Searching for Lionardo DiCapua: Part 2

I returned to Bagnoli, Irpino with my family two years after my first visit (as recounted in part 1) anxious to show my wife, Susie, and my two young children (Emily age 6 and Sam age 4) the bust of their great ancestor in the square named after him. So, immediately after settling into our hotel, I walked with them to Lionardo’s piazza.

I stood next to the plinth that held the bronze likeness and announced that this was the bust of their grandma’s famous great grandpa, who lived a long time ago. The kids looked around the square, then looked at each other with a disappointed expression that surprised me. Sam seemed on the verge of tears. Emily turned around and again looked from side to side then turned a complete circle, raised her shoulders, and looked at me. “Where is it?” she asked.

“Where’s what?”

“Where’s Lionardo’s bus? Sam wanted to take a ride on a bus, like I do when I go to school. I promised him we were going to take a ride on Lionardo’s bus.”

A few years after that disappointing visit, a professor friend from the University of Washington, suggested that I check in the UW Suzzallo library stacks for information about Lionardo. In the basement of that venerable building, I found several biographic articles about him, along with one of his essays, written in the 1680’s on the history of medicine. It begins in the pre-Egyptian era and moves through the Greeks, the Romans into his contemporary times. This essay, which was the first of a series of eight ragionamenti (reasonings), had been translated into English in the early 1700’s by an Englishman named John Lancaster, who sent it to the famous polymath Robert Boyle. Both Lionardo and Boyle were part of an extended group of European scientists who believed that chemistry held great promise for cures in the treatment of disease. The essay is an impressive work, one of the earliest known attempts at a history of medicine. Reading it, along with the other biographic articles, gave me an objective sense for the genius of the man and stoked the desire to learn even more about him. But what I realized then was that to uncover Lionardo’s history with accuracy required that I learn the Italian language.

I grew-up in an Italian American community where I often heard the language spoken, although no one volunteered to teach Italian to the younger, third-generation members of the clan. Like immigrants from other countries, the goal of my first- and second-generation relatives was to become Americans. Within my immediate family, my parents spokei Italian as a secret code between them when they didn’t want their children to know what they were saying. I picked up a few phrases repeated in their southern Italian dialect, but it wasn’t until I began researching Lionardo’s life that I took a class in the Italian language. I enrolled at a school in downtown Seattle and spent the next five months focusing on Italian grammar and basic conversation in a class of seven students. In the spring, three of the students were travelling to Italy and the school required at least six students to offer a class. So, the next section was cancelled.

In September of that year, I met members of the Seattle chapter of the Dante Alighieri Society, an international Italian cultural organization, in their booth at the annual Italian Festa held at the Seattle Center. They encouraged me to come to their next bi-monthly meeting to listen to a presentation on Italian history and to learn more about their ongoing programs. Susie and I went to the next meeting at a hall where there were about seventy-five attendees who mingled and chatted over appetizers and wine before the presentation. During that preliminary time, an elegant older woman introduced herself to us and conversed in perfect English spoken with a beautiful Italian accent. She had been a member of the Dante for several years and everyone in the room seemed to know her. Her name was Adele Lord. She was tastefully dressed, very cordial to us, and carried herself with refined grace. On occasion, I recognized an inscrutable, Mona Lisa like expression, familiar to me from days among the DiCapua women – my mother and her sisters. It created an immediate connection. Before the night ended, I asked if she knew where I could learn Italian. She told me that she taught Italian and offered to teach me, but only if I was a serious student. I assured her I was serious. We set a date for our first class at her home in the north end of Seattle.

Thank you for reading and please read part 3 of my blog Searching for Lionardo DiCapua.