December 30, 2000

Dear Ternani #10

"The Unofficial Mayor of Terni"

Alberto Romoli drives me to an apartment building near San Valentino. We take an elevator up a few floors and he unlocks the door to an apartment and calls: "Ma? . . . Ma? . . . Do' stai? ("Where are you?") No one answers and Alberto explains to me that his 93 years old mother is almost totally deaf now. We wind our way through the dark apartment till we reach the kitchen where we find a tiny wisp of a woman bent over an open drawer from which she is taking knives and forks. Her back is to us and she doesn't notice our presence so Alberto walks up to her, gently touches her shoulder and softly says: "Ma." The woman slowly turns and seeing her son lets out a little gasp of surprise and whispers, "O, sei tu." (It's you.") With her little bony fist wrapped around the knives and forks she slowly walks into the dining room and sets the table for supper.

The woman, Rosa, is not Alberto's birth mother but his "madrina", his stepmother. Right before World War II she married Alberto's father, a recent widower with two young children. The newlyweds were not together long. Alberto's father was killed during the first German bombing raid on Terni, his remains found 18 months later under a pile of rubble. Rosa never remarried and raised Alberto and his sister by herself in a building on the site now inhabited by the VideoCentro. Today Alberto Romoli is 63 years old and the story of his life is in many ways the story of Terni over the past half century.

Like most Terni men of his generation "Albe", "Romoletto", or simply "Romoli" began working at Terni's steel factory at age sixteen and stayed there until he retired several years ago. In 1964 he married a Ternana, Nadia, and they built a house in the Polymer section where they raised two daughters, Christina and Mara. I call Alberto Romoli "the unofficial mayor of Terni" because he seems to know everyone in the city, either by having worked with them, played soccer with them, coached them, or photographed their wedding. I first met him when I photographed a kids' soccer game that he was refereeing; he asked me about my cameras, told me that he was also a photographer, then, with typical Terni generosity, he invited me to dinner at his home.

I often ride with Alberto as he drives around the city on various errands and I ask him about his life and about Terni. He tells me about the war years, about how he, his sister and Rosa had to flee to Spello where thay stayed for two years until it was safe to return to Terni. He remembers how, as a young man, he would finish his shift at the steel factory, jump on his Vespa and ride to San Gemini to play in a soccer game. He describes the day that Libero Liberati, the world champion motorcyclist was killed on the Valnerina while doing practice runs and how all of Terni turned out for his funeral. He takes me to "the Press", the huge piece of equipment taken from the steel factory and reassembled in front of the train station as a monument to Terni's industrial past, and he explains how it worked. He treats me to cappuccino and a croissant at Evangelista's, his sister's bar in the center of town, where we share that morning's Corriere dell'Umbria and Messaggero. Through Alberto I meet dozens and dozens of Ternani and his acceptance of me becomes their acceptance of me too.

In February, after a three month stay, I must return to the US, and I don't know when I will get back to Terni . Alberto saves me a world of aggravation by getting up early on a chilly, gray Saturday morning and driving me to Fiumicino. We pull up to the international departures area and I unload my luggage from the car. I turn to Alberto and as I bend to kiss him goodbye I hear his voice cracking and struggling to say "Ciao". I suddenly realize that he is crying, that maybe he is thinking that we will never see each other again and that this the final "ciao" between us. I am startled and moved and as I hug him I whisper, "Ci vediamo, eh? Ci vediamo." ("We'll see each other again. OK?") I am saying it to reassure both of us and as I walk away to catch my flight a piece of me stays behind in Terni, a piece that I know I will have to come back to find.