Spring Luncheon April 2013 – Peninsula Italian American Social Club, San Mateo

Ron Marinelli is a member of our club. Michael Marnella, Ron’s brother in San Clemente, below shares their family’s fascinating journey from the Val di Non to California.

We  encourage other club members to submit their stories and photos. My ancestors originated in the villages of Casez, Banco and Sanzeno in the Val di Non. My great grandfather Raffaele, in the US Rafaeli or “Ray”, immigrated to the mining town of Nevadaville, Colorado when he was 8 years old. Orphaned at 9, he along with his two brothers survived by sleeping in a stable in exchange for cleaning up after the horses. They found themselves in a rough and tumble mining town without knowledge of the language or culture and also without parents. At age twelve he went to work in the mines. As a child he worked twelve hours a day, six days a week.

Being small of stature, they used him to crawl into the cracks and crevices to plant explosives. It was a very dangerous job, but
small Italian boys were an expendable commodity then.

Through a lot of hard work, some talent and a little bit of luck, he became foreman of the mine by age 24. Thereafter, he married the daughter of a mining engineer. Nevadaville was then known as “Bald Mountain” because it had been completely deforested for use as mine timber. Amazingly, the house where they lived is still standing. I have a photograph circa 1900 of them in their front yard watching as a 20-mule team passed by pulling heavy equipment to one of the local mines. It is perhaps 2 miles from Central City.

Both locations were very productive silver mining towns. There is a forgotten cemetery there within the abandoned ruins of the once thriving town with many Trentini names on the headstones.

My great uncle by marriage owned the saloon, and another still the water works. If someone wanted a drink of any sort, water or something stronger, it had to be
purchased from an enterprising Trentino.
The drills they used in the mines were called “widow makers” because of the
danger involved in their use and the disease they later caused. They did their work. Our
great-grandfather “Ray” died prematurely of black lung disease after spending the last six
months of his life literally coughing up blood and parts of what were once his lungs. His
shortened life’s purpose was to make the lives of his children and grandchildren better than his own. That purpose and sacrifice is one that I attempt to build on every day.

He was a quiet man who preferred never to speak of his childhood or history, traumatic as it was. In his pocket the day he died, he carried then and every day before that
three things: a pocket watch with a braided piece of his wife’s hair, a small prayer book given to him by his mother the day he left Casez, and a worn, stained letter that his father had mailed to him many years before.

Those items remained in a trunk, long forgotten until the death of my great aunt many years later. The prayer book and letter then came into my possession. Consumed by curiosity, I photocopied the letter and with fingers crossed I
blindly mailed it to the parish priest in Casez, the town from which the original letter had originated. I asked if the church had any record of my family. The priest read my letter to the congregation the next Sunday in Mass. Several hands went up. Through this act of great kindness and luck, I was reconnected with family long lost. As it turned out, I had cousins still living in the family home, the Castle of Casez, and familial friends throughout the small town such as the DeConcini’s just across the street. We immediately booked passage to the Val di Non. Note on the family’s last name: When my greatgrandfather arrived in New York with his family, the immigration clerk misspelled their last name
“Marnella”. Uncomfortable challenging what he saw as governmental authority, my great-grandfather lived with the error the rest of his life.
We never knew it had been anything else. It was only after rediscovering our past that the
clerical error was uncovered. Ron elected to legally change his name back to the original
spelling. I felt I had so many miles under my belt, legal documents, degrees, licenses and
children under the name Marnella, that I chose the path of least resistance and like my
great-grandfather, retained the errant spelling.

