Rocco Carmine Siciliano was born on 1922 March 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Mary Arnone and Joseph Vincent Siciliano, Italian immigrants from Calabria. In 1940, he enrolled at the University of Utah, where he participated in student body government. On April 5, 1943, Siciliano entered active duty with the United States Army. He served in the United States Army during World War II as an Infantry Platoon Leader in the Tenth Mountain Infantry Division in Italy and was awarded the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Army Special Commendation Ribbon. In 1944, Siciliano graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor's degree in political science with honors. In 1948, he graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in law.
On 1947 November 8, Rocco C. Siciliano married Marion Leonore Stiebel; together, they had five children. Marion Stiebel Siciliano was a German refugee; the two met while she was working as a librarian in the Research and Intelligence Division of the United States State Department. Marion Siciliano was an abstract artist whose works were shown nationally and internationally and are held in numerous museum, corporate, and private collections. In 2001 along with her husband, she received an Honorary Doctorate (in Fine Arts) from Gettysburg College. Marion Siciliano received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on 2001 February 14.
From 1948-1950, he was a legal assistant to a board member in the National Labor Relations Board. From 1953-1959, Siciliano served by presidential appointment in the Eisenhower administration, first as an assistant secretary in the United States Department of Labor where he directed the nationwide employment and manpower activities. In 1957, Siciliano moved to the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Personnel Management, where he advised and assisted President Dwight D. Eisenhower with management policies, wage rates, and employment systems for all federal civilian employees.
From 1959-1969, Siciliano was a partner in the Washington law firm of Wilkinson, Cragun and Barker, a group of partners who were all originally from Utah. During that time, he served as counsel to national trade associations, including business and educational organizations. In April 1965, while retaining his partnership in the Washington law firm, he became president and chief executive of the Pacific Maritime Association, headquartered in San Francisco. He served in that position until January of 1969, when President Richard M. Nixon appointed him the undersecretary of the United States Department of Commerce. As the deputy secretary, Siciliano was responsible for the overall management of the Department. In October of 1971, President Richard M. Nixon appointed him as a management member and later a public member of the Federal Pay Board. He served in that part-time position until 1973.
From 1971 through 1984, Siciliano served as president, then as chairman and chief executive officer (1976) of Ticor, or TI Corporation (of California), a national Los Angeles based diversified financial services company. After retirement in 1984, he became counsel to the national law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, leaving in 1987 after becoming Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Health Properties, a real estate investment trust. He was a founding member and past chairman (1986) of the California Business Roundtable. Siciliano served as Chairman of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to develop innovative ways to improve democratic self-government.
In 1991, Siciliano became President and Chief Executive of the Dwight D. Eisenhower World Affairs Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2000, Siciliano was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, which he also served on under President George W. Bush. In 2001, he was elected Chairman of the commission. In this role, Siciliano oversaw the choice of a site for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the selection of Frank Gehry as its architect.
In 1997, the Sicilianos established The Rocco C. and Marion S. Siciliano Forum at the University of Utah. The Siciliano Forum is designed to offer an open, nonbiased forum for students, faculty, and the citizenry to focus their attention on the most important, least tractable public issues facing America today. In 2004, the University of Utah Press published Rocco Siciliano's biography,
In addition to his career as a public servant, Siciliano has served on many corporate and philanthropic boards. A supporter of the arts, Siciliano was a lifetime member of the Board of the Lois Angeles Philharmonic, serving as both its president and chairman. He was a founding board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1981, he was named a trustee of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and assisted in the creation of the Getty Center, including the acquisition of its land. Siciliano received many awards for his public service activities and three honorary doctorates: an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Hebrew Union College (1989); an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from Gettysburg College (2001); and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Utah (2001).
Rocco Carmine Siciliano died on 2018 November 6.
Arranged by subject and chronology.
Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.
The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library's
Collection Name, Collection Number, Box Number, Folder Number. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.
Donated by Rocco Siciliano in 1999, addendums in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, and by Maria Siciliano in 2019.
Processed by Mary Ann Curtis in 2000. Addendum and reprocessing by Special Collections staff in 2024.
See also the
Series I consits of material donatede between the 1990s and 2016 and contains primarily black-and-white photograph prints depicting Rocco Siciliano's career in civil service and business dating parimarily from teh 1960s and 1970s. Boxes 1-3 were donated between the 1990s and 2009. They consist primarily of black-and-white prints depicting Rocco Siciliano's work in business and civil service dating from 1969 through 1979. Box 4 contains material donated between 2009 and 2016; folder 18 is partially digital only and folder 19 is digital only. The digital only files were donated on CDs by Rocco Siciliano and are in JPG format. Material in Box 4 depicts Rocco Siciliano's work for the Eisenhower administration and Rocco and Marion's involvement in business and philanthropy.
Series II contains the addendum donated in 2019. Boxes 5-7 contain black-and-white and color photographs depicting Rocco Siciliano's childhood and young adulthood, including his military service during World War II; personal and professional photographs of Rocco and Marion Siciliano and their family; black-and-white prints depicting Rocco Siciliano's political appointments in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations; color photographs depicting Rocco Siciliano's participation in the Dwight D. Eisenhower museum and memorial. Box 7 is oversize and contains primarily primarily black-and-white, matted photographs depicting Rocco Siciliano's political career; it includes signed photographs of political figures known to Siciliano in Folder 1.
These images were sent to the library digitally (emailed, on CD, flash drive, hard drive). The image files can be requested, but the library did not create the scan and does not have the original images.
Subjects include: Board of Control; Association of Men; debate team; South High Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)
Subjects include: Basic training, field artillery; Camp Roberts, California; Ervin Spinary wedding; Battery D, 51st Field Artillery Training Battalion
Locations include: Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna, Austria;; S.S. Barracks at Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), Berchtesgaden, Germany
Locations include: Camp Herbert Tareyton, Le Havre, France; Sea Fiddler (troopship); New York City, New York
Photographs by Bruce Ladd