The Story of Sinatra and Hoboken and What Went Wrong By Anthony De Palma, Jr. Sinatra's Parents: Marty and Dolly Frankie was the only son of an immigrant boilermaker and a practical nurse who had been born in Genoa. Anthony Martin Sinatra, Frank's father, sought his own glory in the ring, fighting as Marty O'Brien at a time when an Italian name like Sinatra shut doors even in a gymnasium. A club bantam-weight, Sinatra took as many punches as he gave from guys like Champ Seigner, another disguised Italian whose real name was Dominick Garaventi. Garaventi and his brother Lawrence, who was also a fighter, had a younger sister named Natalie who was extraordinarily independent for an immigrant woman at the turn of the century. She and Marty Sinatra eloped against the wishes of her parents, and when the Garaventis finally accepted Sinatra, they helped him buy a bar at the corner of Fourth and Jefferson streets. But just as he had done in the ring, Marty Sinatra lost whenever he was up against a Garaventi. Dolly, as Natalie came to be known by everyone in Hoboken, ruled her family as she ruled her neighborhood. Dominant, outgoing, with a mastery of all the Italian dialects, and a burning drive to provide for herself and her family, Dolly squeezed herself into the machine politics of Hoboken. Despite the strict ethnic boundaries that severed Hoboken into isolated fiefdoms, Dolly was clever enough to realize that the city's major industry was politics, and that, in order to get ahead, she had to become part of it. She had the ability to make friends and to use them. She attended all political functions, courteously greeting all guests, then turning to a trusted acquaintance to ask, "Who the hell was that son of a bitch?" When Frank was born, the Sinatras chose Frank Garrick, a young Irishman, to be the boy's godfather. Garrick's uncle, Thomas Garrick, was a Hoboken police captain at the time. The Sinatra baby was mistakenly named after his godfather because the absent-minded priest repeated Francis, instead of Martin, during the ceremony. The Sinatras and Garaventis did well in Hoboken, much better than they had any right to expect. After Prohibition cut into Marty Sinatra's bar business, Dolly used her influence to get him on the Hoboken Fire Department, where he rose to the rank of captain. The family moved out of the cold water flat and took a succession of apartments, each move a block or two eastward, toward the river and the sections of town reserved for those with money and power. The two families shared a cottage in Long Branch, where the children spent most of the summer and where Frank met Nancy Barbato of Jersey City, the girl who would become his first wife and mother of his three children. 
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