Dante Negro

NEGRO, Dante December 1906 - December 2007 Dante Negro, professor emeritus of French and Italian, former Dean of Administration, and Director of the Performing Arts Center at Brooklyn College, and subsequently inaugural Acting Director of the Fine Arts Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, died in Los Angeles, his adopted second home, on New Year's Eve, 2007 at the age of 101.
Born to Italian immigrant parents in Greenwich Village, New York in 1906 and a life-long New Yorker, Dante Negro attended Townsend Harris Hall High School and the College of the City of New York, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. In 1926, at the age of 19, he began his teaching career at the Brooklyn branch of City College, and in 1930 he joined the first teaching staff of the newly formed Brooklyn College as a professor of French and Italian language and literature in the Department of Romance Languages. During four years of World War II, Dante Negro took a leave from his academic life to serve the United States as chief of the Italian Desk of the United States Information Service-Office of War Information (USIS-OWI). In that capacity, he wrote and broadcast programs over the Voice of America for Radio Free Europe. Following the Allied invasion of southern Italy, Negro was commissioned as a colonel and sent to Italy by the State Department as head of the USIS in Naples and then Florence to rebuild the arts of that war-torn country and to restore its cultural relations with the United States. He was also the assistant to the cultural attache at the United States Embassy in Rome. During this time he married Ardemia Dall'Ongaro, with whom he returned to the United States in 1946. In 1948, Negro decided to leave the diplomatic service in order to resume his teaching at Brooklyn College, where he also distinguished himself as Dean of Administration and as General Manager of the highly reputed performing arts series, which he developed and administered until his retirement in 1974. He was coaxed out of retirement a year later by the State University of New York at Stony Brook to chair its new Fine Arts Center and to launch its inaugural season in 1979. Dante Negro was a founder and honorary lifetime member of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Dante Negro had a life-long passion for teaching and the arts. He inspired generations of students, many of whom went on to become notable in numerous fields. "I enjoy teaching, I enjoy contact with the kids, I enjoy the exchange of ideas. The students are intellectual, quizzical, and enthusiastic. I don't particularly care for the rest of academic life." For years after his second retirement in 1980, he continued to serve as consultant and mentor for younger teachers, concert managers and artists. A life-long opera lover, who was blessed with a rich baritone voice of his own, Negro introduced and promoted scores of emerging artists, such as Leontyne Price, Luciano Pavarotti, Van Cliburn, and Peter Nero. His professional achievements are only surpassed by his personal commitment and dedication to his wife, Ardemia, of 62 years, his three daughters, Adele, Mary Joan, and Alma, his sons-in-law, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and his friends, on whom he has lavished his love, his joie de vivre, his impish sense of humor, and for whom he has served as a model of gentlemanliness, empathy, tolerance, and nobility of spirit. A private memorial service will be held at the family's home in New York during the summer of 2008.