Angelo Iannuzzi came to be known as "Professore" early in his life in Pittsburgh. His classroom was the Italian-American community, to which he became indispensable.

Mr. Iannuzzi, of Morningside, died Saturday at age 79.

His daughter, Licia Iannuzzi of Fox Chapel, remembers going with her father as a little girl when he made house calls to the homes of Italian immigrants who had official business to conduct and didn't know how to do it.

"Some people handed him their mail for him to read to them," she said.

A native of Calabria, Italy, Mr. Iannuzzi attended Carnegie Institute of Technology -- now Carnegie Mellon University -- where he learned English, working his way through as a cook and waiter at the Webster Hall hotel in Oakland.

He had been an attorney in Italy but did not retrain here. Instead, he opened Iannuzzi's International Agency, working from his home and making house calls until the late 1970s, when he bought a fixer-upper on Main Street in Bloomfield and turned it into an office. He concurrently worked in the Allegheny County Law Department as an assistant administrator and law librarian.

When Licia Iannuzzi became a lawyer, she installed her practice in his office, she said.

Some of his clients depended on him to do their taxes every year. He helped people with naturalization and Social Security. If they had worked in Italy, he helped them procure their pensions. He guided grieving families through probate and wrote power-of-attorney documents. Judges sometimes called him into their courtrooms to translate proceedings into Italian and back.

"It was known throughout Western Pennsylvania that if you were an Italian-American with a legal issue in Italy, you'd go to him," said David Regoli, an attorney who married Mr. Iannuzzi's younger daughter, Anna Marie, of Lower Burrell. "When some of the judges found out I was his son-in-law, they always asked, 'How is Professor Iannuzzi?' "

Common Pleas Judge Livingstone M. Johnson, who was an assistant county solicitor when he met Mr. Iannuzzi in the early 1960s, said, "I knew him long, well and only favorably. He was a messenger when I first met him, but from the way he dressed, he looked like a professional man."

They became social and professional friends, he said. For a time, Judge Johnson said, he married a lot of young Italian couples his friend would bring to him, often the bride being a Pittsburgh girl, the groom an Italian immigrant.

Josephine Borrelli was a bridesmaid at a wedding where she met the man she would marry. Gino Borrelli was visiting from Italy, in part to attend the wedding, and was supposed to return in September. Mr. Iannuzzi intervened.

"He said, 'Don't worry, I'm going to make arrangements to extend his time and we can get ready for a wedding,' " she said. "We got married in December, and he helped us with passports for our honeymoon, with our income taxes, and when we had property issues, he did our paperwork. He became like family."

In addition to his daughters, Mr. Iannuzzi is survived by his wife, Josephine Iannuzzi; three grandchildren; and two siblings, Assunta Mieri and Enzo Iannuzzi.

The funeral will be at 10 a.m. today at Winter Funeral Home, 4730 Friendship Ave., Bloomfield, with Mass to be celebrated afterward, at 11 a.m., at St. Raphael Church, Morningside.