Pierina (Mora) Petris
(pdf in Italiano)
Birth: 16 Jul 1909, Zoppola, Italy
Father: Giovanni Battista Petris Mother: Rosa Taiariol
Death: 30 Sep 1986, Zoppola, Italy
Father: Giovanni Battista Petris Mother: Rosa Taiariol
Death: 30 Sep 1986, Zoppola, Italy
Spouse: Felice Bomben
Birth: Zoppola, Italy
Death: 8 Oct 2002, Zoppola, Friuli, Italy
Father: Antonio Bomben
Mother: Caterina Bomben
Children: Tarquinio (1936 - 1936)
Caterina (1937 - 1988)
Edda (1939 – )
Rosella (1942 - )
Birth: Zoppola, Italy
Death: 8 Oct 2002, Zoppola, Friuli, Italy
Father: Antonio Bomben
Mother: Caterina Bomben
Children: Tarquinio (1936 - 1936)
Caterina (1937 - 1988)
Edda (1939 – )
Rosella (1942 - )
Pierina “Mora” Petris was born on July 16, 1909, in Zoppola. She was the nineth of the ten children of Giobatta Petris and Rosa Taiariol, but also the fifth and last child to live to adulthood. She had a younger brother named Emilio who was born in 1911 but died in 1912. Pierina spent most of her life as the baby of the family.
Pierina was named after her maternal grandmother Pierina Marson. “Pierina” is a diminutive of Piera (or Petra, meaning “little rock”) which is the feminine form of Pietro, so she was also named after Rosa and Giobatta’s first child. But everyone knew her as Mora. Her grandson Paolo Gorgatti explained,
I can tell you that they called her "Mora." Here in Italy, girls or boys with black hair are called "Mora," Grandma Pierina, when she was young, had black hair, and therefore my grandfather called her "Mora" as a term of endearment. Then everyone started calling her that. I myself grew up believing that Mora was a name like Paolo or Rosella, but it only meant that she had black hair. You can imagine my surprise as a child when I found out... especially since my grandmother had completely white hair for as long as I could remember.
According to what Pierina told her daughter Rosella about her own childhood,
The childhoods of that generation are all similar and are characterized primarily by poverty, cold, and work from an early age. You should know that in Zoppola, they spoke Friulian, which is a different language than Italian. Suffice it to say that in this language, there are no words for happiness or a smile; as you may have noticed, the photographs of the children all look alike. They're always sad: they never smile. This has made the Friulian population strong but closed and not open to new things.
This might be hyperbole, but the word for “happiness” in Furlan is felicitât, which is more akin to good fortune than pleasure or comfort.
Pierina grew up in the house on Via Biacche. When Pierina was born, the town of Zoppola was, in many ways, just like the farming town it had been for more than 700 years. The population was about 4500 people, 90% of whom were farmers or farm laborers. The open-field farming system—wherein tenant-farmers lived in town and farmed strips of land owned by the Panciera family or the Church—had been in place since the Middle Ages. But, in the 19th century, farmers began to buy their own plots of land. The roads were unpaved, and there was often dirt kicked up into the air and breathed in. Life was physically hard but enlivened by the tight-knit family community.
Pierina was named after her maternal grandmother Pierina Marson. “Pierina” is a diminutive of Piera (or Petra, meaning “little rock”) which is the feminine form of Pietro, so she was also named after Rosa and Giobatta’s first child. But everyone knew her as Mora. Her grandson Paolo Gorgatti explained,
I can tell you that they called her "Mora." Here in Italy, girls or boys with black hair are called "Mora," Grandma Pierina, when she was young, had black hair, and therefore my grandfather called her "Mora" as a term of endearment. Then everyone started calling her that. I myself grew up believing that Mora was a name like Paolo or Rosella, but it only meant that she had black hair. You can imagine my surprise as a child when I found out... especially since my grandmother had completely white hair for as long as I could remember.
According to what Pierina told her daughter Rosella about her own childhood,
The childhoods of that generation are all similar and are characterized primarily by poverty, cold, and work from an early age. You should know that in Zoppola, they spoke Friulian, which is a different language than Italian. Suffice it to say that in this language, there are no words for happiness or a smile; as you may have noticed, the photographs of the children all look alike. They're always sad: they never smile. This has made the Friulian population strong but closed and not open to new things.
This might be hyperbole, but the word for “happiness” in Furlan is felicitât, which is more akin to good fortune than pleasure or comfort.
Pierina grew up in the house on Via Biacche. When Pierina was born, the town of Zoppola was, in many ways, just like the farming town it had been for more than 700 years. The population was about 4500 people, 90% of whom were farmers or farm laborers. The open-field farming system—wherein tenant-farmers lived in town and farmed strips of land owned by the Panciera family or the Church—had been in place since the Middle Ages. But, in the 19th century, farmers began to buy their own plots of land. The roads were unpaved, and there was often dirt kicked up into the air and breathed in. Life was physically hard but enlivened by the tight-knit family community.
Family and social cohesion was reinforced by the evening gatherings referred to as the filò. The filò was an essential part of peasant life, combining work and conversation in a communal setting. The gathering usually occurred in the stable, which was often the warmest place in the house, saving on firewood by taking advantage of the animals' body heat. The women typically engaged in spinning wool, flax, or hemp, mending clothes, or other manual tasks, which is the literal origin of the word filò (derived from the verb filare, meaning "to spin"). Men often worked on repairing tools. It was a vital social event for the family community, a time for conversation, sharing news, and strengthening social bonds. Elders would pass down local folklore, stories, tales, and songs to the children and adults, serving as a library of sorts for the community and preserving their cultural heritage.
Though Pierina’s other grandparents were gone twenty years before she was born, her father’s mother Catterina Cassin was still alive and would survive until 1937. It is no longer known with which child Catterina lived, but if she were living in the house with her eldest son Giobatta, she would have told stories of the ancient lineage of the Cassins and the much newer history of the Petrises who had come from Sauris barely a century before. After so little time, the Petrises were still have been considered newcomers, and the two branches of the family had the nicknames Carniel and Zors to reflecy their non-Zoppola roots. Pierina would have been raised that sense of connection. On the other hand, if Catterina lived with one of her other children and Pierina did not experience filò consistently with her grandmother, who knows how that might have changed her perspective.
