How we met our Italian cousins submitted by Jay Tinker June 2024

In 2007, we (myself, my wife Kristin and her parents, fellow retirees Mike and Patti Lama) traveled to Italy for the first time.  Like most first-time visitors we wanted to see the ancient sites in Rome, the artistic bounty of Florence and the canals in Venice.  But we also had a modest plan to visit Sicily, where Kristin’s great grandmother (and Patti’s grandmother) Domenica had emigrated from by herself when she was just 23 in 1914, just as Europe was tearing itself apart in World War I.  We didn’t have much information regarding Domenica’s birthplace, just a record of her baptism at a church in a small town in southeastern Sicily called Aci Bonaccorsi.    Our goal for this part of the trip was to see the land of Kristin/Patti’s heritage and perhaps get lucky and find the church – if it was still standing – and take a photo to show the family back home.

The physical beauty of this part of Sicily is amazing, with crystal blue mediterranean waters framed by the mighty Mount Etna, which seems to rise nearly out of the sea itself.  The nutrient rich volcanic soil and southern California-like climate here feeds an abundance of flora including olive and citrus trees that grow everywhere.

And thanks to gps and Mike’s willingness to drive in a new country, we tracked down the church, which was still standing, and got the photo we had hoped we could take.

After taking the photo we noticed that the church was at one end of main town square (called a piazza) where townspeople gather and near the opposite end of the piazza stood the city hall and police station.  We thought why not take the baptismal record to the city hall/police station and see if they could track down the record and any other information about Domenica.  The people of Sicily are extremely friendly and in accordance with just how small of a town this is, it was the chief of police for the town who met with us and helped us out.  However, he did not speak English and we do not speak Italian, plus electronic translators were uncommon at that time.  So he called his ex-wife, an Australian national who was still living in the area and she came to the police station to act as a translator for us.  Eventually he went into a back room and came out with an enormous dusty book of written records (no digital records here) that had Domenica’s information on it, all in Italian of course including the address of the house where Domenica lived as a child.  Then his ex-wife asked us if we had time to wait there while he made some calls.   After the chief made those calls we were told that we could meet Domenica’s relatives as they still live in the house where Domenica lived.  And soon in a scene that felt out of a movie, there we were just a couple of hours after arriving in this town we had never been to before, driving behind a police escort from the chief of police and his ex-wife turned translator, heading to meet a few of the folks that would turn out to be cousins of Kristin and Patti, descendants of Domenica’s siblings who stayed in Sicily, living their lives and having families there.  When we arrived there were about 5 people – strangers to us as we were strangers to them – sitting in the living room with photo albums spread out on tables, turned to pages with pictures that Patti and Kristin immediately recognized.  They were photos of Domenica as a child and as an adult including Domenica’s children (Patti’s mom and uncles) that Domenica had sent back to Sicily in the years after she came to the United States.

Thanks to the help of the translator, we spent the next several hours getting to know our new family members, tracing back the family connections over generations.  As the afternoon and evening would pass, new cousins would show up to the house having received calls in astonishment to come over after work and meet your new American cousins.  All told, there about 25 Sicilian cousins spanning 4 generations.  While that initial trip to Sicily was a short one and we soon had to head back home, we agreed to stay in contact and visit periodically, which we have done several times since 2007 including about a month ago.  And this summer 7 cousins (representing 3 generations) will be visiting us in Oregon.   So what started as a modest goal to find a church and take a picture led to finding family we would have never thought possible but which have enriched our lives immeasurably.