Personal Life
Giamatti was born in Boston and grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Claybaugh Walton (Smith College '35) and Valentine John Giamatti. His father was professor and chairman of the Department of Italian Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College. Giamatti's paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants Angelo Giamattei and Maria Lavorgna : his grandfather Angelo emigrated to the United States from Telese, near Naples, Italy, around 1900. Giamatti's maternal grandparents, from Wakefield, Massachusetts, were Helen Buffum (Davidson) and Bartlett Walton, who graduated from Phillips Academy Andover and Harvard College.
Giamatti attended South Hadley High School, spent his junior year at the Overseas School of Rome, and graduated from Phillips Academy in 1956. At Yale University, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and as a junior in 1960 was tapped by Scroll and Key, a senior secret society. He graduated magna cum laude in 1960. That same year, he married Toni Marilyn Smith, who taught English for more than 20 years at the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, until her death in 2004. Together the couple had three children: Hollywood actors Paul and Marcus and jewelry designer Elena. In the film Sideways, a photograph of the character Miles Raymond (portrayed by Giamatti's son Paul) with his late father is really a picture of Paul and Bart Giamatti.
Giamatti's friend and successor as baseball commissioner, Fay Vincent, wrote in The Last Commissioner that Giamatti's official religious view was agnosticism.
Read more about this topic: A. Bartlett Giamatti
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