The municipal government had done quite a bit in the previous century to improve the lives of the townspeople. Water which was readily available from artisan wells began to be brought directly into the courtyards of most homes. Effective, well-trained doctors and midwives were available in town. Trained teachers were hired in the school, and compulsory elementary education sought establish an expected level of literacy and numeracy.
The annual school calendar ran from November 18th to July 14th. When Pierina started in the Fall of 1915, the school had 281 students in four classes. Since the maximum number of students per teacher was legally set at 60 and there were only three available classrooms, it is likely that half the students came in the morning and half in the afternoon.
The teachers were relative newcomers. Teresa Gurato had joined the faculty in 1915 after the resignation of Maria Arduini, who had taken over upon the death the previous year of 25-year veteran teacher Angelo Maccorini. Gurati taught a mixed gender class of 95 students in two sections. She lasted four years and resigned in 1919. Twenty-four-year-old Noemi Bragadini had two gendered sections, one of 59 girls and one of 57 boys. She would teach in the Zoppola School for twenty years. During that time, she would marry the famous painter Tullio Silvestri. Annita Zilli, daughter of the municipal secretary of Zoppola, Vittorio Zilli, taught two mixed gender sections of a total of 70 students. She would teach in Zoppola for fourteen years. It is unknown in whose class Pierina was placed.
School and farming life would have been the main events of Pierina’s early life if the outside world had not made its presence known in the form of the First World War.
Italy had been reunified in 1866 for the first time in almost 1400 years. The government was definitely feeling its oats and wanted to flex its muscles on the world stage. But with the complexity of the international alliances, they were unsure on which side of the War to enter. They were initially allied with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria), but then Italy hesitated to join the War in 1914. Italy had a long-standing antagonizing relationship with Austria and ultimately decided to enter the War in 1915 on the Anglo-French side. Their hope was to gain control of Trieste and Istria, as well as other ports along the Adriatic Coast.
Though in the western part of Friuli, Zoppola was still less than 50 miles from the fighting on the Isonzo River. From 1915 to 1917, there had been eleven Battles of the Isonzo—mostly frontal, uphill assaults by the Italians that gained very little ground. The Italian-Austrian theater became known as the White War. As the Italian Army was preparing for their 12th Battle of Isonzo, the Austrians, supported by fresh German troops newly transferred from the now-quiet Russian Front, launched a preemptive strike on October 24, 1917. The Battle of Caporetto, as it came to be known, is considered to be the greatest disaster in Italian military history. The whole front collapsed, and the Tedeschi (what the Friulani called the Austrians and Germans) pushed all the way to the Piave River on the west edge of Friuli. Only lack of supplies and a strong defense on November 4th at Mount Grappa, stopped the Germans. Mora was only six years old when the War started and eight when Zoppola became occupied territory.
After the Battle of Caporetto, Zoppola became an occupied territory and an even more grim place under the Tedeschi. Years later, Palmira Quattrin remembered that soldiers were billeted in the homes of the citizenry, and that the soldiers “slept on the floors in the hallway, were dirty, and had lice.” The whole family of twelve had to live in one bedroom as the officers took the other rooms. The Petrises most likely also served as unwilling hosts.
Food became harder and harder to come by. Tools were confiscated as potential weapons. Farming became even more difficult than before, and the grain yield suffered. After roughly nine months of occupation, the Tedeshi pulled out of Zoppola. The soldiers took everything they could lay their hands on. On November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed between the Germans and the Allies, and the Great War was over. Scenes of joy in homes and in the town square broke out spontaneously. But there was most certainly significant distress over the devastation, the loss of life, and the return of prisoners-of-war and refugees. These events set the stage for Italian National Unity and Armed Forces Day, held annually on November 4th to commemorate the war's end.
The effect of having many sons in the Army and not in the fields was a double gut punch that increased everyone’s workload and heightened everyone’s anxiety for their sons, brothers, fathers, and neighbors. The Petris’ oldest son, Geremia, had chosen to heed the call of Ricciotti Garibaldi in 1914 and joined the French Foreign Legion. The Garibaldi Legion, as it was known, was formed officially in November of 1914 but was disbanded in March of 1915 so the ex-patriots could return to Italy and join the Italian Army once it had officially entered the War. In those four short months, they fought in the three Battles of the Ardenne, suffering over 50% losses. Geremia seems to have chosen to stay and continue to fight in France or return to California. According to Pierina’s granddaughter Rosella, “This was a great sorrow for Grandma Rosa, that he had not fought with the Italians for the liberation.”
The Twenties did not roar in Zoppola like they did in America. Friuli was a poor place to begin with, and it recovered gradually from the German occupation. During the War, fields had been neglected and/or damaged, and livestock and tools had been confiscated or destroyed. There was no industrial base in the area to recover, so, though getting back to the level of subsistence farming was a low bar to achieve, moving beyond that level seemed unimaginable.
Post war reconstruction in rural Friuli was uneven. Some road repairs occurred—for example, those roads connecting to Pordenone and Casarsa—but most villages could still only be reached by dirt roads. Very limited new investments were made in water, electricity, or schools, as urban areas were prioritized. Luckily, the Comune di Zoppola had invested in these infrastructures during the 1890s. Local churches and parishes continued to provide charity and support services, especially for widows and orphans. Friuli’s close-knit families and parishes helped people survive. Extended family networks, cooperative farming, and informal local institutions softened the worst blows—something not as present in fragmented urban societies elsewhere.
Though Pierina’s other grandparents were gone twenty years before she was born, her father’s mother Catterina Cassin was still alive and would survive until 1937. It is no longer known with which child Catterina lived, but if she were living in the house with her eldest son Giobatta, she would have told stories of the ancient lineage of the Cassins and the much newer history of the Petrises who had come from Sauris barely a century before. After so little time, the Petrises were still have been considered newcomers, and the two branches of the family had the nicknames Carniel and Zors to reflecy their non-Zoppola roots. Pierina would have been raised that sense of connection. On the other hand, if Catterina lived with one of her other children and Pierina did not experience filò consistently with her grandmother, who knows how that might have changed her perspective.
