Angelo Felice Coniglio

Angelo Felice Coniglio (born August 21, 1936) is a retired American Civil Engineer and university educator from Buffalo, New York. He attended Buffalo elementary schools, Lafayette High School, and the University of Buffalo (UB), where he earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Civil Engineering. He was the first graduate of the UB School of Civil Engineering, under Robert L. Ketter, PhD., who later became President of the University. Coniglio also took undergraduate courses at the University of Illinois. He is a Registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the State of New Hampshire. He is married to the former Angela Yvonne Bongiovanni, a retired Pharmacist, a childhood sweetheart and a classmate at Lafayette and at UB.
Biography
Professional career
Coniglio had a varied professional career which included service with: the Power Authority of the State of New York; Acres International, a private Engineering firm; and the Buffalo District, United States Army Corps of Engineers, where he rose to the highest civilian position, as Chief, Engineering and Planning Division. He also taught for twenty-five years as an Adjunct Professor in Civil Engineering at UB, where he received the 1993 New York State Society of Professional Engineers award as Educator of the Year, teaching courses in Hydrometeorology, Fluid Mechanics, Hydrology, and Water Resources Planning.
During his professional career, he was responsible for hydraulic and hydrologic engineering for numerous water resources projects including Mount Morris Dam, the Lake Erie Wastewater Management Study (credited with restoring the Lake), and oversight of the hydrology of the Lower Great Lakes. He is an expert in lake and river ice hydrology, reconnaissance and control, and served in liaison with Canadian counterparts through the International Niagara River Board of Control and other control and study boards of the US-Canadian International Joint Commission.
As an alumnus of Lafayette, the oldest Buffalo public school remaining in its original building, he served on the Board of the Lafayette High School Alumni Association, playing important roles in both the school's 75th Anniversary in 1978, and its 100th Anniversary in 2003. The alumni reunion for the latter raised over $30,000 for physical improvements to the school.
Association with the Buffalo Bills and American Football League (AFL)
Coniglio was a season ticket holder for the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League, and became an avid fan of the league, with which the NFL merged in 1970. He was the driving force behind the Kansas City Chiefs' wearing of a commemorative AFL patch in the fourth and final AFL-NFL World Championship Game. In 2003, as an outgrowth of his Coniglio family website, he started a site devoted to the AFL, which includes an American Football League Hall of Fame, initiated because of his perception that former American Football League players were not fairly considered for induction to the "pro football" Hall of Fame. Coniglio's AFL pages have the largest on-line collection of images and stories of AFL players, officials and teams.
Coniglio's AFL site or his AFL-related activities have been featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the New York Times, Pro Football Weekly, and the Buffalo News. He was a contributor to HBO's feature Rebels With A Cause about the AFL, and has had numerous TV and radio interviews, including one by NFL Films for their Fall 2009 Showtime series Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League.
In 2005, Conglio began a letter-writing campaign to Lamar Hunt, Ralph Wilson, Roger Goodell and others, urging them to give significant recognition to what would have ben the AFL's fiftieth season. He called the proposal a "Celebration of the American Football League". In the 2009 season, many of his suggestions were implemented by Professional Football, including "Legacy Games" played between former AFL teams, with each wearing throwback AFL uniforms.
Coniglio was the litigant in a 1970 class-action lawsuit against the Buffalo Bills and the NFL (officially "Coniglio V. Highwood Services"), holding that their policy of forcing season-ticket holders to purchase tickets to unattractive exhibition games in order to secure their season-ticket rights was illegal. The suit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it, and Coniglio lost the case. Since the basis of the decision was that there was no restraint of trade because there was no competition for the Bills' services in Buffalo, he is quoted as saying afterwards that "The U.S. Anti-Trust laws don't protect consumers from avaricious businesses, they protect avaricious businesses from each other."
Personal life
His family site includes "La Bedda Sicilia", his written history of his parents' homeland, Sicily, as well as a partial translation from the Italian of "Serradifalco", the history of his parents' village, written on its 350th anniversary in 1990 by Giuseppe Testa.
Coniglio lives in Amherst, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. He now writes columns on genealogy for the monthly Forever Young, a publication of the magazine Buffalo Spree, and 50Plus Senior News, a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania monthly, as well as for an on-line publication, Coastal Monroe Magazine. He is an active proponent of the establishment of a Buffalo-Erie Canal Museum at Buffalo's Commercial Slip, to recognize the city's Erie Canal heritage.

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