An officer in the Army for 20 years, Lorenzo Fiorentino was in charge of anti-terrorism at a base in Kabul that housed the Three Star General Command. The youngest of four children, Lorenzo Fiorentino was born in Casteldaccia, Sicily, to Pietro and Rosalia (Canale). His father became ill and could no longer work the farm, and in 1972, the family immigrated to Chicago, where they lived with Rosalia’s sister and her family. His mother supported them as a seamstress until his father recovered and began working in a factory.

Fiorentino grew up near Pulaski Road and North Avenue and attended Our Lady of the Angels grade school. He remembers growing up in an Italian neighborhood. “Everybody watched out for everybody,” he says. “If you said something wrong to somebody, you were going to hear it when you got home. Not only hear it, but you were going get it, because you were supposed to respect everybody.”