The municipal government had done quite a bit in the previous century to improve the lives of the townspeople. Water which was readily available from artisan wells began to be brought directly into the courtyards of most homes. Effective, well-trained doctors and midwives were available in town. Trained teachers were hired in the school, and compulsory elementary education sought establish an expected level of literacy and numeracy.
The annual school calendar ran from November 18th to July 14th. When Pierina started in the Fall of 1915, the school had 281 students in four classes. Since the maximum number of students per teacher was legally set at 60 and there were only three available classrooms, it is likely that half the students came in the morning and half in the afternoon.
The teachers were relative newcomers. Teresa Gurato had joined the faculty in 1915 after the resignation of Maria Arduini, who had taken over upon the death the previous year of 25-year veteran teacher Angelo Maccorini. Gurati taught a mixed gender class of 95 students in two sections. She lasted four years and resigned in 1919. Twenty-four-year-old Noemi Bragadini had two gendered sections, one of 59 girls and one of 57 boys. She would teach in the Zoppola School for twenty years. During that time, she would marry the famous painter Tullio Silvestri. Annita Zilli, daughter of the municipal secretary of Zoppola, Vittorio Zilli, taught two mixed gender sections of a total of 70 students. She would teach in Zoppola for fourteen years. It is unknown in whose class Pierina was placed.
School and farming life would have been the main events of Pierina’s early life if the outside world had not made its presence known in the form of the First World War.
Italy had been reunified in 1866 for the first time in almost 1400 years. The government was definitely feeling its oats and wanted to flex its muscles on the world stage. But with the complexity of the international alliances, they were unsure on which side of the War to enter. They were initially allied with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria), but then Italy hesitated to join the War in 1914. Italy had a long-standing antagonizing relationship with Austria and ultimately decided to enter the War in 1915 on the Anglo-French side. Their hope was to gain control of Trieste and Istria, as well as other ports along the Adriatic Coast.
Though in the western part of Friuli, Zoppola was still less than 50 miles from the fighting on the Isonzo River. From 1915 to 1917, there had been eleven Battles of the Isonzo—mostly frontal, uphill assaults by the Italians that gained very little ground. The Italian-Austrian theater became known as the White War. As the Italian Army was preparing for their 12th Battle of Isonzo, the Austrians, supported by fresh German troops newly transferred from the now-quiet Russian Front, launched a preemptive strike on October 24, 1917. The Battle of Caporetto, as it came to be known, is considered to be the greatest disaster in Italian military history. The whole front collapsed, and the Tedeschi (what the Friulani called the Austrians and Germans) pushed all the way to the Piave River on the west edge of Friuli. Only lack of supplies and a strong defense on November 4th at Mount Grappa, stopped the Germans. Mora was only six years old when the War started and eight when Zoppola became occupied territory.
After the Battle of Caporetto, Zoppola became an occupied territory and an even more grim place under the Tedeschi. Years later, Palmira Quattrin remembered that soldiers were billeted in the homes of the citizenry, and that the soldiers “slept on the floors in the hallway, were dirty, and had lice.” The whole family of twelve had to live in one bedroom as the officers took the other rooms. The Petrises most likely also served as unwilling hosts.
Food became harder and harder to come by. Tools were confiscated as potential weapons. Farming became even more difficult than before, and the grain yield suffered. After roughly nine months of occupation, the Tedeshi pulled out of Zoppola. The soldiers took everything they could lay their hands on. On November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed between the Germans and the Allies, and the Great War was over. Scenes of joy in homes and in the town square broke out spontaneously. But there was most certainly significant distress over the devastation, the loss of life, and the return of prisoners-of-war and refugees. These events set the stage for Italian National Unity and Armed Forces Day, held annually on November 4th to commemorate the war's end.
The effect of having many sons in the Army and not in the fields was a double gut punch that increased everyone’s workload and heightened everyone’s anxiety for their sons, brothers, fathers, and neighbors. The Petris’ oldest son, Geremia, had chosen to heed the call of Ricciotti Garibaldi in 1914 and joined the French Foreign Legion. The Garibaldi Legion, as it was known, was formed officially in November of 1914 but was disbanded in March of 1915 so the ex-patriots could return to Italy and join the Italian Army once it had officially entered the War. In those four short months, they fought in the three Battles of the Ardenne, suffering over 50% losses. Geremia seems to have chosen to stay and continue to fight in France or return to California. According to Pierina’s granddaughter Rosella, “This was a great sorrow for Grandma Rosa, that he had not fought with the Italians for the liberation.”
The Twenties did not roar in Zoppola like they did in America. Friuli was a poor place to begin with, and it recovered gradually from the German occupation. During the War, fields had been neglected and/or damaged, and livestock and tools had been confiscated or destroyed. There was no industrial base in the area to recover, so, though getting back to the level of subsistence farming was a low bar to achieve, moving beyond that level seemed unimaginable.
Post war reconstruction in rural Friuli was uneven. Some road repairs occurred—for example, those roads connecting to Pordenone and Casarsa—but most villages could still only be reached by dirt roads. Very limited new investments were made in water, electricity, or schools, as urban areas were prioritized. Luckily, the Comune di Zoppola had invested in these infrastructures during the 1890s. Local churches and parishes continued to provide charity and support services, especially for widows and orphans. Friuli’s close-knit families and parishes helped people survive. Extended family networks, cooperative farming, and informal local institutions softened the worst blows—something not as present in fragmented urban societies elsewhere.
As other small towns and villages in Italy, many of the residents were mezzadria, that is, tenant-farmers who leased land from local owners. The Petrises were not safe from having to “make San Martino”—losing their lease and having to move to another town to try to start over—as Rosa Taiariol’s family had years before when her father Domenico died in Villotta, forcing them to relocate to Zoppola. Rosa’s experience adding uncertainty and fear to their lives. All three of Mora’s surviving brothers moved to America in order to earn a better living and send support back home. Geremia either never returned home after fighting in France, or he left quickly after visiting. Giacomo immigrated to 1920, and Giorgio followed in 1922. Only Emilia and Mora remained at home during Mora’s teen years. After the sons left, the family moved into the house on Vicolo Petris—Petris Alley.
