Funeral plans Wednesday for former Mayor D’Alesandro, brother of Speaker Pelosi
The funeral of Thomas D’Alesandro III, a former Baltimore mayor and eldest brother of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will take place Wednesday at St. Ignatius Church, according to his son, Thomas D’Alesandro IV.
Viewings are scheduled Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Roman Catholic church at 740 N. Calvert St.
A funeral Mass will take place at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
Both the viewings and Mass are open to the public, his son said.
Interment at Delaney Valley Memorial Gardens will be private.
D’Alesandro, who served as mayor from 1967 to 1971, died Sunday at age 90 of complications from a stroke at his North Baltimore home.
He was the second of two mayors from a political dynasty that also produced Pelosi, the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Young Tommy,” as he was affectionately known, followed in the footsteps of their father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., who was mayor from from 1947 to 1959.
But the younger D’Alesandro decided not to run for a second term after after the 1968 riots in the wake of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, racial strife, and strikes by city laborers, bus drivers and symphony musicians.
The D’Alesandros remain the only father-son duo to have held the office of mayor, making them perhaps the closest thing to political royalty in Baltimore.
The family considered hosting wellwishers at St. Leo the Great Roman Catholic Church, its longtime parish in Little Italy, but opted for the larger St. Ignatius Church to accommodate more people, D’Alesandro IV said.
“We gave that a lot of consideration, but we are concerned we may need more space,” he said.
St. Ignatius can seat roughly 300 people and has an overflow room that can hold about 50 more, according to a church official. D’Alesandro’s wedding to the former Margaret Piracci in 1952, while his father was mayor, drew thousands to the Basilica of the Assumption, the first Catholic cathedral built in the U.S. — so many that the fire department was forced to turn people away.
In lieu of flowers, the D’Alesandro family asks that donations be made to either the Institute of Notre Dame at 901 Aisquith St. or the Loyola Early Learning Center at 801 St. Paul St.