Guardia per Sempre

People often ask me how I got involved with preserving Italian-American history and why on earth I would even want to tackle having my own organization. The response is simple: I'm not doing it for myself.

When I was a little girl, my mother would take me to a restaurant in Clarks Summit called Dino and Francesco's. Every time we'd go, the placemat on the table would have a map of Italy (they still do!) and my mother would promptly-- and proudly-- tell me that her father was from there. One day, she even took a clean placemat  home and sat me at our dining room table, tracing the boot, telling me about my Nonno Joe and how he was never able to go home to Guardia dei Lombardi, where he was born in 1916.

Nonno Joe died in 1973, eight years before I was born, but his story has stayed with me throughout my life. Why was this place so important to him? Why did he want to go back?

As I got older, I began to research my family tree, learn Italian (even graduating from the University of Scranton as an Italian major in 2003) and do whatever I could to learn about my grandfather's homeland. 

When I published "The Italians of Northeastern Pennsylvania" in 2004, I never dreamed it would take me to Guardia, fulfilling my Nonno's dream of going home. I knew I had to do more.

I was involved with several local Italian-American organizations but never really felt that my love for heritage preservation had a "home." I needed to do more, it was in my blood, it was in my heart-- but with my background and expertise, I didn't want to have to keep having my work approved by anyone when I instinctively knew what I needed to do. Passion always makes the difference and I knew my work had that extra "oomph" that couldn't be found anywhere else. 

In December 2014, I was the chair of the "Celebrating Guardia dei Lombardi" exhibit at Lackawanna College in Scranton. This exhibit was... for lack of a better word... my baby. I gave it every ounce of myself that I could, culminating in the formal declaration of a Sister City relationship between Scranton and Guardia as well as the renaming of a city street to Guardia dei Lombardi Way and even a piazza renamed for Scranton in Guardia itself. The exhibit hosted photos of people from Guardia upon arrival in the USA and gave a glimpse of what their lives were like here. In my years of studying immigration history, it seemed as if stories trailed off upon arrival at Ellis Island as an "...and they lived happily ever after." I knew there was more to the immigration story and I hope I told it through "Celebrating Guardia dei Lombardi."

SIAMO wants to continue telling those stories, not just the story of those from Guardia, but also those from Gubbio, Avigliano, San Mango, Felitto, Calitri and any other town that ended up with a large population here in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I fully believe that there are still immigrant voices wanting to be heard.

I ask anyone who wants to volunteer with SIAMO to please contact me at info@siamonepa.com. If you have an idea for an exhibit or event, please share it. In the meantime, you are all invited to participate in our events and activities as they are scheduled.

Every immigrant to this county-- not just Italian-- has a story to be told. Like my Nonno Joe, so many of them never returned home. It is my hope that SIAMO, at least for the Italian community, can bring the stories back to life and, hopefully, inspire other ethnicities to do the same.

Set in Stone

Each gaze at the famed Mount Rushmore tells a story.
For George Washington, his straight-ahead focus depicts him as the Revolutionary War hero who had to keep his troops' concentration on beating the Redcoats.
For Thomas Jefferson, his eyes show someone envisioning an America spread from sea to shining sea following the Louisiana Purchase.
For Theodore Roosevelt, his downward gaze brings his famous "Speak softly but carry a big stick" quote to life as he is all at once pensive yet steadfast.
And for Abraham Lincoln, his eyes are tender but full of concern-- knowing that one wrong move would allow the South to prevail and the union of the United States to collapse forever.
Although he never met these men personally, Luigi Del Bianco knew their stories and knew that the innermost humanity behind these giants of American history would be brought forward through their eyes.
In a 1966 interview with the Herald Statesman of Yonkers, N.Y., Del Bianco recalled when he carved Lincoln's eyes on Mount Rushmore.

"I could only see from this far what I was doing, but the eye of Lincoln had to look just right from many miles distant," he said "I know every line and ridge, each small bump and all the details of that head (Lincoln's) so well."

Luigi Del Bianco, an Italian immigrant from the town of Meduno, about 60 miles north of Trieste, was the principal carver of Mount Rushmore, but, as his grandson, Lou, pointed out, that information is not reaching a wider audience because of a bureaucratic tie-up he intends to fix.