The local economy returned to its previous level within a couple of years, but inflation and taxes rose between 1919 and 1922. There was great disappointment and frustration of Italy being on the winning side but not gaining the lands along the Adriatic Coast which they had sought and the political chaos in Rome fueled the rise of Mussolini.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was a journalist, a former bersagliere and veteran of the Great War, and political firebrand, who founded the fascist movement in 1919 with the creation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. He played on the people’s disappointment from the War and leveraged the prestige of the Roman Empire, aiming to create a "New Roman Empire" that would legitimize his new party. Through romanità (Roman-ness), he adopted ancient symbols, architecture, and the legacies of Julius Caesar and Augustus to foster national pride and portray his dictatorship as an historical and necessary return to greatness. The term "Fascism" itself derived from the Roman fasces (a bundle of rods around an ax carried by attendants as the Consul and other Roman magistrates walked through the streets of Rome), representing strength through unity. The fasces also represented the consul’s power of life and death over the citizenry. The regime also used Roman eagles, salutes, and Latin mottos to reinforce the connection.
Italy was still a kingdom with Victor Emmanuel III as king, but he was constitutional monarch and much of the power resided with the Prime Minister. The political scene in Rome of the early 1920s was unstable. Italy was plagued by chaotic parliamentary government, frequent, short-lived governments, and widespread social unrest following World War I. The King feared that attempting to stop the fascists with the army would result in a bloody civil war. He was also concerned about a potential communist revolution, similar to the recent Russian Revolution, and viewed fascism as a necessary bulwark against the left. Following the "March on Rome" in October 1922, the King refused to declare martial law against the Fascist Blackshirts, choosing instead to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister on October 30, 1922, believing he could manage the Fascist leader within a constitutional framework. The King thought he was employing a “strong man” ala Machiavelli’s The Prince—someone capable of restoring order, doing the dirty work and drawing the anger of the masses away from himself. But Victor Emmanuel underestimated Mussolini’s ambition and personal charisma.
Nationally, Mussolini’s government pushed a platform of the Four Battles: The Battle for Grain, the Battle for the Lira, the Battle for Land, and the Battle for Births. These were designed to rebuild Italy into a great power. The first, Battaglia del grano, had the most impact on Zoppola. The aim was to boost grain production to make Italy self-sufficient in wheat. This campaign was successful in increasing wheat output and lowering the trade deficit, but was ultimately economically counter-productive for Italy's agricultural sector as farmers who grew other produce had to clear their land for grain cultivation which decreased exports. This resulted in higher food prices which placed Italian families under financial strain. But again, being out of the way, there was likely less direct impact in Zoppola than elsewhere. Like elsewhere in Italy, some people in Zoppola were supporters of Mussolini and the Fascist agenda, some were not, and many were indifferent.
Friuli was a peripheral and linguistically distinct region, and as such, it was often neglected by the central Italian government. Investments and relief efforts prioritized more industrial or politically central areas like Lombardy or Rome, leaving Friuli more vulnerable. The local parish played a stabilizing role, offering moral support, charity, and some resistance to cultural pressure.
Mussolini’s regime also imposed Italian-language-only policies. Local languages like Furlan and Slovene were discouraged or suppressed, compounding cultural alienation. Furlan, (aka Friulian) had been influenced by many other languages over time, including German, Venetian, Slovene, and, of course, Italian. It is sometimes known as Eastern Ladin, due to its relation to Ladin, the ancient colloquial version of Latin spoken in the Dolomite Mountains (the original home of the Petris family). What really sets Furlan apart from Ladin is the things it has picked up along the way from the German and Slovene. Furlan had four separate dialects and even its own alphabet at one point. Furlan began a long, slow decline and eventually became an endangered language. It is now protected and recognized by the Italian government as a minority language. This allows it to be taught in primary schools. There are theater groups, musical groups, an online newspaper, and even two movies that exclusively use Furlan.
When Mora was 18, Andrea Quattrin returned from America and married Mora’s sister Emilia. Mora and Emilia’s mother had told her friend Elisa—Andrea’s mother—that her 22-year-old daughter was getting older and could not marry any of the men in town, so Elisa had told her son to come home and marry Emilia, which he did on February 24, 1927. They quickly became pregnant with a first son, Giovanni Battista, named after both his grandfathers. Andrea was concerned about raising a family under the Fascist Regime, though, and returned to California before Battista’s birth to beginning setting up a life for them in San Francisco. In 1930, he returned to bring Emilia and Battista to America. This left 21-year-old Mora as the only child at home and the sole support of her parents in their old age.
Among the children in town was Felice Bomben.
The local economy returned to its previous level within a couple of years, but inflation and taxes rose between 1919 and 1922. There was great disappointment and frustration of Italy being on the winning side but not gaining the lands along the Adriatic Coast which they had sought and the political chaos in Rome fueled the rise of Mussolini.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was a journalist, a former bersagliere and veteran of the Great War, and political firebrand, who founded the fascist movement in 1919 with the creation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. He played on the people’s disappointment from the War and leveraged the prestige of the Roman Empire, aiming to create a "New Roman Empire" that would legitimize his new party. Through romanità (Roman-ness), he adopted ancient symbols, architecture, and the legacies of Julius Caesar and Augustus to foster national pride and portray his dictatorship as an historical and necessary return to greatness. The term "Fascism" itself derived from the Roman fasces (a bundle of rods around an ax carried by attendants as the Consul and other Roman magistrates walked through the streets of Rome), representing strength through unity. The fasces also represented the consul’s power of life and death over the citizenry. The regime also used Roman eagles, salutes, and Latin mottos to reinforce the connection.
