Cleveland Plain Dealer

While Robert Corna Jr. was an assistant director on "The Passion of the Christ," filmed in Italy, he started a professional lacrosse team. Corna, who played lacrosse at St. Ignatius High School and the College of Wooster, began the Italian national lacrosse team. He coaches and travels with the team between movie shoots. Corna also started a high school team for the American Overseas School of Rome. He coached the son of Mel Gibson, the director of "The Passion."

Corna, who lives in Rome, also worked on "Gangs of New York," which was filmed in Italy.

Trick of the trade Like magic, doors opened for Thompson Hine lawyer James Robenalt when he began to research a book about the grandfather he never met, William Durbin. He got information about Durbin from magicians around the country, including David Copperfield.

Why? Durbin, who ran William Jennings Bryan's 1896 presidential campaign in Ohio, amused farmers and factory workers with sleight of hand while selling his candidate's platform. Politics and law were Durbin's career, but he maintained magic as a hobby, becoming the president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Robenalt's book, "Linking Rings," will be published this summer by Kent State University Press. Robenalt will appear before the International Brotherhood of Magicians in June when it holds its annual convention in Cleveland. His granddad held the organization's first convention in 1926 in his Kenton back yard.

Found, 40 years later West Side interior designer Joe Costa, a member of the Hermit Club's chorus, dreamed up the Cuban theme for the 100-year-old club's Saturday gala, "The Hermits in Havana."

He was one of 20,000 Cuban youths whom parents sent to America, mostly by plane, to escape communism in the early 1960s. The plan, engineered by the U.S. government and the Catholic Church, was called "Operation Peter Pan." There were eight other children on the 15-year-old Costa's plane, which landed in Miami. "I didn't know any of those kids," he said. He never saw any of them again either - until a few months ago in Cleveland.

Costa heard that there was a piano professor at Cleveland State University who had trained at the International Conservatory of Music in Havana. He went to see Maria Pla about playing some authentic music at the Hermit Club gala.

It was a lunch that lasted seven hours. They discovered that they both came over April 10, 1961 - on the same plane.

A green fling The 94th meeting of the Irish Good Fellowship Club will be held on St. Patrick's Day, of course. This year, the club's Irish Good Fellow of the Year award goes to Herbert "Bud" McTaggart, longtime labor leader, government liaison and producer of "America's Workforce," the WERE AM/1330 labor program with former WMMS FM/100.7 personality Ed "Flash" Ferenc serving as host.

The club's annual meeting, this year at the Wyndham Hotel, will be held early in the day to allow for glad-handing and toasting before 11:30 a.m. Steven Dever, Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor, is the event's master of ceremonies and promises to watch the clock to get everyone out before the St. Patrick's Day parade starts.

Asbestos foes meet again Personal injury lawyer Michael Kelley of Cleveland's Kelley & Ferrero was one of the lead lawyers who took on Halliburton Co. last year and won a $4.2 billion settlement for some 435,000 lawsuits over asbestos and silica exposure.

In April, Kelley will face off with Albert Cornelison, Halliburton's executive vice president and general counsel, on the issue of asbestos compensation. They will debate at a LexisNexis Wall Street Forum on asbestos in New York.

© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.