Finding My Italian Family ? Channel 3's Dennis House Blogs

It seems one of the big questions people ask in January is about travel. ?Any good trips planned for 2013?? Whatever vacation we may take this year can?t possibly top our summer 2012 trip.???My family and I?had a once in a lifetime adventure that was exciting,?educational and surprisingly?emotional.? We met our Italian relatives for the very first time.

This was a trip that was really many years in the making, decades in fact.??I had?been told about my?Italian ancestry for as long as I can remember, but I knew few details about it until 2010.?? As a boy, my mother talked with great affection about her late father Crescenzo Chully; the surname being an Americanized version of Chiulli.??Crescenzo was killed in a horrific hornet attack at the age of 37, when my mother was young. She remembers his father, Paolo, but he died a few years before his son.

Our exposure to our Italian heritage came through Paolo?s other children, Crescenzo?s siblings, but they too were in the dark about where our forefathers had lived. My best source of information was my great-aunt Angie, who died just a few years ago at the doorstep of?98. All she was ever told was that her father (my great-grandfather)?was from ?Abruzzo.?

When I was in junior high, a teacher assigned the task of researching our geneaology to coincide with the landmark television event, ?Roots.????? I did pretty well on the other branches of my family, but when it came to the Italian branch, I couldn?t learn anything beyond my great-grandfather, Paolo Chiulli.

Life happened and I put researching my Italian heritage on the back burner, and picked it up now and then with zero luck.

While in Italy in 1996, I checked the telephone books for people named Chiulli, but I didn?t speak Italian so I never called any of the many names listed.??But as I walked through Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Milan, I could feel it: I had family there. ?

I returned to Italy three more times in the following ten years. My wife Kara and I honeymooned on the Amalfi Coast, Portofino and Lake Como, and again, being in Italy felt like being home. I also returned to Rome to cover Pope John Paul II in 2002, and his funeral three years later.

During that period I searched for my great-grandfather?s name in ship manifests, scoured websites where I connected with other people with Chiulli ancestors who were also looking for?relatives, but I never?found anything.?? I figured my great-grandfather must have changed his name, or perhaps someone misspelled it in the list of passengers heading to America.???? I wanted to know, why did he come here, and who did he leave behind?

In?2009, I had a stroke of great luck.??? A man from Utah, named John Nelson, ?was researching Chiullis in his family tree, when he came across my great-grandfather?s name.???John had discovered the town where my grandfather was born, his siblings, parents and grandparents.????? As it turns out, what John had discovered was a dead end for him, but the holy grail for me. It?cleared the path for me to answer questions that had stymied my family for decades.

Armed with that information, I stepped up my search efforts, but on a sporadic basis.??? As a working father with two young children, I had little time to sit down and finish my Italian family tree.???? I would occasionally try to e-mail someone named Chiulli in Italy on Facebook, but never found any relatives.?? Then, when my aunt Angie died in late 2010 as she approached her 98th birthday, I decided it was time to get the job done.

I began with a fruitless attempt to e-mail folks in the town hall of? Alanno, Italy, birthplace of my?great-grandfather.???? I hoped to?locate some records, that would?hopefully lead me to some cousins.?? It was fruitless.? I didn?t get any responses, and when I called once, there was no one who spoke English, and my Italian wasn?t cutting it.

In early 2011, I decided to contact a fellow journalist in Italy.?? I figured we reporters can pretty much track down anyone here, surely someone in the old country would be able to get through to the town hall.????? Reporter Marirosa Barbieri?of the magazine ?Prima Da Noi? suggested that she write an article about my search for my Italian ancestors.???? The story was a big success.??? The day after the?article went on line,? I received a call from a?woman here in Connecticut, whose cousin called her from Italy to say she and I?were related.?? The woman, by the way, is not related to me, but her cousin is.???? Within days, through e-mail and Facebook I had connected with a handful of people, my people, my family! Marirosa had also been contacted by a few others.

Through my newly discovered family, I learned the reason I couldn?t find any cousins named Chiulli, is because there aren?t any.?? My great-grandfather had five sisters and a brother who died in childhood.??? Those sisters all married and so when Paolo Chiulli emigrated to America, he took the Chiulli name with him.?? Truth be told, there are plenty of Chiullis in Abruzzo, but they are probably very distant cousins.

The first few weeks of our cyber-reunion were exciting.??? I swapped pictures and information with my newly found cousins, Donatella, Paola, Andrea, Cristina, and the list goes on.??? I now had dozens of cousins there.?? ??Just like I always felt I had cousins in Italy, my Italian cousins told me they always knew they had family in the United States.??? They had heard stories of their Zio (Uncle) Paolo leaving Abruzzo, never to return, but?didn?t know anything about his descendents here.??? In fact,? my cousin Paola?e-mailed me a family tree that they could now fill in with the 26 people descended from their long lost Uncle.

Almost immediately after connecting with the Italian relatives,? I decided to plan a trip to the ancestral homeland in 2012 ?for a huge family reunion.???Ideally,?it would great if all 26 descendants and their spouses could go, although I knew it was unlikely.??In the end, there were 9 of us who made the trek:? Kara, our children, my mother, brother, sister-in-law and their two sons.