Italy was still a kingdom with Victor Emmanuel III as king, but he was constitutional monarch and much of the power resided with the Prime Minister. The political scene in Rome of the early 1920s was unstable. Italy was plagued by chaotic parliamentary government, frequent, short-lived governments, and widespread social unrest following World War I. The King feared that attempting to stop the fascists with the army would result in a bloody civil war. He was also concerned about a potential communist revolution, similar to the recent Russian Revolution, and viewed fascism as a necessary bulwark against the left. Following the "March on Rome" in October 1922, the King refused to declare martial law against the Fascist Blackshirts, choosing instead to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister on October 30, 1922, believing he could manage the Fascist leader within a constitutional framework. The King thought he was employing a “strong man” ala Machiavelli’s The Prince—someone capable of restoring order, doing the dirty work and drawing the anger of the masses away from himself. But Victor Emmanuel underestimated Mussolini’s ambition and personal charisma.
Nationally, Mussolini’s government pushed a platform of the Four Battles: The Battle for Grain, the Battle for the Lira, the Battle for Land, and the Battle for Births. These were designed to rebuild Italy into a great power. The first, Battaglia del grano, had the most impact on Zoppola. The aim was to boost grain production to make Italy self-sufficient in wheat. This campaign was successful in increasing wheat output and lowering the trade deficit, but was ultimately economically counter-productive for Italy's agricultural sector as farmers who grew other produce had to clear their land for grain cultivation which decreased exports. This resulted in higher food prices which placed Italian families under financial strain. But again, being out of the way, there was likely less direct impact in Zoppola than elsewhere. Like elsewhere in Italy, some people in Zoppola were supporters of Mussolini and the Fascist agenda, some were not, and many were indifferent.
Friuli was a peripheral and linguistically distinct region, and as such, it was often neglected by the central Italian government. Investments and relief efforts prioritized more industrial or politically central areas like Lombardy or Rome, leaving Friuli more vulnerable. The local parish played a stabilizing role, offering moral support, charity, and some resistance to cultural pressure.
Mussolini’s regime also imposed Italian-language-only policies. Local languages like Furlan and Slovene were discouraged or suppressed, compounding cultural alienation. Furlan, (aka Friulian) had been influenced by many other languages over time, including German, Venetian, Slovene, and, of course, Italian. It is sometimes known as Eastern Ladin, due to its relation to Ladin, the ancient colloquial version of Latin spoken in the Dolomite Mountains (the original home of the Petris family). What really sets Furlan apart from Ladin is the things it has picked up along the way from the German and Slovene. Furlan had four separate dialects and even its own alphabet at one point. Furlan began a long, slow decline and eventually became an endangered language. It is now protected and recognized by the Italian government as a minority language. This allows it to be taught in primary schools. There are theater groups, musical groups, an online newspaper, and even two movies that exclusively use Furlan.
When Mora was 18, Andrea Quattrin returned from America and married Mora’s sister Emilia. Mora and Emilia’s mother had told her friend Elisa—Andrea’s mother—that her 22-year-old daughter was getting older and could not marry any of the men in town, so Elisa had told her son to come home and marry Emilia, which he did on February 24, 1927. They quickly became pregnant with a first son, Giovanni Battista, named after both his grandfathers. Andrea was concerned about raising a family under the Fascist Regime, though, and returned to California before Battista’s birth to beginning setting up a life for them in San Francisco. In 1930, he returned to bring Emilia and Battista to America. This left 21-year-old Mora as the only child at home and the sole support of her parents in their old age.
Among the children in town was Felice Bomben.
Felice Bomben was born on May 9, 1910, to Antonio and Caterina Bomben (a distant cousin). He was the fifth child of seven. He had four older sisters and two younger brothers. The Bomben family lineage could be reliably traced in Zoppola to the late 1700s, only two generations more than the Petrises. Through their connections to the Zilli and Pighin families, Felice’s roots in Zoppola went back to the early 1600s. The Bombens owned land and served as members of the town council as early as 1834, giving them higher social status than the Petrises or the Taiariols. Like many boys in Zoppola, Felice—whose nickname was Filisuti (which, in Furlan, seems to mean The Boy—maybe like an American would say “the kid”)—was named after his own paternal grandfather
Felice had an early life which was very similar to other boys and girls of that time in Zoppola. There was family and work, the Church and school. He was born a farmer and was a born-farmer. The rhythms of the agricultural cycle, the school year, and the liturgical calendar of Feast Days were in alignment with each other and made each week seem to flow effortlessly into the next. The Great War, the occupation of the town, and the recovery of the 1920s were experiences Felice shared with his agemates.
There were two of experiences which Felice does not seem to have shared with Mora and others neighbors. The first was having older siblings immigrating from Italy in order to make a living and send money back home to the family. Three of his four sisters married men from Zoppola and stayed in town to raise their families. It is unclear what happened to his sister Regina (born in 1907). His younger brothers would immigrate to Argentina and then on to California after the Second World War, and they kept encouraging him to join them. But Felice stayed at home and took over the land from his father.
The second was that Felice had more formal education than most of his contemporaries. Felice went through the standard three years of public school in Zoppola and was a year behind Mora in school. As the eldest son of a well-to-do family, though, he received two more years schooling with private tutors and then went on to attend agricultural school in Udine. There he also picked up excellent carpentry skills. According to his daughter Roselle in her essay (Quaderni Zoppolani, Dec 2023) Nell’album Dei Miei Ricordi: I Mestieri Di Una Volta (In the Album of My Memories: The Trades of Yesteryear):
When it came to arts and crafts, he, too, was second to none. He was always present for the fieldwork, but once back home, he turned his hand to absolutely everything! For instance, he would craft handles for shovels or pitchforks out of tree branches. Whenever he spotted a branch that fit the bill, he would cut it down and “shape” it against the barn’s ladder, forcing the green wood to take on a gentle curve—a design that would later make the tool easier to use precisely because it was ergonomic. It was no coincidence that he used to say: “In Italy, everything goes wrong; yet the one thing that ‘should’ have gone crooked—the shovel handle—they made straight!” Filissuti never threw anything away; he belonged to a generation raised with a deep appreciation for the inherent value of every object—nothing was to be wasted! I remember how he would straighten out every rusty nail he salvaged, and I would lend him a hand with the small tasks. I can still almost hear his voice: “Come here, ‘nina’—give me a hand! You sort the big ones from the little ones.” Or, when we went out to load hay in the fields, he would place a leafy branch—soaked in vinegar—into my hands, instructing me to swat away the horseflies buzzing around the horse’s muzzle. The horse, with its grateful gaze, seemed to be thanking me for the relief I brought it!
