A narrator then offers a few quirky revelations:
“Police often question him, just because they find him interesting.”
“People hang on his every word, even the prepositions.”
“His legend precedes him the way lightning precedes thunder.”
In truth, the guy — who ends each segment with his signature “stay thirsty my friends” — is not some Latin Renaissance man, but Jonathan Goldsmith, an actor from New York City.
But here in Kettering — on the sidelines of Alter High School football — you will find someone who Bob Penno, the UD professor and past president of the Agonis Club, calls “The Real Deal.”
He was talking about Marco Del Freo, a bearded raconteur who also speaks in richly-accented English. He can also speak in Italian, French and some Spanish.
He studied medicine at two universities, was once the drummer in a band and served in the armored tank division of the Italian army. He has worked decades as an international journalist and photographer, covering wars, politics, business, sports and entertainment in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States.
He’s profiled everyone from Grace Jones, Diana Ross and Miles Davis to 28 Nobel Prize winners. He’s been involved in the import and production of olive oil and hot peppers, has trained horses and written a book on a trip to Antarctica.
His sporting pursuits include karate, weightlifting, parachuting, skiing, target shooting and especially American football, in which he has won three Italian titles.
And now, in maybe the most unlikely career move yet, he is about to begin his second season as an assistant coach on Ed Domsitz’s football staff at Alter.
He was with the Knights last year as they went 14-0 before losing to Cleveland Benedictine, 21-14, in the state championship game at Ohio Stadium. And he’ll be with the team again beginning next week when the Knights hold their annual three-day camp at Thomas More College in Northern Kentucky.
While it makes for an unlikely story, it’s built on the time-worn adage about one good deed deserving another.
Won 3 ‘Super Bowls’
The 58-year-old Del Freo — proudly wearing a brown Alter sweater adorned with a gold helmet over the heart — sat down in a Kettering coffee shop recently and talked about his thirst for life.
He grew up in Carrara in the Italian region of Tuscany. He was into sports and music as a teen, spent three college years in premed and eventually gravitated to journalism. He has worked for several well-known Italian newspapers and magazines and over the years has reported from around the world, including a New York City firehouse and a Chicago courtroom.
He’s had a special affinity for America, going all the way back to his teen years’ fascination with Clint Eastwood’s cinematic San Francisco detective, Dirty Harry Callahan, and his football hero, Jack Lambert, the snarling, gap-toothed Hall of Fame linebacker of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
In the late 1970s he was assigned to take photos of an Italian team playing American football. Most of the players were from Piacenza in Northern Italy and were called The Pink Panthers.
“They were enthusiastic, but they had no pads, no equipment,” Marco said. “They wore motorbike helmets and welded on face masks.”
A rich hotel owner from Milan began to back them and he convinced Marco to play.
“The Saturday after, I went to the field and so, after that I lost some 15 years of weekends,” he recalled with a grin.
He played defensive end for a team called the Rhinos, whose games were against NATO forces teams. Then in the early 1980s his team won three Italian championships — Italy’s Super Bowl, as he called it — and soon after he was on an assignment in New York City when a guy recruited him to play for a semipro team in the Bronx.
With the possibility of a future tryout with the New York Jets, he put himself in the hands of a physical therapist who eventually muscled him up from 230 pounds to 275.
“I took no steroids, but I drank these smoothies every day,” Marco said. “They had two bananas, about a half pound of liver, soy, four eggs and when it all went through the blender it reminded me of the film The Blob.”
He said he could squat 700 pounds and his sprint times lowered, but while his efforts didn’t get him on the Jets roster, the amazing transformation did get chronicled in the New York Post.
Back home, he was involved in putting on football camps that involved former NFL players like Jim Plunkett, Boomer Esiason and Marcus Allen. And in 2003, with the help of the NFL, he helped put on the Jurassic Bowl, a charity football game that raised funds for a school in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In the decade after that — as he drifted to other business ventures — he still dreamed of pursing his football passion.
And it was during that time he and his wife Maggie met Tricia Penno, who is part of a Kettering family — including brothers Doug, Jeff and Joe — especially accomplished in sports.
Ohio connection
While a student at UD, Tricia had studied abroad in Italy and so fell in love with the country that she returned later to live.
