Complaints from readers are par for the course when one works at a newspaper. The newspaper should have covered something but didn't, or shouldn't have covered something but did, or didn't cover something well enough.
That the Star shouldn't have covered something but did was the complaint after a front page article ran about Joseph Bonanno Sr.'s 90th birthday party.
From the Arizona Daily Star, January 16, 1995:
Family ties show on Bonanno's 90th birthday
Joe Salkowski
The Arizona Daily Star
To those familiar with American history, Joseph Bonanno Sr. was the "boss of bosses," the longtime leader of one of New York City's five major Mafia families.
To federal lawmen, Bonanno was the big fish who always seemed to elude their hooks.
But to the 300 or so people who gathered Saturday night at the Westward Look Resort to celebrate his 90th birthday, Bonanno was — and is — something more: a father, friend and teacher of the value of respect and tradition.
"He's been a wonderful, intelligent, loving godfather to us all," said Russ Andaloro, an instructor at Pima Community College and friend of Bonanno. "I've learned from him my whole life, and I'll keep learning from him."
In a position where longevity is often measured in months, Bonanno endured for more than three decades as father of the Brooklyn-based Bonanno family. After surviving several feuds and an abduction by another family, he retired to Tucson in 1968.
His golden years have not been uneventful. His house was one of several bombed in 1968 by men he said were linked to a fired FBI agent, and he has served two prison terms stemming from arrests made after his move to Tucson.
Bonanno, who turns 90 on Wednesday, railed against his treatment by federal prosecutors in a spirited address to the overflow crowd at his party.
"Extreme justice is extreme injustice," he said, invoking one of his catch phrases in a thick Sicilian accent.
After a minute, though, he turned more sentimental.
"I am here present before you all because God loves me, and with the gift of God, how can I go wrong?" he said. "With great profound humility, I thank you for coming to honor me and 90 years of traditional life."
Guests at the party said they weren't concerned about the guest of honor's background.
"He was whatever he was back in New York, but I've never known him as anything other than a good Tucsonan," said former newscaster George Borozan, whose mother was close friends with Bonanno's late wife, Fay.
Friends say Bonanno spends much of his time in his midtown home, visiting with friends and relatives and attending regular church services.
"I see him almost every Sunday," said the Rev. Van Wagner, pastor of SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church.
The party's guest list included priests and politicians, actors, attorneys and relatives from across the country. Local defense lawyer Bob Hirsh was there, as was former Nogales Mayor Jose Canchola. U.S. Sen. John McCain and Arizona Gov. Fife Symington sent their regards by telegram.
Among the most recognizable faces was Alex Rocco, a longtime character actor who played Mo Greene in "The Godfather." He also was in the cast of "Love, Honor and Obey: The Last Mafia Marriage," a 1993 television miniseries about the Bonanno family.
"He's a good friend," Rocco said of Bonanno while he signed autographs and smoked cigarettes with his agent on a walkway outside the main party. "He's got a great family. It reminds me of my own family."
The word most mentioned during speeches at the party was "respect" — for Bonanno and the traditions he taught to his family and friends.
"What America lacks today is the traditional values of family," said author Gay Talese, who wrote about the Bonanno family in "Honor Thy Father." "What I see in this room is the strength of family."
Bonanno smiled and chatted with well wishers, showing no signs of tiring even as the clock approached 1 a.m. His vitality might have surprised those who remember that his attorneys argued repeatedly during the 1980s that Bonanno was too ill to testify at various hearings or report for prison terms.
"I argued in court four times that he was on his death bed, and now look at him," said Alfred "Skip" Donau III, one of Bonanno's lawyers. "I told his son yesterday that we're going to get indicted for fraud by the government because he's still alive."
Readers were outraged, to say the least. Letters and phone calls poured in. Some questioned whether Bonanno owned a piece of the Star (he didn't and never has). Many were further outraged that the article ran on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
An editorial ran the following day with a decidedly different tone.
From the Star, January 17, 1995:
Bonanno's 90th
Just because Joe Bonanno turns 90 years old tomorrow does not make him a great man, nor even a good one.
Just because Gov. Fife Symington sent birthday greetings and Sen. John McCain sent his regrets does not make Bonanno an upstanding citizen of Arizona.
And just because The Arizona Daily Star ran a front page story on his birthday party at the Westward Look Resort, complete with four photographs, does not mean that readers need regard him as a community leader.
Joe Bonanno is, in fact, none of those.
What Joseph C. Bonanno Sr. was and remains is one of the most notorious gangsters in America. He reigned as one of the original five New York Mafia bosses. He lives now as a man who, but for luck - and skill at covering his tracks - would be spending his final days not in pleasant retirement in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, but in prison where he belongs.
What's more, it was ironic yesterday that the Star's story on Bonanno's birthday bash appeared on the very day that people in the United States honor a truly great American, Martin Luther King Jr. The juxtaposition of the two celebrations makes very clear the difference between a great man and a despicable man; between a man who improved the lives of millions, and a man who was harmful to untold numbers; and between a man who deserves respect, and a man who deserves, at best, contempt.
Tucsonans and others who defend Bonanno are simply wrong.
"I've never known him as anything other than a good Tucsonan," said former newscaster George Borozan, who ought to have recognized that Bonanno's not having committed his crimes here in no way makes him a good Tucsonan.
And writer Gay Talese was equally misguided when he said Saturday night, "What America lacks today is the traditional values of family . . . What I see in this room is the strength of family." Talese, who wrote about the Bonanno family, knows better. Bonanno in no way represents the traditional values of America's hard-working families.
Bonanno, by contrast, defends extortion in his autobiography as merely the economics of businessmen trying to protect their businesses; glosses over his participation in violence with the comment that he could be entrusted with "military assignments"; and describes illegal gambling and loan-sharking as "services" provided by "entrepreneurs."
In this context, the Symington and McCain congratulations would be troubling except for one key fact: Press secretaries for both insist that Bonanno received and his son read at the party standard form letters. Symington's spokesman said the governor sends form-letter greetings to anybody who requests one "for new babies, birthdays, anniversaries or other milestones such as Eagle Scout awards."
Finally, take Bonnano's statement to the 300 or so well-wishers at his party: "I am here present before you all because God loves me, and with the gift of God, how can I go wrong?" That is sheer blasphemy.
Here is the truth: What we see in Joe Bonanno is a bad man grown old. That does not atone for the wrong he has done; that does not make him a desirable citizen nor a desirable neighbor.
It makes him an aged gangster. To celebrate Joe Bonanno as anything else discredits all the good people who have lived and contributed to our city and society.
The editorial didn't mollify readers one bit. Again, letters and phone calls poured in. If the editorial was an apology, it didn't work. Readers wondered who was running the Star, or was anyone running it?
Bonanno died May 11, 2002. For those who believe such things, his judgment day has come and gone, and nothing that ran in the Star would have changed it. But those who were at the Star in January, 1995, will not forget the chaos of his 90th birthday.
