U social historian Rudolph Vecoli of St. Paul

Rudolph Vecoli of St. Paul, a University of Minnesota social historian, studied the effect of immigration on the nation and worked to ensure history reflected immigrants' words and experiences.

Vecoli, director of the university's Immigration History Research Center from 1967 to 2005, died Tuesday in St. Louis Park of complications from acute leukemia. He was 81.

Hy Berman, retired University of Minnesota historian, helped recruit Vecoli to join the faculty in 1967 and run the Research Center. "He was key in putting the center on the academic map," Berman said, adding that he was a skilled fundraiser for the center.

Vecoli grew up in Wallingford, Conn., the son of Italian immigrants. Years ago, when he was a newly minted Ph.D., he bewildered his mother, Settima Vecoli, when he would return home in dirty coveralls. Many days, he dug through dusty basements, seeking the stories of immigrants in personal writings and in the documents of the organizations they created in America.

"His mother just looked at him and shook her head, and would say: 'Tell me again what you do?'" said his daughter, Lisa, of Minneapolis.

What he did was find primary-source documents, and learned to read them in Italian, so he could reveal the truths and effects of immigration.

He included labor organizations and the working classes in his work, said Joseph Amato, a history professor at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall. And he worked with students and faculty at many other colleges, helping them to launch studies of any and all immigration groups, Amato said.

A former Ph.D. student, June Alexander, now a historian at the University of Cincinnati, studied eastern European immigration. She called him a "tough taskmaster" who let his students choose their academic direction.

But he insisted they dig in those dusty attics and basements, and learn to read the language of the immigrant group they studied.

"Rudy had a razor-sharp mind," she said.

"He was able to inspire me to view the immigration experience from the immigrant's perspective."

He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He briefly taught at Rutgers and the University of Illinois before joining the University of Minnesota. He was honored for his scholarship with numerous awards, such as those from American ethnic groups of Hungarian, Polish and Italian descent, and the Italian government.

His daughter said he was socially conscious, years ago taking his young family to protests, such as those against the Vietnam War.

In addition to Lisa, he is survived by two sons, Chris of Corvallis, Ore., and Jeremy of Richfield; a sister, Olga Gralton, of Wallingford, Conn.; his former wife, Jill, of Minneapolis, and a granddaughter.