The statue of St. Michael the Archangel no longer perches in its niche above the entrance to the former St. Michael’s Church.

Weeks before the installation of John Joseph Myers as the fifth archbishop of Newark last Tuesday, rumors were swirling like the leaves in Branch Brook Park.

One controversy that has tarnished the seafarer’s reputation persists, periodically fanned by prevailing political winds.

Slash and burn, that’s Nicole Mustilli’s style. It has been since her days as a fencer at Columbia High School in Maplewood.

In an Italian-accented voice that is no less friendly than it is forthright, Edvige Giunta has much to talk about.

Sitting before a piano at the Monmouth Conservatory of Music, the Red Bank school he founded in 1962, Felix Molzer asked a visitor, sotto voce, in a Viennese-accented lilt, ”What is your phone number?”

To say that ice has been a leitmotif in the life of Elaine Zayak is to state the obvious.

For a century the predominantly Italian-American faithful of St. Lucy’s Church have been celebrating the feast of St. Gerard Maiella with a religious procession through the streets of the neighborhood once known as the First Ward.

Like many teachers, Anna Brown spent part of her summer vacation traveling abroad. She’s also been labeled a fugitive and a terrorist.

At the age of 72 and financially secure with her children on their own, Evelyn Jacobs Ortner could easily have chosen the genteel suburban life of country clubbing and shopping.