He died at the age of 74 years old in Florence, where he had moved some time ago and was hospitalized in a private clinic, the former Salerno deputy Franco Di Comite. Originally from Positano, with residence in Montepertuso, a hamlet on the Amalfi coast, Di Comite, a qualified surveyor, was a company manager with prestigious positions on the boards of directors of Fincantieri and Sviluppo Italia as well as being president of Invitalia. Elected in the ranks of Forza Italia in 1996, he was among the first to believe in Silvio Berlusconi as a politician, so much so that he founded the first Forzista clubs in Salerno. «Mine relationships are first of friendship and then of politics – he says in an interview with Corriere del Mezzogiorno – we met in 1980 when I was general manager of a company and Berlusconi was launching Publitalia 80 at the time. I met him for work buying advertising space for his company, I met him personally and from then on a deep relationship of personal trust was born.” During his mandate as MP he was secretary of the parliamentary commission for productive activities.
A jovial character, smiling and ready to joke, he loves the brilliant life spent aboard his vintage all-wooden boat, the Paraggina, 15 meters long, with his old friends. Bon vivant, he defines himself as a man attached to affection: he marries with Filomena Amato, daughter of the entrepreneur Giuseppe, former president of the industrialists and owner of the pasta factory of the same name whose good and bad luck she shares. And right from the pasta factory, then ended up in the legal storm that followed the bankruptcy proceedingsbecomes deputy general manager and board member.
He has two children, Pietro and Marilisa, to whom a third from his second wife will be added. In 2010 the first dramatic setback: Di Comite is the victim of a serious road accident: on board his moped he collides with a motorbike in the area of Vico Equense, towards the Sorrento peninsula. Thrown to the ground, he hits his head and suffers internal bleeding and some fractures. Even though he had a helmet. At his bedside, at the Second Polyclinic of Naples, many people visited him, bringing their solidarity and affection. But adverse fate dictates that just when he is undergoing a remarkable recovery and starts planning a second life full of activities, another accident, this time much more serious, stops him definitively: in Naples, while driving his motorbike, he loses control of the vehicle and crashes into a bus. The results of the accident are very serious and Franco Di Comite leaves that scene that he had dominated with charm and marked sympathy at the end of the 90s.