My father also made brooms out of sorghum straw, as well as wicker baskets—and, using that very same material, even rabbit cages! To gather the wicker (known locally as vinciàrs), he would head down to the gravel banks of the Cellina River toward the end of May. This was when the bark peeled away most easily, making it simpler to strip it off and, consequently, to work the wood. Depending on whether the wicker was light or dark in color, the resulting basket would be assigned a different role within the household economy. If it was a beautiful basket woven entirely from white wicker, it was used for laundry; if, however, it was dark, it was used in the granary for storing ears of corn.
One aspect of life that united the males of Zoppola was military service. Even before the Great War, roughly 40-50 young men from Zoppola were drafted into the army every year. Starting at age 20, two years of military service were required, and all men served (unless excused for health problems or not meeting height requirement). The Kingdom of Italy aspired to a pertinent, if not preeminent role in Europe and as a colonial power abroad. Soldiers from Friuli, especially the Alpini, were known for their individual bravery, resilience, and fighting skills—a reputation often in contrast to the broader perception of the Italian military. The Alpini, many of whom were recruited from the local mountain regions, were highly regarded for their skill and tenacity in mountain warfare. During the Great War, they had distinguished themselves fighting in extreme conditions against the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserjäger forces. In the hearts and minds of the locals, the Alpini were considered to be like a Friuliano National Army and were a great source of pride.
Felice was called to arms on October 4, 1930. His military record describes him as 1.88 m (6’ 4”) with a 0.91 m (36”) chest. He had straight, brown hair, a straight nose and regular chin, brown eyes, a rosy complexion, and healthy teeth. He had no particular scars or marks. His occupation was contadino (farmer), and he could both read and write.
Felice had an early life which was very similar to other boys and girls of that time in Zoppola. There was family and work, the Church and school. He was born a farmer and was a born-farmer. The rhythms of the agricultural cycle, the school year, and the liturgical calendar of Feast Days were in alignment with each other and made each week seem to flow effortlessly into the next. The Great War, the occupation of the town, and the recovery of the 1920s were experiences Felice shared with his agemates.
There were two of experiences which Felice does not seem to have shared with Mora and others neighbors. The first was having older siblings immigrating from Italy in order to make a living and send money back home to the family. Three of his four sisters married men from Zoppola and stayed in town to raise their families. It is unclear what happened to his sister Regina (born in 1907). His younger brothers would immigrate to Argentina and then on to California after the Second World War, and they kept encouraging him to join them. But Felice stayed at home and took over the land from his father.
The second was that Felice had more formal education than most of his contemporaries. Felice went through the standard three years of public school in Zoppola and was a year behind Mora in school. As the eldest son of a well-to-do family, though, he received two more years schooling with private tutors and then went on to attend agricultural school in Udine. There he also picked up excellent carpentry skills. According to his daughter Roselle in her essay (Quaderni Zoppolani, Dec 2023) Nell’album Dei Miei Ricordi: I Mestieri Di Una Volta (In the Album of My Memories: The Trades of Yesteryear):
When it came to arts and crafts, he, too, was second to none. He was always present for the fieldwork, but once back home, he turned his hand to absolutely everything! For instance, he would craft handles for shovels or pitchforks out of tree branches. Whenever he spotted a branch that fit the bill, he would cut it down and “shape” it against the barn’s ladder, forcing the green wood to take on a gentle curve—a design that would later make the tool easier to use precisely because it was ergonomic. It was no coincidence that he used to say: “In Italy, everything goes wrong; yet the one thing that ‘should’ have gone crooked—the shovel handle—they made straight!” Filissuti never threw anything away; he belonged to a generation raised with a deep appreciation for the inherent value of every object—nothing was to be wasted! I remember how he would straighten out every rusty nail he salvaged, and I would lend him a hand with the small tasks. I can still almost hear his voice: “Come here, ‘nina’—give me a hand! You sort the big ones from the little ones.” Or, when we went out to load hay in the fields, he would place a leafy branch—soaked in vinegar—into my hands, instructing me to swat away the horseflies buzzing around the horse’s muzzle. The horse, with its grateful gaze, seemed to be thanking me for the relief I brought it!
My father also made brooms out of sorghum straw, as well as wicker baskets—and, using that very same material, even rabbit cages! To gather the wicker (known locally as vinciàrs), he would head down to the gravel banks of the Cellina River toward the end of May. This was when the bark peeled away most easily, making it simpler to strip it off and, consequently, to work the wood. Depending on whether the wicker was light or dark in color, the resulting basket would be assigned a different role within the household economy. If it was a beautiful basket woven entirely from white wicker, it was used for laundry; if, however, it was dark, it was used in the granary for storing ears of corn.
One aspect of life that united the males of Zoppola was military service. Even before the Great War, roughly 40-50 young men from Zoppola were drafted into the army every year. Starting at age 20, two years of military service were required, and all men served (unless excused for health problems or not meeting height requirement). The Kingdom of Italy aspired to a pertinent, if not preeminent role in Europe and as a colonial power abroad. Soldiers from Friuli, especially the Alpini, were known for their individual bravery, resilience, and fighting skills—a reputation often in contrast to the broader perception of the Italian military. The Alpini, many of whom were recruited from the local mountain regions, were highly regarded for their skill and tenacity in mountain warfare. During the Great War, they had distinguished themselves fighting in extreme conditions against the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserjäger forces. In the hearts and minds of the locals, the Alpini were considered to be like a Friuliano National Army and were a great source of pride.