“She was in both Florence and Milan, basically just trying to make a life over there, but it wasn’t working,” said Bob, her dad. “She was about to the point where she didn’t know where she was going to get her next meal and she ended up calling one of her friends in Chicago whose dad was the press secretary for the Illinois Supreme Court.
“As luck would have it, Marco had done a story on the court system there and her friend’s father got Tricia his phone number.
“She called and Marco told her to come have dinner while he was talking to a couple of people about a story. And those two people turned out to be Nobel Prize winners.
“From there he and Maggie kind of took Tricia in. They had just acquired a property in northern Italy and were making a bed and breakfast and Tricia went and helped them with it.”
Marco said Tricia also helped him and his wife with their three children and soon a relationship between families was cemented.
Eventually the Pennos visited Marco and Maggie and since then Bob has brought several study-abroad groups to Italy and managed to visit them.
More recently Tricia’s sister Cathy and Cathy’s husband Nate came and ran the B&B for a month.
Marco — who has been involved in various American business ventures in recent years and is going through the process to become a U.S. citizen — finally visited the Pennos at their Kettering home last year. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had sent over his resume and a note about his desire to coach.
Bob Penno took him to visit Domsitz, who embraced the possibilities with an open mind.
“Marco’s experiences were amazing,” Domsitz said. “But the thing that jumped off the page at me was interviewing all those Nobel Prize winners. That had to be a fascinating.”
Penno remembers that first meeting:
“The two of them hit it off. It turns out Marco has always had an affinity for the American Indians — in particular he has a lot of respect for the Cherokee — and he had just finished reading a book about them. And Ed had read the same book.
“I think they enjoyed each other’s company. There really was a resonance.”
‘Passion for the game’
Alter always begins its football campaign with the three-day camp at Thomas More and after that initial meeting last year Domsitz invited Marco to come down there and see how they did things.
“He had a real passion for the game, but I told him all the hoops he’d have to jump through to be a coach in Ohio,” Domsitz said. “He’d have to take a sports medicine course, a concussion course, be finger printed, do lots of things and then afterward, do it all for pennies. He said that’s what he wanted.”
During the Thomas Moore sessions, the Knights end their most grueling practice day with an evening at a big swimming pool there.
“They do crazy things and they asked the new coaches to do something,” Marco remembered. “I was headed to the airport and didn’t have time to change clothes, but I told them, ‘You are trusting me as a coach, so I trust you to take me across the pool.’
“And I dropped and they caught me and passed me across without one drop getting on me.”
The bond was forming and developed further once Marco returned from Italy in August, moved in with the Pennos and then immersed himself in the Knights’ preseason two-a-day practices.
He helped with the junior varsity team but by mid-season was working with varsity defensive linemen.
When the Knights finished their regular season 10-0, they posed for a group photo with Marco — who was wearing the blue No. 76 Rhino jersey he wore in 1983 when he won his last Super Bowl — in the middle
During the season Marco developed a special relationship with Alter quarterback Dusty Hayes and after the Knights had lost the rain-drenched title game, there was an especially poignant moment.
Before Hayes left the field, he had a cell-phone conversation with Marco’s wife, Maggie, back in Italy.
“He’s become like family to us,” Marco said. “He’s in the Marines now and my daughter sends stuff to him.”
Marco plans to write a book on the Knights’ run to the state title game, the way the Alter community embraced him and on American people in general. He plans to call it “The Perfect Season.”
“The whole experience was better than anything I’d thought it would be,” he said. “I mean think about it: I’m a guy almost 60 from Italy and I felt accepted from the start. And this wasn’t at just any place. This is one of the cradles of football in the state. It’s one of the most successful programs with one of the best coaches in Ohio.
“In some ways this has changed my life.”
Domsitz said this season Marco will call the defenses for the JV team and coach varsity defensive ends. He also helps in the weight room:
“He is a great fit for Alter.”
Penno agreed: “What you see with him is what you get.”
And with Marco Del Freo you get a lot.
“All those experiences he’s had serve him well in coaching,” Domsitz said. “They lend credibility and they also give him something he shares with the kids.
“Did he tell you his great uncle was the Pope? Yeah, Pope Paul VI. Marco remembers when he was a kid and he and his little brother playing at the Pope’s summer palace. His little brother sat on the Pope’s lap playing and slapped the Pope. And Pope Paul VI, he just laughed.
“With stories like that … now that’s an interesting guy.”
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