Carugati spoke Italian, English, French and German fluently, as well as a bit of Russian and other languages. His language skills soon came to the attention of Capt. Jack Hart, an artillery officer with the 75th Infantry Division, and who assigned the Italian to work for the American Armed Forces as an interpreter. The two men, working so closely together, became good friends. As a result, Carugati remained with the occupational forces in Europe through 1947, when he returned to Milan.

It took some time, but in 1949, the former Italian soldier, who was now married to a woman named Minerva, and their young daughter, finally arrived in America. Jack Hart planned to have the Carugati family stay with him, but he had recently suffered a hunting accident. Instead, the new arrivals went to live with Jack’s brother, Dean, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. The Hart brothers were well-known citizens in that small town — Jack was a geologist for his family’s oil company and Dean was an attorney — and it was through the Hart connections that Carugati would begin to build his life in his newly adopted country.

With only 7,000 residents, Pauls Valley couldn’t long support the work of a talented artist like Carugati. During his six-month stay, the Italian artist painted portraits of various members of the Hart family, followed by a portrait of Oklahoma Govenor Robert S. Kerr. Kerr, like Jack, was an oil man. The governor was so impressed with Carugati’s painting that Carugati soon found himself with a commission to paint the Kerr family portrait. In order to ensure the artist could continue his work uninterrupted, Kerr moved the Carugatis to Oklahoma City. Gov. Kerr — who would later become Senator Kerr — maintained his interest and contact with the Carugati family, even going so far as to assist the Italians through the red tape of immigration and with earning their citizenship in 1954. For Carugati, it was a long-held dream that had finally come true.

Carugati’s career was beginning to take off, and the move to Oklahoma City proved to be a fortunate one. Shortly after moving, the Carugatis met and became good friends with then-Province Theta Archon Leo S. Cade (Oklahoma ’22), who later became the Fraternity’s Eminent Supreme Archon. Cade also took an interest in Carugati’s career and, in 1951, convinced Eminent Supreme Recorder John O. Moseley (Oklahoma ’16) to sit for a Carugati portrait while Moseley was visiting the Oklahoma Kappa chapter. The completed painting, which was given to Oklahoma Kappa to honor its most prominent alumnus, was another turning point. Moseley recognized Carugati’s talent and began to commission additional paintings. Soon, Carugati began traveling to the Levere Memorial Temple in Evanston, Illinois, to consult on the care and preservation of the Temple’s growing art collection.

Like the first artist of the Levere Memorial Temple, Johannes O. Waller (Northwestern ’34), it was his work in the Temple’s Tower Room that lead Carugati to become an initiated member. Waller had done the room’s initial painting during his ten-year tenure as the Temple’s official artist, but had trouble with the paint properly adhering to the walls. Over the years, the problems resurfaced, and the frescoes needed to be restored. Since the Tower Room’s frescos depict Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s Ritual, only initiated members are allowed inside. Moseley’s successor as ESR, Rex A. Smith (Nebraska ’24), knew that Carugati was the artist for the job, so he consulted with Cade to determine a course of action. Cade and Smith came up with a simple idea to solve the problem — initiate Carugati.

According to Fraternity Law at that time, non-student initiations could only take place during a chapter’s installation, and the Iowa Sigma chapter at Simpson College was in the process of revival. It presented the perfect opportunity, so, on October 19, 1957, with Cade and Smith as his sponsors, Carugati became a member. Carugati was thrilled.

Over the next two and a half decades, Carugati created a substantial body of work for Sigma Alpha Epsilon totaling almost two dozen pieces. In 1971, the Fraternity made its already 20-year artistic relationship with Carugati official and named him the artist of the Levere Memorial Temple, a position he held for another 13 years. In the 1950s, Chicago became a hub of the growing American advertising industry. Cade continued to believe in his friend’s artistic talent and mentioned his name to colleagues. The networking paid off, and Carugati was contacted by Reno Biondi (Northwestern ’30) of Stephens, Biondi and DeCicco, a commercial art-and-photography studio located in Chicago. After seeing Carugati’s portfolio, Biondi hired him on the spot. In 1957, the Carugati family relocated to Chicago, and Carugati began to establish himself as a successful commercial illustrator.

Carugati’s work was in great demand in both the US and Europe. In 1972, Carugati got his first commission from Playboy for artwork to accompany an article. This assignment lead to many more commissions from Playboy and other national publications including Penthouse, Psychology Today, Skeptic, Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker. He also completed artwork for many books and was commissioned to do the cover illustration for the four solo albums of the band KISS and for the album Fly By Night by the band Rush.

In 1984, Carugati decided to retire and resign his post as artist of the Levere Memorial Temple, ending a 33-year relationship as the Fraternity’s primary artist. Here the information in The Record articles ended. Like finishing a good book only to realize that the last chapter is missing, I wanted to know what happened next. To find out how Carugati’s story ended and learn more about his involvement the Fraternity, I decided to give Anna a call.

Anna told me that her parents moved back to Italy after his retirement, where her father continued to do some professional work for both American and Italian clients. He also was able to indulge in painting landscapes for his own enjoyment. But tragedy would strike: In 1996, Carugati suffered an aneurism and was bedridden for 20 months before passing away at age 76, and then a few years ago, faulty wiring started a fire that devastated Minerva’s apartment. Carugati’s oil paintings, including many of the landscapes that he and Minerva treasured, were destroyed. In his later years, Carugati began to work with acrylic paints, which are waterproof and survived the water used to extinguish the fire. While heavily damaged, the acrylic paintings await cleaning and conservation.

I asked Anna what the organizationv meant to her father. “Being a member of the Fraternity was a huge honor for him,” she said. “He never would have imagined joining such a prestigious organization. He cherished the friendships he made, had great respect for the members as well as the Fraternity’s standards of excellence.”

But it was through his work that he would be most remembered and, thankfully, that is exactly how Carugati wanted it. “Dad believed in hard work, in developing and perfecting skills, in taking the necessary time and effort to do good work,” Anna said. “I think he would want people to appreciate his work as faithful depictions of the beauty he saw around him. He sought beauty and truth in nature, music, art, architecture, in the world around him.”

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