Felice was called to arms on October 4, 1930. His military record describes him as 1.88 m (6’ 4”) with a 0.91 m (36”) chest. He had straight, brown hair, a straight nose and regular chin, brown eyes, a rosy complexion, and healthy teeth. He had no particular scars or marks. His occupation was contadino (farmer), and he could both read and write.
At that point, Italy was seven years into the Second Italo-Senussi War (also known as the
“pacification” of Libya). The war led to the mass deaths of the indigenous people of Cyrenaica, totaling one quarter of the region's population. Italian war crimes included the use of chemical weapons, execution of surrendering combatants, and the mass killing of civilians, while the Senussis were accused of torture and mutilation of captured Italians and refusal to take prisoners. Italian authorities forcibly expelled 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica, from their settlements, many of which were then given to Italian settlers.
Felice was assigned to the 10th Heavy Artillery Regiment 15 Apr 1931. Luckily, he qualified for a reduced term of service because of his occupation and Mussolini’s Battle for Grain. After a six-month term of service, Felice was granted a declaration stating that he maintained good conduct and served with fidelity and honor, and he was placed on unlimited discharge leave on October 15, 1931. It would not be the end of his military career, though.
The Great Depression was in full swing all around the world, but, in Italy, there was a smaller drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compared to other countries due to a large, traditional agricultural sector that was relatively unaffected. Ironically, Italy’s relative poverty at the time protected the country somewhat from the Depression.
Despite the troubles of the outside world, life went on in Zoppola as it always had. One anecdote of the time passed down by Rosella was this:
In the early 1930s, there was a waltz competition in town during the annual celebrations (the festival), and Mora entered the competition with a man who was already married and had five children! This caused such a stir that in the Bomben household she was looked down upon, as such a thing was scandalous at the time. However, Mora entered and won the competition because she was a very good dancer, and evidently her dance partner was too. In town, this caused quite a stir! Grandpa, however, was in love and got married even though the family wasn't very wealthy.
Mora and Felice were married on January 11, 1936, at the Church of San Martino Vescovo, where her sister Emilia had married nine years earlier. According to Rosella,
Mora arrived at the church wearing a blue coat and a gray dress, which she had chosen for economic reasons. But the parish priest objected—Felice's uncle Don Alessandro Bomben—strenuously objected because, back then, a wedding dress was supposed to be white to signify the purity of the bride who was supposed to present herself at the altar as a virgin. Fortunately, Felice stood up to his uncle, silencing him, and ordering him to perform the ceremony anyway. Another unique aspect of the wedding was that a fireworks specialist was hired for the wedding to put on a fireworks display—an absolute novelty for the time in Zoppola!
Mora became pregnant almost immediately and, in December, a son whom they named Tarquinio was born. It was fashionable to give names from Roman history because it was a fascist cultural legacy, but Tarquinius seems like an odd choice. The name came from Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the legendary—and tyrannical—seventh and final king of Rome. In 509 bce, in response to the pace and burden of constant building, warfare against neighboring city-states, and his son’s rape of the virtuous Lucretia and her subsequent suicide, Tarquinius Superbus was driven out of Rome by Lucius Junius Brutus, the eponymous ancestor of the leader of the assassination of Julius Caesar. It is unlikely that Mussolini would have approved of the choice.
Everyone was happy about the birth of a boy, but he unfortunately died just 29 days later due to pneumonia. Felice and Mora tried to have another son but had three daughters: Catterina was born in 1937, Edda in 1939, and Rosella in 1942.
In 1939, Felice was recalled to the Army. He arrived at the 9th Mixed Depot of the Frontier Guard in Gorizia on 21 August 1939. Over the next four years, Filisuti was bounced back and forth between the Army and agriculture:
On February 4, 1941, Mora’s father Giobatta died. With all the other children dead or away in America, her mother Rosa was living alone, probably for the first time in her life. Her granddaughter Edda often stayed overnight with Grandma Rosa. Edda remembered that the townspeople thought of Rosa as a modern woman because she smoked a pipe. Rosa would live until January 4, 1949.
To continue with Filisuti’s military odyssey:
In July of 1943, the Italian government entered into negotiations with the allied forces and placed Mussoliini under arrest. An armistice was announced on September 8. In response, the Germans released Mussolini and spirited him north to the town of Salò on Lake Garda, in Brescia, where they established an Italian Socialist government in exile. They also decided that Friuli, Istria, and the Adriatic coast of what would become Yugoslavia was too important an area to be left to this new government and annexed the area directly, forming the Operational Zone of Adriatic Littoral. Zoppola was under German occupation again, as it had been 26 years earlier. Filisuti’s response was to join the Osoppo Brigade.
The Brigate Osoppo-Friuli were autonomous partisan formations founded in the headquarter of the Archbishop Seminary of Udine on Christmas Eve, 1943, by resistance groups already active in Carnia and Friuli before the Armistice. The name Osoppo was a symbolic reference to the city of Osoppo which, during the Italian unification of 1848, resisted the Austrian troops for seven months.
The Osoppo Brigades, of which there were five, were eclectic groups of volunteers with divergent ideologies: both secular and Catholic, socialist and liberal. The Osoppo intended to cooperate independently with the communist Garibaldi Brigades and to contribute to the antifascist fight against the occupying German forces. They were led by two captains of the Royal Italian Army—Candido Grassi and Manlio Cencig—and Don Ascanio De Luca, a chaplain of Alpini in Montenegro and parson of Colugna.
The two groups operating in Carnia, the ancestral home of the Petrises. It is likely Filisuti served there. During the summer and early fall of 1944, with Allied forces nearby, partisans attacked behind German lines. This rebellion led to several provisional partisan governments throughout the mountainous regions, including the Republic of Carnia. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Germany's commander of occupation forces in Italy, estimated German casualties fighting partisans in the summer of 1944 amounted to 20,000: 5,000 killed, between 7,000 and 8,000 missing / "kidnapped" (including deserters), and a similar number seriously wounded. The partisan losses were lower. By the end of the year, German reinforcements and Mussolini's remaining forces crushed the uprising.
