Raymond Librizzi

04/30/2001

Raymond J. Librizzi of Circular Avenue, journalist, artist, world traveler, hobo, labor organizer and political candidate, died yesterday at Berkshire Medical Center. He was 93. Mr. Librizzi, who was widely known as "Raylib," retired in 1972 after 10 years as The Eagle's police and court reporter. From 1952 to 1962, he worked as night news reporter for radio station WBEC, which was owned by The Eagle until 1962. For a brief period as a young man, he worked in the advertising department of The New York Times and as a reporter for the Springfield Union. Describing his duties at the radio station, Mr. Librizzi -- probably unintentionally -- conveyed the extent of the stores of energy that kept him walking, riding his bicycle, writing and painting into his ninth decade. "Theoretically, I was supposed to take the place of the whole Eagle staff that worked during the day," he told an interviewer in 1972. "It was a hell of a job. You were running constantly." On the day he retired from The Eagle, "the excitable, emotional peppy little Italian was still rushing around the newsroom, flirting with the women, joking with the men, pounding on the typewriter, puffing on cigarettes, hurrying to the police station, answering the phone, reminiscing about past adventures, and tearfully thanking fellow reporters for a surprise birthday luncheon," a colleague wrote of the occasion. Following his retirement, Mr. Librizzi turned his attention to painting and drawing. Typically, he approached the work with unbridled enthusiasm and emotion. He signed his work "Raylib." "I guess the high point in his life as an artist was being written up in a book by Dan Prince called 'Passing in the Outsider Lane.' There was one chapter devoted to Raylib with six color reproductions of his paintings," Grier Horner, former associate editor of The Eagle and a colleague of Mr. Librizzi's, recalled yesterday. "Prince felt there was a real correlation between Ray's personality, his skills as a reporter and the way he painted. He painted in broad strokes, often using words -- his paintings were almost like headlines." Horner, who also is an artist, said he regularly marveled at the breadth of Mr. Librizzi's life experience. "Ray used to hawk The Eagle and the older boys crowded him off street corners, so he would go into bars. He made up the name Raylib so they remembered him in the bars," Horner said yesterday. "He was a wild-man traveler. He'd go on vacation to Europe with enough money to get by on five bucks a day and a couple of paintings tucked under his arm -- he'd barter them [for food and lodging] -- and a round-trip air ticket. He'd often end up interviewing the president of the country." Indeed, Mr. Librizzi's published work includes dispatches, sent by air mail to The Eagle, that contain reports of his personal meetings with dignitaries, including former Irish Premier Sean Lemass and John McCann, a noted playwright who was lord mayor of Dublin. On a trip to Iceland in 1965, Mr. Librizzi interviewed Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson in Reykjavik. His explorations of foreign lands were preceded by extensive travels in the United States. He left home as a young teen-ager, riding "blindbaggage" -- in a narrow nook at the head of the first passenger car -- on trains that included the famed 20th Century Limited. Several weeks later, after winning $360 in a game of craps in Atlantic City, N.J., he resolved to come home. In 1972, Mr. Librizzi published his memoirs. The 100-page softcover book, titled "Ray Lib," recounts many of its author's adventures under such chapter titles as "Fighting Fascisti," "I Live on my Paintings in London," "Rendezvous with Death," "Reverie in my Attic," and "New York Publicity Stunt," an account of Mr. Librizzi's activities as "agent" for another Pittsfield man who agreed to walk from Pittsfield to New York City as a publicity stunt for the former Rosa Restaurant and the former Pittsfield Milk Exchange in connection with the 1939 World's Fair. With Mr. Librizzi and two other men following in a car, Aldo Liccardi, a cook at The Rosa, made it to New York in 33 hours, counting rest periods. In the mid-1940s, Mr. Librizzi joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a union organizer and was sent to Montgomery, Ala., where he directed a successful campaign to organize employees of a textile firm into a CIO local and win a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election. He resigned his post after he was repeatedly threatened, once by a young man who held a pistol to his head. The organizer who succeeded him was severely beaten. In 1961, Mr. Librizzi entered -- then withdrew -- from a race for the Democratic nomination for state Senate. He ran for mayor of Pittsfield in 1975 and again for state Senate in 1976. His positions on issues included favoring the death penalty and restrictions on furloughs for prisoners. He opposed the "flat rate" income tax, contending that "those who reap the benefits of our economic system should also bear the burden of higher taxes." Born in Pittsfield on May 30, 1907, son of Charles and Anna Monteleone Librizzi, he graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1928. He attended Ohio State University for one year before being admitted to Williams College as a sophomore. He graduated in 1932 with a degree in political science. Mr. Librizzi's wife, the former Helen Scagliarini, whom he married June 4, 1934, died in 1996. He leaves two sons, R. Joel Librizzi of Pittsfield, a photographer for The Eagle, and Richard C. Librizzi of Pittsfield and New York City; a daughter, Carla Critelli of Pittsfield; two sisters, Mary Fasce of Adams and Leonora Aprile of Afton, N.Y.; six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Predeceased by a brother, Vincent Librizzi. The funeral will be Friday, May 4, at 9 from FLYNN & DAGNOLI-BENCIVENGA FUNERAL HOME, 5 Elm St., followed by a Liturgy of Christian Burial at 10 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church celebrated by the Rev. Geoffrey J. Deeker, CSS, pastor. Burial will follow in St. Ann's Cemetery, Lenox. Calling hours at the funeral home will be Thursday, May 3, from 4 to 7. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Mount Carmel Church Organ Fund in care of the funeral home.

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