Garzio was born July 22, 1922 in the
Italian village of
Mirabello Sannitico. He and his family emigrated to the United States when he was a child. Garzio became a U.S. citizen in 1956. He received his early education in
Syracuse, New York and served in the
U. S. Army Air Corps during
World War II. Under the
G.I. Bill, Garzio attended
Syracuse University, earning dual bachelor's degrees in Library Science and Music, Art and Literature in 1949. He worked briefly as a reference librarian and played the
French horn professionally with symphony orchestras in Syracuse, Utica and Rochester, New York and
Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1950, Garzio earned a Diploma de Proffito in
Art History at the
University of Florence. He received an M.A. in art history at the
University of Iowa in 1954 and an M.F. A. in Ceramics in 1955. He was a Guest Potter at the internationally known Arabia Potteries in
Helsinki, Finland in 1956–57. Garzio joined the faculty at Kansas State University as an assistant professor of ceramics in 1957, and was promoted to full professor in 1966. In 1972, Garzio received the institution's Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award. He taught at the university until shortly before his death on January 20, 2008. ==References==