Train Headed Towards Venice, But With Final Destination San Francisco
By Giovanna Eghenter – Translation, Dan Aspromonte

The special story of Giusepppina Piasente Alvarez, native of Pieve Tesino and President of the Circolo Trentino of San Francisco

It was raining heavily on that 1^st of October in 1958 when Giuseppina Piasente left Pieve Tesino in the Province of Trento to take a trip in Italy.  At that time she worked in a bar that she had bought with her brother Marino.  It was time for her vacation, and a little rain, she said, certainly was not going to stop her from going.  She had worked for 2 years as a waitress in Venice, and she wanted to get back together with some of her friends who were part of her life when she lived there. She decided to first visit a friend in Villafranca, but she was so excited about getting away that she got on the wrong bus and after a couple of hours ended up in Padua.  Rather than get overly bothered by the situation, she went to visit the Basilica of Saint Anthony, or “the Saint” as he is commonly referred to in Padua.  Then she decided to continue by train to Venice.  It was on that train that she met Byron Alvarez, her future husband, an American who was on vacation in Europe.  Destiny!
The trip from Padua to Venice was very short, but it was long enough for the young couple to build a strong liking for each other.  Next to them on the train, there was a couple from Hollywood that acted as interpreters.  This way Byron was able to tell Giuseppina about his job as a typographer in a large company as well as in his own small, print shop.  He told her about how his brother died in 1944 when his plane was hit by enemy fire near Anzio, Italy.  She told him about how her father died when she was only 8, about her art studies in Florence, about her dream to become a costume designer and about her work in Pieve Tesino. That evening they had dinner together in Venice, at Ristorante San Giorgio, where a very accommodating waiter acted as an interpreter, and it was there that they exchanged addresses.  Actually, Giuseppina, who had a collection of postcards, asked Byron to send her one from San Francisco.  He began sending messages and presents right afterwards, first from Sorrento and Naples and then from San Francisco.
This exchange of correspondence became part of their lives.  Byron wrote his letters in English; an English teacher translated the letters for Giuseppina, the same one that also gave her language lessons.  Giuseppina wrote back in Italian; Father Vittorio Bazzanella and Father Efrem Trettel of the Parish of the Immaculate Conception in San Francisco translated them for Byron, who had fallen madly in love. 

In 1959 Father Efrem arrived in Pieve Tesino with an engagement ring.  Giuseppina’s mother gladly gave her consent, and the young couple got married on the 6^th of June of the following year.
Their honeymoon in Italy lasted 3 months.  It was then stretched out further because they returned to the States by ship, taking the opportunity to go on the first passenger cruise of the Leonardo Da Vinci.  They then took a train from New York to San Francisco.
During her first 3 months in her new homeland, she was not that happy, even if she said she was.  Then things got better when her first child, Anna Maria, arrived.
Taking advantage of what she learned in costume design school, Giuseppina started working as a seamstress.  She continued working even after Leo and Raymond were born; then, when Peter arrived in 1972, she stopped.  At that point, with four kids to take care of, Giuseppina decided to dedicate all her time to being a mother.

In 1980 Trentini nel Mondo founded a club in San Francisco.  At that time, the President of Trentini nel Mondo, Bruno Fronza, gathered 30 members together and assigned people to various positions:  Vittorio Eccher, President, Laura Vitlacil, Vice-president and Ursula Leonardi, Treasurer.  Giuseppina was asked to be secretary, and she accepted the position with enthusiasm, that sort of enthusiasm that is part of her nature.  Then, only 4 years later, she became president.
Giuseppina Piasente Alvarez has held that same position up till now (except for the years 1988-1991, when the position was held by Ralph Yob).  As president she organized in 2004 the 16^th Convention of ITTONA (International Tyrolean Trentini Organization of North America). We asked her to speak to us about the convention.  “The hardest job was convincing our members that we could do it.  Organizing a convention requires an immense amount of work, and for many it seemed an insurmountable obstacle.”  Yet, Giuseppina managed to convince people, and for 2 years everyone gave it their best.  In the end they put together an organized and efficient 4-day convention with meetings and side trips for nearly 500 participants at the Westin Saint Francis Hotel, a jewel in the heart of San Francisco. It all went wonderfully, and Giuseppina was very satisfied.  “Having support and help from the Trentini nel Mondo Association was vital to the success of the convention as was the involvement of many younger members of our club.”