Overseas, the planning was masterminded by cousins Donatella, Miriam, Paola and Cristina, who?coordinated a week like no other we?d ever experienced.?????Sure, flying with four children under the age?of 5 can be challenging, but once we arrived?in Italy, we?all focused on the upcoming festivities and this momentous event in our family history. ??? We stayed in Rome for a few days before heading to Abruzzo.??? Kara and I had been to the Eternal City before, but my brother and sister-in-law wanted to see the sights.?? 48 hours at the Hilton Garden Inn near the Villa Borghese was just what we needed.

Why a Hilton when traveling in Italy? First, we?ve learned that Hiltons are great hotels. When we had to attend a wedding in Hawaii we stayed at two of them. Read about that trip here: http://dennishouse.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/from-hartford-to-hawaii/

The Hilton Cavalieri is a jewel in Rome where Kara and I are planning to stay in the future for a romantic trip, but in this case, we didn?t think a pack of kids was fair to the Cavalieri guests! Instead we chose the Hilton Garden Inn, partly because of its king-sized beds, great for a mom and dad weary from a long flight and herding children. King beds are rare in Europe, and they are a welcome change from the tiny twin beds many hotels have. Best of all, for the somewhat fussy youngsters: the Hilton served American breakfast, waffles, eggs, nutella and the works. There was even nutella gelato at a shop nearby. There would be plenty of time for traditional Italian food when we reached Abruzzo.

With our body clocks now on Italian time, we loaded up our Ford Transit van and began our two hour journey to one of the most anticipated destinations of my life.? By the way I was the only one who drive a stick shift, so the burden of navigating narrow medieval streets was all mine for 10 days. ? The mountains were amazing and the Adriatic Sea a Caribbean aqua that looked like an instagram.?? The quaint villages were something out of a postcard.

Our home in Abruzzo was a mountainside villa called ?Casa Mimosa,?? and it was the ultimate retreat.??It was an old barn of stone at the top of a hill accessible by a steep, winding road in the town of Castiglione Messer Raimondo.?? A couple from Britain bought it and refurbished into into an idyllic retreat to rent to tourists. ? The views were truly awe inspiring, and we spent as time much outdoors as possible.

The next day was the reunion and quite frankly, we weren?t sure what to expect. ?? The cousins had told us not to worry about a thing;? they would take care of all the food and drink, and that a caterer would show up first, followed by trays of homemade goodies.?? What a spread it was.?? Traditional Abruzzese dishes, homemade wine, garnished with?Italian and American flags.??The caterers showed up and transformed the villa into an Italian restaurant.? Then the doorbell rang.

The first cousins we met were not part of the e-mail conversations that had been going on for the past 17 months.??? ?You are my cousin,?? said Carlo Iulianetti, a man in his 40s with rock star hair. He came with his mother, Cesaria de Melis.????? We hugged, and my mom cried.???? Within an hour, fifty cousins had arrived, some from as far away as Rome.?? We studied each other faces, and I definitely saw similarities.? Donatella bore a strong resemblance to my great aunt Lucia, Crescenzo?s sister. ?Even though some of the?cousins didn?t speak English we communicated and we connected.? I had been studying Italian on my iPad app and I actually think I did pretty well.

The highlight of the reunion took place on the piazza when my cousins delivered some hearfelt words welcoming us to their country.? I was prepared, and had written a speech that I read in Italian, with the help of my cousin Elisa, who translated a few ad libs for me.?? Then, three of the cousins of my mother?s generation, Donatella, Miriam and Paola, presented us with a basket of rocks, sitting on red silk.?? These weren?t just any rocks?they were pieces of rubble belonging to my great-grandfather?s farmhouse where he was born in 1879.

My mother wept, as she handled the limestone, majella stone, and ancient concrete.???? But there was more.??? Paola?s husband, architect Gustavo Del Rossi,? unveiled a gift we will treasure always: the most beautiful and intricate family tree I?d ever seen.??It was hand drawn on parchment paper that was 15 feet long.?? Gustavo had worked on it for months, and it included every relative at the party, and my cousins back home in?America.? More than a hundred names in all.? It went as far back as my great-great-great grandparents, Antonio and Maria Chiulli.

The night was spent learning about each other over copious amounts of food, washed down by homemade wine and limoncello.? I got to try out my Italian, but I must admit my cousins speak my native language better than I speak theirs.???We also learned for the first time, why my great-grandfather emigrated to America.

Paolo Chiulli had a? childhood, that was marred by sadness.??? He was one of seven children, and his only brother Gennaro, died as a child.???? His mother died in childbirth as his youngest sister was born.???He later served in the Italian military, and played a key role in the upbringing of his family.?? He finished school, which was uncommon for this rural part of Abruzzo and worked at a vineyard.??Paolo is remembered?as well liked, and adored by his sisters.???According to legend, he left Italy after a dark chapter:? he was?framed for a crime and fled to the United States.?? Great.? Cue Speak Softly Love, please.

