Fiorello H. La Guardia

Fiorello Henry La Guardia was an American politician. He is best known for being the 99th Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a Republican. Previously he had been elected to Congress in 1916 and 1918, and again from 1922 through 1930. Irascible, energetic, and charismatic, he craved publicity and is acclaimed as one of the greatest mayors in American history. Only five feet, two inches tall, he was called the Little Flower .

La Guardia was born in Greenwich Village in New York City. His father, Achille La Guardia, was a lapsed Catholic from Cerignola, Italy, and his mother, Irene Coen, was a Jewish woman from Trieste, then part of the AustroHungarian Empire his maternal grandmother Fiorina Luzzatto Coen was a Luzzatto, a member of the prestigious ItalianJewish family of scholars, kabbalists, and poets and had among her ancestors the famous rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto. It was in Trieste that Achille La Guardia met and married Irene. Fiorello La Guardia was raised an Episcopalian and practiced that religion all his life. His middle name Enrico was anglicized to Henry when he was a child.

Source: Wikipedia