at 25 years of age.

He wanted to join the US Army, but police were exempted from the US military at the time, and the fact that his two brothers were in the armed forces was an additional factor.

In 1944, he shot and killed a man who tried to stab him with an ice pick, and in 1959, he shot and killed a man who tried to rob him at gunpoint; he himself was wounded in the shootout in the Bronx.

Among his many exploits was his rescue in 1946 on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan of a girl on a runaway horse, which dragged him 90 feet and trampled his right leg before he subdued it, causing a permanent limp.

He used a cane for the rest of his life.

In 1952, he was promoted to Sergeant.

His police career spanned 23 years, until 1965.

He was wounded 11 times.

Biaggi received dozens of citations for valor, including the police department’s Medal of Honor (its highest award) and the National Police Officers Association of America’s Medal of Valor, becoming one of the NYPD's most decorated officers.

He retired from the Department in 1965, with the rank of Detective Lieutenant.

At the age of 45 and near the end of his police career, Biaggi entered law school.

The American Bar Association granted him a special dispensation to study law due to his distinguished police career, even though Biaggi had never gone to college and a college degree was a prerequisite for law school.

Dean Daniel Gutman offered him a full scholarship to New York Law School, after hearing him speak at a public event.

In 1965, he graduated from the law school with an LLB.

In 1966, at the age of 49, he was admitted to the New York State Bar and founded the law firm Biaggi & Ehrlich.

First elected a U.S. Representative as a Democrat from the Bronx in 1968, Biaggi was subsequently re-elected nine times, seven times with more than 90% of the vote.

In 1968, the U.S. House seat in NY's 24th congressional district became vacant when eight-term Republican incumbent Paul A. Fino resigned to become a justice on the New York Supreme Court.

Biaggi ran for the open seat as a Democrat with the endorsement of the Conservative Party.

He won the 1968 election to Congress with 60.5% of the vote in what had previously been considered a traditional Bronx Republican stronghold.

He was 51 years old.

Author Gerhard Falk wrote: "Few members of the House of Representatives have ever achieved the popularity of Mario Biaggi."

He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York from 1969 to 1988.

Prior to his political career, Biaggi became one of the most decorated officers in NYPD history; he killed two criminals who attacked him and was injured 11 times in the line of duty.

He then became an attorney at 49 years of age.

He represented a Queens woman who was denied the right to be an umpire in minor league baseball in 1969, and won her case at the New York Court of Appeals in 1972.

He was easily re-elected in 1970, as a nominee of the Democratic, Republican, and Conservative Parties, with a vote of 130,000-8,000.

He won the 1970 election defeating former Bronx Borough President Joseph F. Periconi, the 1972 election with 93.9% of the vote, the 1974 election with 82.4% of the vote, the 1976 election with 91.6% of the vote, the 1978 election with 95.0% of the vote, the 1980 election with 94.5% of the vote, the 1982 election with 93.7% of the vote, the 1984 election with 94.8% of the vote, and the 1986 election with 90.2% of the vote.

In the redistricting after the 1970 census, Biaggi's district was renumbered the 10th, and included part of Queens.

In 1987 and 1988, he was convicted in two trials of receipt of unlawful gratuities, and, facing the prospect of expulsion from the House, he resigned from Congress in 1988.

Biaggi was born in a tenement on East 106th Street in East Harlem in Upper Manhattan, New York City, New York to poor Italian immigrants from Piacenza in Northern Italy.

His father, Salvatore Biaggi, was a marble setter.

His mother, Mary (née Campari), worked as a charwoman.

He had two younger brothers.

Biaggi graduated from P.S. 171 in East Harlem.