We appreciate you Nonno & Nonna! The family is doing well, thanks to you!

Michele Spadoni on his farm in
Shore Acres, Gig Harbor, WA

Dear Nonno and Nonna,

I want to give you a progress report on how the family you started a bit more than 100 years ago is doing. When you took that ship to America in 1909, Italian immigrants were treated with hostility and suspicion. The governor of Louisiana, elected two years after you arrived, described Italian Americas as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless and treacherous.” Knowing this, you did your best to teach your children and grandchildren to be loyal and productive Americans. Each generation has learned honesty, patriotic values and a strong work ethic. You taught us the inestimable value of family love and togetherness. You farmed your land to put food on your family’s table and worked at jobs that others refused to do. And then you helped your siblings, nephews and nieces become established in America as well.

Anita Seghieri in
her 20s, in France.

Thanks to the hardships you endured, the whole world became open for subsequent generations. In the family we’ve now seen engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers (an abundance of them), artists, musicians, designers, beauticians, city planners, writers, executives, business owners and leaders, military officers—people in nearly every occupational field. The doors that were closed to you are now wide open to us.

Dr. Leon Spadoni, son of 
Michele's nephew Alfredo.

Most of your grandchildren hardly knew you, but we want you to know we appreciate the sacrifices you made, the risks you took, the hardships and insults you endured. In honor of you, many of us are also rediscovering our Italian heritage, tracing our ancestry and visiting those places in Tuscany where it all began. You might also want to know that the family you left overseas, after struggling in poverty for a half century, has also enjoyed the same successes. At the end of World War 2, Italy experienced “Il Boom Economico,” and now our relatives there have taken full advantage of the nearly limitless career possibilities as well.

I await the day we can all be together again at that big and eternal dinner table. For now, on behalf of our family, I thank you for your courage, foresight, persistence and strong moral standards. Your work is done, your burdens lifted. Go and dance with the angels.

Tuo nipote, Paul (along with many others)

The image in this charcoal drawing by Lita Dawn Ancich now adorns
the historic Finholm building in Gig Harbor, Washington, where Anita's brother
Seghiero "Jim" Seghieri settled. Lita Dawn is Seghiero's granddaughter. 

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Author’s note: I was inspired to write this after reading a similar essay by author and friend James Pantaleo.