"The National Park Service insists on recognizing him as one of the 400 workers, even though he was documented as a vital part of the project," he said. "We want the NPS to give him his rightful place in history."

Del Bianco's importance to the Mount Rushmore project was highlighted by none other than Gutzon Borglum, who was the monument's designer. Borglum hired Bianco to be the chief carver on Mount Rushmore in 1933, tasked with carving the "refinement of expression" or the facial detail. He was paid $1.50 per hour, considered a high wage for the Depression era.

"I would do it again, even knowing all the hardships involved," Del Bianco said in the 1966 Herald Statesman interview. "I would work at Mount Rushmore even without pay, if necessary. It was a great privilege granted me."

"Stone carving was my grandfather's life," said Lou Del Bianco. "He ate, slept and drank stone. He worked to put food on the table like so many hardworking Italians."

Lou Del Bianco has now made it his mission to get the National Park Service to formally recognize his nonno's contribution to the creation of Mount Rushmore. Through his website, www.luigimountrushmore.com, he hopes to finally set in stone his grandfather's place in American history. He also hopes that his grandfather's story can help start a deeper conversation about Italian-Americans' contribution to the patchwork quilt that makes up "America."

"The importance of family and the many contributions of Italian-Americans is something that needs to be talked about more," he said. "As an actor, singer and storyteller, I feel strongly that my nonno inspired me to follow my passion and go into the arts as a profession."

Lou Del Bianco also created a petition at MoveOn.org at this link. To date, it has more than 800 signatures. The current goal is 1000.

"My nonno was very proud to be Italian," he said. "He went back to Italy many times in his life to see family and friends. Even though he lived in the USA for 50 years, he always preferred opera to Sinatra and Michelangelo to Rockwell."

La Vedova Bianca

One day, a friend of mine and I were having a conversation and it randomly went toward our shared Italian heritage. We began to discuss our grandparents and how we wished we could have known them and we wondered what it might have been like in Italy during the times of immigration, her family came from Gubbio in the North, mine from Guardia dei Lombardi in the South.
As we were talking, she told me the story about a family mystery that shook her to the core.
She was always told that she was named for her grandmother, Emilia. Both Emilia and her husband died before my friend was born. As she dug deeper and deeper into her heritage, she wanted to learn more about her grandparents. She started by visiting Emilia's grave... or so she thought.
When my friend arrived at the cemetery, she saw her grandfather's name on the grave but, buried next to him was not a woman named Emilia but, rather, Rosa. My friend was confused, but she kept digging and discovered that Emilia was a "Vedova Bianca" or a "White Widow," meaning that her grandfather abandoned Emilia and their children in Italy to come to the United States. While he may have intended to send for them, he never did for whatever reason. He met Rosa and ended up with her, though they never formally married.
Emilia's story was not uncommon in Italy during the years of immigration, which saw many Italian men coming to the United States for work and creating new lives and even taking new wives, forgetting the one who was left behind. For a "vedova bianca," she was a social pariah-- people would talk and it was sometimes discovered that the husband, who seemingly disappeared, was actually alive. She wasn't entitled to the black that a widow wore because she was not widowed, but she was alone.
While researching the white widows, I found the following poem by Maria Zaffina, who is from Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro, Calabria. I translated it into English below the original Italian.

Le vedove bianche

Americhe: paradisi sognati

da chi ha poco o nulla

"Vado io a tentare la fortuna, tu resta con i  bambini!"

Varcato l'oceano

Dopo le prime lettere, 

addio famiglia!

E le vedove bianche non si contano.

Che fare?

Ci sono anche i vecchi da mantenere,

loro non hanno la pensione.

Si va alla giornata sotto padrone

o a lavare il bucato 

ai ricchi speculativi

e mai contenti.

Di lui intanto,

più nessuna notizia,

ma il panno rosso rimane,

solo per incutere rispetto.

The White Widows

America: The imagined paradise

Of the person who has little or nothing

"I am going to find my fortune, you stay with the children!"

Having crossed the ocean,

After the first letters,

Farewell family!

And the white widows don't count in this world.

What to do?

There are the also the elderly to take care of,

Who have no pension.

The widows work daily under a boss

or washing the clothes

of the rich people who are never contented.

Of him instead,

no more news,

only the red cloth remains,

to command respect.