Reader Nicholas Calvano was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland in the area known as Little Italy. His father was born in Vasto [Abruzzo] and arrived in the US when he was three. Nick's paternal grandparents were also from Vasto and his maternal grandparents came from Sicily. Nick is a retired research chemical engineer and spent most of his career as a Project Leader at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
This is the story of how he found his Italian relatives:
On July 17, 2004 my wife, Marge, and I went to Milan, Italy to attend the wedding of my cousin's daughter, Stefania. Four years earlier, I didn't even know that I had any relatives in Italy. This is how I found my Italian family:
When I was growing up I used to ask my father, who was born in Vasto, Italy if we had relatives there. His answer was always the same:
"We might, but if we do, I don't know who they are or where they live".
Maybe it was because I grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Baltimore or maybe it went deeper than that, but for some reason I always wanted to find out if we had relatives in Italy and if we did, I wanted to meet them. I never dreamed that it would happen the way it did six years after my father died.
It started in July, 2000 with an e-mail message from a young man in Australia named Adrian Calvano who was trying to find his relatives. Since I was also anxious to find my Italian relatives, I responded with a brief note providing information on my family. But just before I hit the reply button, I noticed that Adrian had sent his message to 36 Calvanos around the world.
So instead of responding only to him, I chose reply to all and my note went to everyone on his list. Little did I know that this spur-of-the-moment decision would result in my going to Milan to meet my Italian cousins and, three years later, to attend the wedding of my cousin's daughter.
Two days after I sent my reply I got a response from someone on his list - Stefania Calvano in Milan. She found it interesting that her father, Michele, was born in Vasto, the same town as my father and, in an afterthought, mentioned that she had cousins in Washington, D C.
Here is the email she sent, verbatim:
Ciao!!!
Io sono Stefania Calvano, ho 27 anni e sono italiana. Io vivo a Milano, ma mio padre e' DI VASTO, proprio come il tuo. Si chiama Michele e adesso ha 62 anni. Suo padre si chiamava Nicola Calvano, e sua madre Antonia Caramancio.
Anche io ho numerosi parenti in Australia, discendenti del fratello di mio nonno. Vivono a Perth.
If you don't understand Italian, I translate for you in English:
My name is Stefania Calvano, I'm 27 years old, my father Michele is from Vasto (!!) and has one brother (Angelo) and one sister (Santa) who both live in Milan, like us. My grandfather was Nicola Calvano and my grandmother was Antonia Caramanico.
Now I have some relatives who live in Australia in Perth, and in USA (Philadelphia and Washington); Brothers of my grandfather moved to Australia and to USA in the 20s. I hope you find some relatives and I hope you will enjoy Italy and Milan. I saw Florida ten years ago and I loved it.
Hugs from Stefania.
I was happy to get a response from a real Italian named Calvano who actually lived in Italy but even more exciting was the fact that her father was also born in Vasto and they had relatives in D C. I couldn't wait to respond that I also had a cousin in Washington. I told her my cousin's name was Mario; his father was Anthony and his grandfather was Michael.
She passed my message on to her father in Bergamo. Then she sent me this message:
Hi, Nick!
I checked with my father and I discovered some interesting news.
My father also has a cousin in Washington named Mario, whose father was Anthony and whose grandfather was Michael!! Anyway, now we're very interested to know if we are relatives!!! So, if you know the names of their wives, we could discover if this is just a coincidence!!
Now I try to tell you what we know:
Mario's mother was Maria Scafetta, and Michael's wife was Santa Cicchini
Let us know as soon as possible if you know something!!
Hugs, Stefania and Michele (my father and probably your cousin)
This was becoming more and more exciting and I had reached the point were I would have been very disappointed if we were not related. I desperately wanted to have relatives in Italy. When Stefania and Michele learned that everything checked out up to this point, I think they were just as excited as I was.
I didn't have the information Stefania requested so I tried to reach my cousin Mario to ask him about his mother's maiden name. Bad luck. We hadn't been in touch for some 25 years and he no longer lived in Washington. Worse, his new phone number was unlisted. However, at this point my wife, Marge, was on scent and was not about to give up. Through the Internet she found Mario's sister, Gloria, who was now living in California and it was Gloria who told us that her mother's maiden name was indeed Scafetta.
While Marge was tracking down Gloria, I located an old photo of Anthony and his wife, Mary and e-mailed it to Stefania and Michele. That did it! Everything checked and they recognized Anthony (Antonio) whom they had met many years ago.
Now at this point we had already planned a trip to Italy without knowing anything about our newly found relatives so we had to make some changes. Instead of going to Rome, as originally planned, we revised our itinerary to go directly to Milan so we could meet them first.
Read the second part of Nicolas Calvano exciting story here!
