Memorial Day tribute

This is another tombstone picture from Kathleen and Nick.  At the very bottom you can see Riccardo Dalpiaz who was an uncle to your grandfather Costante.  As you can see here, Riccardo died in war--in the Dolomites according to family legend.

We'll have to consult the historians in the family for better detail and perspective, but I believe Riccardo's death resulted from the Italian Campaign of WWI 1915-1918 between the Austria Hungary army and the Italian army for control of the Tyrol region (overly simplified for those that don't understand WWI military campaigns any better than I do--sorry, Thomas.).  In other words--I think this was the BIG one for your family testing their loyalties.  I do not know which army Riccardo belonged to.  I think military service was required of young men in this region and he may have found himself a solider by duty rather than by choice.  Regardless, he is deserving of recognition for his service to his country.  He was a 40 year old soldier fighting battles that probably were far too close to home.

You have many servicemen in your family who have honored their country and served it with dignity.  May 30 is the day set aside for recognition and I'd like to share the following 4 minute video that speaks to me and I hope to you as well.  I think HOME was important to each of them.

Costante's siblings

From the trip pics, I've been able to sort out some of your grandfather's siblings.  I thought you might like to "meet" them!  These would be aunts and uncles to your Dad.

An older sister Maria:  according to Trentini birth records, her full name is Maria Severina Carlotta Carolina Dalpiaz married a Menapace:

A younger sibling Edvige Rosa Dalpiaz married Pio Valentini

Pio, another younger sibling is in the same gravesite as his parents

How nice for us that photos seem to be standard additions to tombstones.  These guys generally lived long happy lives so you come from hardy stock.

Tullia, of course, is the ultimate proof and I'm happy to be able to share this picture NOT taken in a cemetery, although I imagine many of you have seen this already:

Another picture of Tullia I remember seeing when we visited Aunt Josie:

I definitely see Dalpiaz in this younger picture. 

Mother's Day Musings 2012

I think this is the longest time I've ever gone between meaningful blog posts:  from your mother's birthday to Mother's Day with a trip-of-a-lifetime to Italy in between.  Believe me, this is much easier to do on a weekly basis because now there's so much whirling around that I want to address that I'm a little bit frozen by it all.  Funny how you can stall partly because there's so much to do!  Anyway, please forgive the rambling nature of what is to follow here.

If you have not looked at Kathleen and Nick's pictures of the Italy trip, please make yourself time to do so.  They did a wonderful job of telling a story.  I noticed they did not include an album of the cemetery pictures....hmmmm......just kidding--I realize that kind of stuff has a limited audience!  But here's one to share for sure:

Giuseppe and Barbara are your great grandparents.  Pio is their son who married Giuseppina Menapace.  I know you are all quite familiar with how Barbara looked from that picture we have taken with son Costante.  But I don't know if you're very familiar with what Giuseppe looked like (I wasn't):

I counted 18 relatives documented by the pictures taken by Nick at this cemetery.  And those are just the ones I already know about.  I feel quite certain there are other relatives represented in those pictures but I just haven't found them yet.

I'm very sorry to have missed the post trip party at Robert and Bobbie's.  All these years gone by and I still can't face making that drive by myself.  But I'm very grateful for the pictures shared by Pat especially

Which, of course brings to mind this one:

Gotta love it, right?  But it's Mother's Day today so of course we are thinking about Moms.

This is 1989.  I was going to crop out the "background noise" (James, Robert and Scott) but it adds a nice touch to the realities of family life, right?  When I showed this to James, his comment was about your dad's "big ass truck".  Hmmmmmm...............realities of family life.

Cheers to Moms, Dads, family!

Hey Blog Fans

I haven't abandoned the blog--I know it's been a little while since I've posted.  Our computer is "having issues" so my normal links, pics, and files aren't available to me as easily and I don't feel I can post without some visual effects.  Hopefully by this weekend we'll be back up and running so we can catch up on blogging.  It truly amazes me how dependent I've become on the technology--may or may not be a good thing, but time will tell I guess.  See you back here soon!