A. Kenneth Ciongoli, 65, physician

He had been a South Philadelphia boxer when he was young and he became the physician on the 1976 U.S. Olympic boxing team that featured Sugar Ray Leonard.

As a Republican fund-raiser, a son said, he was on the short list to become ambassador to Italy in 2000.

And, displaying his wide-ranging interests, he shared his grandmother's recipe for ravioli on public television.

On Tuesday, A. Kenneth Ciongoli, 65, a Vermont neurologist and board chairman of the National Italian American Foundation in Washington, died of cancer at his home in Burlington.

After joining the foundation in 1985, he served as its president from 1996 to 2000, vice chairman from 2000 to 2004, and chairman since 2004.

A foundation spokeswoman said Dr. Ciongoli expanded the organization "from . . . a scholarship sponsor to a major voice in American cultural and political affairs."

Dr. Ciongoli graduated from St. Joseph's Prep in 1960, the University of Pennsylvania in 1964, and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1968.

From 1975 to 1977, he taught and was a researcher at the Wistar Institute in West Philadelphia and the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

His son Adam said in an interview yesterday that his father, "despite being an incredibly busy man who wrote books and . . . did medical research and ran a national foundation, was actively involved in politics."

A national fund-raiser for Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign last year, Dr. Ciongoli "was very involved in Republican politics," his son said, and active in the 2005 Senate confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But Dr. Ciongoli was "very bipartisan," his son said, and through the Italian American foundation he advocated the appointment of Andrew Cuomo as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton.

In 1974, according to the foundation, the government of Denmark awarded Dr. Ciongoli a fellowship in medicine, the first foreign citizen it had so honored.

Since 1975, Dr. Ciongoli had been on the faculty of the medical school at the University of Vermont, most recently as a clinical assistant professor of neurology.

In 1977, he cofounded Neurological Associates of Vermont, his Burlington medical practice, where he worked until last year.

He became Vermont boxing commissioner in 1982.

Dr. Ciongoli's involvement with the Olympics began with a chance encounter, his son said.

The U.S. Olympic boxing team was training at the University of Vermont, preparing for the 1976 Games in Montreal.

"My father boxed as a kid," Adam Ciongoli said, "and brought me up [to the campus] to watch the boxing trials."

When those in charge "discovered that they did not have a physician," he said, "they conscripted him. At that point, he was already a well-known neurologist."

Dr. Ciongoli went to Montreal with the boxing team, "continued his affiliation with the Olympics, and was a senior medical officer at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980."

In 1997, Dr. Ciongoli and author Jay Parini edited

Beyond the Godfather,

a collection of essays by prominent Italian Americans, including Gay Talese.

In 2002, they cowrote

Passage to Liberty,

which Adam Ciongoli said was "a story of Italian American immigration, based in part on the experiences of the two authors' families.

In addition to his son, Dr. Ciongoli is survived by his wife of 42 years, Barbara; sons Gregory and Antonio; daughters Happy Marino and Alessandra; and seven grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass is set for 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Epiphany of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church, 11th and Jackson Streets in South Philadelphia.