by Dennis Augustine
Today is April 25th—Liberation Day in Italy. While ceremonies take place in the great cities, my heart is in the small fishing village of Roccalumera—thinking of my late mother.
Born in 1924, Mom was a teenager in 1943 when war quite literally rained down around her. She once told me how, while crossing the street, a “spray of bullets from above” tore through her village. Allied planes were strafing the coastal road toward Messina—and she was caught in the crossfire.
When I visited Sicily in 1963, I saw the proof with my own eyes. The old stucco buildings—what she called “popcorn walls”—still bore the scars of those bullets. It made me realize just how close I came to never being here at all.
She often said she had a “tough life”—and she meant it. But she was also deeply courageous. In 1947, just four years after surviving the war, she boarded a ship to America. She arrived in Hoboken and began again… just three years before I was born.
Today, on Liberation Day, I don’t just think of a country set free—I think of one young woman who survived, endured, and gave her family a future.
