US News

THANKS, DAD, FOR TEACHING ME TO CHASE MY DREAMS

YESTERDAY my dad made the final journey to his resting place.

John Gotti was an incredible man and I know he would have been impressed by the hundreds of people who turned out to pay their respects.

It has been a difficult time for my family and me, as not a tear we shed went unnoticed and our personal grief was magnified by the scrutiny.

But in this time of intense sorrow, I felt it was important for me to honor my dad with a heartfelt tribute – particularly with today being Father’s Day.

John Gotti is a New York icon, but to me he was the most dynamic, charismatic man I have ever known.

When he died last week, I lost half of my best friend. The other half is my wonderful mom, Victoria.

When we spent our final minutes together, we recalled an old family story.

This man of strength and character raised me with old-country values to be a good person, a good wife and a good mother. He also taught me that anything was possible if I set my heart and mind to it. And he taught me to dream.

When I was just 7, I wished everything for a pony – a white one, of course. We were a poor family, and a horse was well beyond the family’s means. Years later, on my 30th birthday, I received a card from my dad with a white unicorn on the front. He clearly had not forgotten my wish and wrote inside that the unicorn was a symbol “that beauty belongs with beauty” and I should never stop dreaming.

As I manicured his nails for the last time during a prison visit a few weeks ago – knowing how meticulous he was about his hygiene – we discussed my life, my children, my work.

Even with death hovering nearby, his mind was razor sharp and his spirit undaunted. He ended up giving me a pep talk and instructions for my life after he was gone.

He ended our conversation telling me not to worry about his dying – and mentioned the white pony one last time.

“You must go on,” he instructed. “Go out there and show the world that we’re not a one-horse show.”

It’s funny how close I was to my dad, because when I was born, he wished that I had been a boy.

Mom had already provided him with a daughter, my elder sister, Angel – and would later bear him three boys – John, Frank and Peter.

But dad always told the story that his disappointment at me being a girl evaporated when he saw my black hair and green eyes. He called me his mini-Elizabeth Taylor.

And he was a doting dad. He loved to tell the story about how he carried me home from Methodist Hospital after I was born. We couldn’t afford public transportation then, so dad and uncle Angelo waded through snowdrifts three feet deep. Seventeen blocks, he said.

Other times he would parade me around in a rickety old carriage through the streets of downtown Brooklyn. Mom always insisted Angel and I wore proper dresses – most of them she made by hand – and that we learned to be little ladies. But dad had other ideas when it came to me.

He liked that I be dressed pretty, like a girl, with my hair in pigtails, but he always wanted me to think and be educated like a boy. He loved sports and taught me everything he knew, especially about football. By the time I was 6, I knew all the players by name. And there wasn’t one play I misunderstood. We had a lot of fun times as sports buddies.

Yesterday morning I recalled many of those fun times as I watched the bronzed casket that carried his cancer-ravaged body placed inside the hearse for the long, slow procession to the cemetery.

MY tears fell freely. I knew he would no longer be here to wrap his strong arms around me, to protect me against any travail that would befall me. That pain was unbearable.

But as we laid him to rest, I realized this was not so. A legend does not die. It merely grows with the telling of each act of courage and display of strength.

The media coverage of my dad’s death over the last week and his funeral yesterday has been what it was because my father was the man he was. To some, it was excessive, to others, scant tribute.

If a person hadn’t known him, if he hadn’t touched their lives on some level, they couldn’t possibly understand why people cared so deeply about him. There were thousands of people lining the streets, holding candles, as we drove along the highway.

It is said that the value of a person’s life can be judged by the turnout at his funeral. That being the case, my father was priceless.

And the legend of John Gotti lives on. Forever.