The story of Zio Paolo (Uncle Paul) that has been handed down generation to generation among my cousins is that my great-grandfather left after some sort of fight.??With the help of?Maria Odoardi, one of the older cousins, my cousin Mauro Morelli, an attorney in Pescara, ?told the story in great detail, with some legalese tossed in for good measure.? ?Now, this is not confirmed,? he would say as he recanted the story told to him by his grandmother, who was my great-grandfather?s niece.???? Apparently someone planted a wallet in Paolo?s jacket, and then a group accused him of stealing it and they pounced on him.????During that fight or a brawl,? as Mauro put it, someone died.?? Again, ?not confirmed.?

Paolo was later toiling in the vineyard, when he was approached by friends who told him had to leave the country or go to prison.?? He hastily said goodbye to his sisters and left Abruzzo never to return.??? Someone gave him a passport to use, which is why I could never find my great-grandfather?s name in any of the manifests of ships carrying Italian immigrants to the United States.??? We will never know the name on the passport Paolo showed immigration officials that got him into this country.???By the way, he never became a U.S.?citizen, but certainly became an American patriot.?? He tried to enlist?to serve in World War I and World War II.??He was 62 when he went to the recruiting office a month after Pearl Harbor.

The Italian cousins also solved a few other smaller mysteries.??? When my mother was a child, Paolo, her grandfather, called her Mariuccia.? After 65 years of not knowing where that name came from one, we learned in Abruzzo in the summer of 2012, that Mariuccia was what Paolo called his younger sister.

A few days after the reunion, we loaded up our van and headed to the ancestral town of Alanno, where my great-grandfather was born.??? The mayor there was honoring us with a reception at town hall.??? Sindaco Vincenzo deMelis gave us a warm welcome and presented us with a plaque with my name on it and literature and information on the town.?? The mayor is a cousin of a cousin, but not one of my cousins.?? Capisce?

Italians love food and this day was no exception.??? After our ceremony at the town hall, were were feted at a luncheon where the dishes kept coming and coming.

Across a small valley from the ancient town center sits my great-grandfather?s farm, which is still in the family.?? Cousins live in homes on the sprawling hillside,? not far from a pile of rubble where Paolo?s birthplace? once stood.?? A fig tree now grows out of it, surrounded by acres of olive trees, some of them more than a hundred years old.

We couldn?t help but be pensive as we walked the grounds that afford spectacular views of the mountains and the medieval town.?? As my children and nephews played with giant wheels of hay,? I tried to imagine what life was like here for my ancestors.???? My daughter picked flowers, and my mother huddled with her cousins of her generation as they together gazed at the land that is their roots.

The kids were beyond thrilled to be feeding figs and juice to the goats and slobbering sheep,? and to climb on a Lamborghini tractor.

At a more modern house at the farm, came another emotional experience.??We met my grandfather?s first cousins, whom he had never met, the only survivors of his generation.????? 90 year old Luciano Odoardi and his sister Guisseppina, age 92.???? Now blinded by old age, Luciano held my hand with a vise-like? grip as he went through the family history. ?? He also shared how his Zio Paolo sent his mother post cards from Boston and Norwood, cards that were lost just recently when he moved in with his son.?? ? How I would?love to read those.

Guiseppina and my mother fought back tears as they bonded, despite? their difficulty in speaking each other?s language. ? ? For my mother,? meeting Luciano and Guissepina gave her a sense at what her father may have looked like had he not been taken from us so early.??? Giuseppina, too, added details to the legend of Paolo Chiulli and she had always wondered what happened to him and the family he created in America.

Not far from the homestead is the rustic church of St. Stefano, where my grandfather and his sisters were baptized.? It is closed to the public, badly damaged by the L?Aquila earthquake of 2009.??? There is no money to fix it, so unless a generous benefactor comes forward, it may continue to detoriate.??? A cousin?s home on the Chiulli ?farm also bears the scars of the earthquake.

The next day we loaded again into the Ford van and trekked to Pescara to go the beach on the Adriatic with Donatella and crew. We lunched under her family?s giant umbrella, whose American counterpart would be a cabana.

Our sendoff celebration was held on a warm night at the home in Chieti in the town of Ripa Teatina of my cousin Cristina Del Rossi and her husband Mimmo Mangiafesta. Along with Cristina?s brother Andrea, an accomplished mountain climber, they have young children about the ages of my children and nephews. The youngest generation also bonded over toys and cookies.

Cristina is a bakery chef, who created not only a huge cake for the reunion, but another one for this night. My daughter Helena, still talks about helping Cristina with the frosting and decorations.

The highlight of this celebration was arrosticini, a grilled lamb cooked on skewers on a special grill. It is a specialty of Abruzzo, and Mimmo cooked over 300 of them.

We also learned there is a particular way to eat arrosticini.

The goodbyes were tearful, but we left Italy a bigger and stronger family. We?re planning a return trip to Abruzzo with a larger American entourage of Chiulli descendants, and our doors are open for our Italian cousins to come here.

Here are some other images from my visit to my ancestral homeland:

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Source: http://dennishouse.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/finding-my-italian-family/

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