Archive for December 2013

Reunited

Early in October, I met up with the Gentile family from France.  Evelyne had been in touch with me since last summer, when we discovered that her father, Roland, was my 3rd cousin on the Forte side.

And so it was that, at 80 years old, Roland came back to his roots with his wife, daughter and son-in-law to see where his father Luigi Gentile and mother, Almerinda Fusciardi had been born.  On the evening of their arrival, Evelyne told me that they couldn’t wait to visit Casalattico and, standing under umbrellas in the pouring rain, not speaking a word of Italian let alone Casalattico dialect, they managed to ask someone if any of the Gentile family remained in Casalattico.  They were directed to a door and rang the bell.  Imagine the surprise all round, when the person answering the door turned out to be Roland’s first cousin, Maria Gentile.

There were tears of joy and, along with Maria’s sister, Eleanora, this generation of the Gentile family were together for the first time sharing many happy stories of their families with their newly discovered first cousins.