I was born Diana May Frunzi to first generation Italian-American parents: John Vincenzo Frunzi and Rose Anna Gallichio.
My grandparents (father's) were Almino Frunzi and Ernestine DiGiacomo .
My grandparents (mother's) were Guiseppi Antonio Gallichio and Ernestina Pontarelli.
All my grandparents were born in the Abruzzi region of southern Italy, immigrated to the USA in the late 1800's, and settled in the Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, one of several states, is located in the southeast region of the United States.
While living with my family in Philadelphia, I graduated West Philadelphia High School and the Palmer Business School.
My business experience was varied and comprehensive which culminated as an Assistant Office Manager. During 1973, I moved to Virginia Beach,
Virginia to be married and began a family with my husband, Don then a member of the U. S. Navy.
Since then, Don and I had raised two children, I had begun to sell home correspondence courses in the direct sales market, and Don had retired from the Navy.
We returned to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PA) in 1985. Shortly after our family's return I decided to begin a residential cleaning business.
In this way, I could meet the needs of our children before and after school also to help with the family finances.
Both our children had started competitive swimming in school and continued year-round.
So I worked as a volunteer in various responsible positions that culminated in my becoming president of the North Penn Aquatic Club of over 100 members strong.
I remained president for four years and continued to serve on the Executive Board for eight additional years.
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During this time I served as Diving Representative and organized all the League Diving and Championship events.
The League Championship hosts a combination of 21 swimming-diving clubs throughout the area. Again, in my desire to serve the community, I instituted, organized, and made financially viable the North Penn Trophy Meet.
This annual swimming event, open to all clubs in the area, continues to this day.
At age 50, I returned to the office work force, part time, with a goal in mind to becoming computer literate and to learning new office technologies.
This prompted Don to purchase a home computer system. Since then, I have learned many computer skills, software programs and I am now the project manager for a web page project.
For me, working with a computer is both exciting and fulfilling.
It was during this period that my husband purchased for me the computer program Familytree Maker.
I started entering my limited history of my family and my interest grew.
I contacted Abruzzo 2000 and with their help, I was able to find information about my great great grandparents.
It was through this relationship that I was asked to become associated with Abruzzo 2000.
My contribution was to do family research in the United States for those people who wanted to find additional
family history information elsewhere other then in the Abruzzo Region.
I love to research family histories for others and myself.
In finding genealogy information, there are successes and failures.
The successes are very gratifying for me and for the people I help.
For those who are not successful, disappointment is mixed with a positive attitude;
yet, those individuals are still very pleased with the effort made in their behalf.
My mom really appreciates your information.
We had no idea my grandmother was a spinner.
(LouAnn Visalin, CA)
Thanks, Diana. Because of your advice and direction, I found a relative on the internet.
(Pam Doylestown, PA)
One of my greatest experiences was searching a ship's passenger list and finding the names of
my great grandparents and grandmother (age10). This Christmas, I found my great grandfather's gravesite
upon which I placed a decoration. Last July we visited my grandmother's birthplace in Bugnara, Italy .
What a feeling!
(Diana Lansdale, PA)
