Sicilia and Roma

For years now I have been wanting to explore my Sicilian genealogy and cultural heritage.  I never recalled hearing my grandparents speak of their Italian roots, nor had I heard them speak Italian.  My guess is that their parents were looking to make entirely new lives in the United States, not looking back.  This is something that I will be investigating as I continue to explore the stories that brought my relatives across the Atlantic from their homeland.  A few months ago, two professors from my department announced a field seminar to Sicily.  I thought to myself, this is the time to make it happen.  This was the right decision for so many reasons that I will further write about and reveal in the following photographs. 

Several things happened along the way to preparing for this trip that made this one of the more unique trips I've ever had... and I've had some pretty epic trips!  When I talked to my advisor, Dr. John Stone, about this, he mentioned that this was the same time frame as AMS-11.  And indeed it was.  Unfortunately, it sat right on the last week of the Explorer Seminar.  It wasn't ideal, but it was also the sort of thing that I shouldn't pass up.  This conference was a perfect opportunity for my career, and ended up being my first poster presentation. 

In doing research about my family, I contacted two "uncles".  The first was Frank Campagna, my grandmother's youngest brother.  Frank had written a book about my grandmother's side of the family, and how they immigrated to the Us in the early part of the last century.  Frank has continued to research the various branches of the family tree and was just out here in Sicily.  After a lengthy discussion, it seemed as if he didn't actually know any people who would be appropriate to contact to visit.  He also indicated that Corleone, the region that the Campagna's came from, was not a good region to just waltz into without knowing Italian proficiently.  Corleone has a reputation as one of the original and last bastions of Mafia power.  So I turned my attention towards the Argento side of the family.  Charlie Kelly, my grandfather's nephew, had been to the Castrofilippo region to look up some of the relatives that stayed behind when my grandfather immigrated to the US.  This was 16 years ago.  But he had found some distant relatives who took him under his wing, and showed him around Castrofilippo and even took him over to the most direct relatives that they knew of.  I suspect that Charlie knew about as much Italian as I did, so the interactions with them were minimal.  They certainly were for me.  But more of this later.

I called the two phone numbers that Charlie had given me, and after several tries, I was starting to get frustrated.  No one in this family (Italy?) seems to have voice mail, and I was really wondering if the numbers were good at all.  Finally, a few days before I was set to leave, I made contact with Maria Sferrazza.  We couldn't hold a conversation, but she did recognize my name, and also mentioned Charlie in the same sentence.  Ok!  Progress!  They are aware and I could work out the rest of the details.  The rest of the adventure unfolds in one of the more logistically difficult trips I've ever taken.

Take me to Sicilia and finding family                 Take me to the Explorer Seminar