On March 25, 1917, seven young Jewish women founded Sigma Delta Tau at Cornell University. The Beta Chapter was chartered at the University of Pennsylvania on June 20, 1920.
In the mid-1960s, Barbara Ann Weintraub Ciongoli became a member of the Beta Chapter after she enrolled at Penn. She graduated from the prestigious Hunter College High School in New York City. Beginning in seventh grade, she took two subways to get from her home in Forest Hills to school and then reversed the trip to get back home. She was 17 when she graduated from high school.
In 1966, she studied in a Penn sponsored program in Florence, Italy. It was life changing experience for her. She met her future husband and she fell in love with Italy and all it had to offer. She became fluent in Italian, too. In 1967, she graduated from Penn summa cum laude. A year later, she earned a master’s degree in International Relations.
She married A. Kenneth Ciongoli, the young Penn student she met in Italy, when she was 21. In 1969, they moved to Burlington, Vermont, for his medical residency in neurology.
The Ciongolis shortly after their marriage.
While pursing a Ph.D. at the University of Vermont, she taught history. And although they moved 11 times in the first years of their marriage, they ended back in Burlington in 1975. There they raised their two daughters and three sons.
The couple opened an Italian restaurant, La Bottega, and the menus and recipes were her domain. And she worked behind the counter, too. And the Ciongolis were instrumental in starting the Vermont Italian Cultural Association. A 1986 article in the Burlington Free Press described the elegant Carnevale held on Strove Tuesday at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum. The attire was black tie or costume to celebrate the final day before Lent. There was a spread of traditional Italian desserts made by Ciongoli and two friends. It took them a week to prepare the dolci for the 150 attendees.
She was a trustee of John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Dr. A. Kenneth Ciongoli died in 2008. Barbara Ciongoli spent the last seven years of her life waging a valiant battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – Lou Gerhig’s disease). She died on June 29, 2021.
