The year was 1963, and Rudy Giuliani was working as a lowly summer assistant at a savings bank in Freeport, Louisiana. As soon as the buzzer sounded, friend Kathy Livermore recalled how they would sneak into Giuliani's parents' house and he would practice his true calling, sitting behind a heavy wooden table - making political speeches.
“We would joke about it,” she added of her then-21-year-old beau. “Oh, this is Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, the third, first Italian Catholic President of the United States.” This is no longer a joke. Today, as the country pauses to mark Columbus Day, Giuliani is the Republican front-runner in the 2008 presidential race, the closest an Italian-American has gotten to the White House since Geraldine Ferraro reached the ballot as a vice presidential candidate in 1984.
Source: New York Daily News