Madden Mischief

Ducktown was the name of the Italian American section of Atlantic City, NJ, where Raffaele and Genoveffa Imperiale resided at 20 North Georgia Avenue, you might say imperially with their 11 children, one of them Clementine, or Lina as her brothers and sisters called her.  I would one day call her “mom.”

Raffaele and Genoveffa who had immigrated from Italy in 1900 were married in nearby City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia where Raffaele established himself as a most suitable tailor specializing in garment making and clothing repair, highly valued trades for skilled Italian immigrants of that era.

Eventually they relocated their rapidly sprouting family to Ducktown, the historically Italian American neighborhood stretching from Missouri to Texas avenues in what was then the queen of resorts, Atlantic City, NJ. 

The Ducktown district had derived its name from Italian duck farmers who were the first Italian immigrants to move there.  Along the bayfront there they built duck houses to raise poultry and waterfowl supplied to local hotels.  St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church along with friendly family-run bakeries, taverns and social clubs would eventually unify and enliven the tightly knit enclave, where my mom grew up.

Ducktown was also called “Little Italy” by The Press of Atlantic City way before I started my career as a reporter there after graduating from Temple U and then earning my master’s degree at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School. The school was named after Walter Annenberg, who owned the newspaper where I’d eventually become one of its most daring cityside reporters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering everything from predatory drug dealers to visiting U.S. presidents, including one I thought had been shot. 

The shots were fired during a concert President Nixon was attending and I was covering at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, but the secret service agent who tackled me before I could reach the president’s box yelled the shots fired were part of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.  Oh!

The World’s Playground

Later, Atlantic City is where my playfulness would become full bloom and famous or maybe infamous one day when it caused me to break my neck.  At that time, I was a restless young lifeguard who after work one hot day made headlines when I dove headfirst from my lifeboat into the ocean onto guess what?  Out of nowhere  sprang a shallow sandbar onto the ocean floor that made a jolting rendezvous with my dauntlessly stubborn head, instantly turning Captain Marvelous Madden into one mad duck out of water. 

Eventually I recovered although you’d hardly call it at breakneck speed as it took over a year to return to somewhat normal.  After I was put back together almost like new again, what did I do?  Dive again!  This time headlong into another line of work replacing neck breaking with news breaking called public relations.

Soon the city where I grew up would become more widely known as The World’s Playground, where my mom played with her brothers and sisters in their close-knit Italian neighborhood while not too far away a mustachioed Irishman named William Madden deftly played his violin at the elegant Traymore Hotel on the boardwalk, was destined to become my dad. There one day he and my mom would meet, fall in love, and soon create me!

All Thanks to Ducktown

So, you might say the lifeguard, who turned reporter who would eventually make a big splash into PR when he launched TransMedia Group is thankful to all the ducks for that’s where it all began when an Italian tailor relocated his flock to a wonderland called Ducktown. 

And made me one of the luckiest ducks!

Lucky duck Tom Madden is an author and publicist whose PR firm, TransMedia Group, has made countless clients lucky ducks too over the past 40-plus years.  The celebrated firm, which he founded when he left NBC in New York City, is today managed by his dauntless daughter Adrienne Mazzone.