Like “old-timers” throughout history, later in life, Filisuti would talk about the War with his grandsons. Fabio Iacobbini recalled,
Every now and then, he would talk about the Second World War—specifically the time he spent as a partisan waiting for American planes to drop supplies (including weapons, I believe) for them in the countryside. It was a very risky situation because the German military command was actually headquartered in their home. He once came close to being deported to a concentration camp in Germany; he was saved while already on the train by a German soldier who had been quartered at the command post in his house—"a good German" who helped him escape.
Unfortunately, we do not have more specifics regarding Filisuti’s time with the Osoppo, but, for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Italy in 2025, Ugo Bari—who would later rise to the rank of General in the Italian Army—was interviewed about 10-year-old Ugo living in Udine and about his 22-year-old brother who was with the Resistance. In WAR: Historical Memoirs. Friuli: The Final Months of the Second World War Through the Eyes of an Eyewitness (InsiderTrend.it, 2025), Ugo had this to say:
My brother qualified as a schoolteacher in 1944. He had not been called up for military service because he had taken a competitive exam to become an officer cadet. According to a family story I heard as a child—though its veracity has never been fully confirmed—all the eighteen-year-olds were rounded up, conscripted into a battalion, and dispatched to conduct a sweep of the area above Cividale. The officers, however, deemed it sheer madness to send inexperienced youths to fight against Tito’s partisans—men who were by then hardened to a life of clandestinity and violence. Consequently, the unit disintegrated, and my brother defected to join the Italian partisans in Upper Friuli—specifically in the rugged valleys of the Arzino and the Prealps—where he would remain until the end of the war. My mother would go in search of him to bring him food at least once a week. He had headed into the mountains wearing nothing but a canvas shirt and trousers; he possessed absolutely nothing else, and winter was fast approaching. Worried for his safety, my mother filled a rucksack with woolen clothing and set out on foot toward the mountains. She even managed to cross the Tagliamento River by walking along two ropes strung across the riverbed, as all the bridges had been destroyed. At a certain point, however, she was forced to stop, having been spotted; she could no longer move about freely. Yet, in the meantime, the situation had shifted: the partisan struggle had gained official recognition, and with it, the attitude of the local population had changed as well.
In that area, a whole series of sabotage operations were carried out against bridges and roads, and he, too, had likely participated in some of these actions—such as the operation to damage the Pinzano bridge. However, they never attacked enemy units; instead, they operated primarily on the defensive, aiming to prevent the Germans from entering the valley. These were essentially harassment actions; they lacked significant resources and tended to remain largely in hiding. They were resupplied by American aircraft, which parachuted supplies down to them. Ammunition was scarce—since the Americans did not fully trust the partisans—so while they sent food, clothing, equipment, and other supplies, actual weaponry and ammunition were in very short supply. To obtain those, the partisans had to rely on conducting raids—perhaps targeting an isolated barracks to seize a few rifles. Consequently, they were very poorly armed. After carrying out an action, they would disperse into the mountains, leveraging their intimate knowledge of the terrain; they would spend the night in one location, then move on to another. The Germans did not bother hunting them down; to do so would have required mounting extensive search-and-sweep operations. They no longer had the interest—they were losing the war.
Yes, it was 1944. The local people clothed them and helped them, offering comfort on many occasions. My brother stayed as a guest in Armida’s home in Cassacco. She was a friend of my mother’s; they had met before the war, when they were hospitalized together. My brother was up in the mountains, but when the roundups began, he had to come down to the valley, where he spent a week staying at her house.
Mora, like all the women of that time, worked as much as, if not more than, a man, because in addition to household chores, she also had to work in the fields and tend to the farm animals. She was a tough woman. With Felice and his two brothers called up for military service during the War, the work in the fields became even harder. There were no tractors yet, and farming was done with horses and oxen. These were certainly not easy times for a woman with three little children to replace the men in the fields without neglecting anything at home.
By late 1944, Northern Italy was becoming a target of nearly constant air raids by the Allies. The presence in the southern part of the municipal territory of two important regional transportation routes—the Venice–Udine railway and the Pontebbana State Road—made the area around Zoppola a target. The Cusano-Pescincanna railway yard and the bridges over the Fiume and Tagliamento Rivers were hit several times over the last six months of the War, but it seems that the town of Zoppola was spared direct attacks.
On April 25, 1945, Italian partisans launched a general insurrection, liberating major industrial centers like Milan, Turin, and Genoa before Allied troops even arrived. This date is celebrated today as Liberation Day (Festa della Liberazione) in Italy. Three days later, Mussolini was captured and executed near Lake Como. (This prompted one of John Quattrin’s favorite Italian jokes: Who put the 21 bullet holes in Mussolini? 5000 Italian sharpshooters.) The unconditional surrender of all German and Axis forces in Italy, which had been negotiated on April 29, officially went into effect on May 2. The War in Italy was over.
From Ugo Bari’s perspective, when asked “When did it all end?”,
Well… I’d say there was a moment of chaos; you couldn’t tell anymore who was for and who was against. We would run into one another, but we no longer exchanged nasty remarks. We might have avoided each other a little, perhaps, but there wasn’t even any lingering animosity. And here, I must say, the social life of the parishes proved helpful, for we kids went back to catechism, to meetings, and to games—in short: the younger ones began to drift back into the fold of their friendships, while the older ones simply grew tired of being at odds with one another.
Recovery in Zoppola after the Second World War was not much different than recovery after the First. Fields needed to be repairs and livestock and tools needed to be replaced in order to return to the level of subsistence farming. What was different was the massive influx of cash to the country from America’s Marshall Plan. The most visible change was the introduction of tractors and motorized machinery (like mechanical reapers and threshers), which allowed farmers to cultivate larger plots of land faster and with fewer workers. Less visible was the There was a rapid adoption of chemical fertilizers and biochemical inputs, which significantly boosted crop yields alongside the new mechanical tools. This went hand-in-hand with improved roads and railways which allowed farmers to shift toward perishable crops like asparagus and fruits, which could now reach distant markets before spoiling.
By the mid-1950s, the Bombens were able to buy a used tractor, thanks to the sale of two horses and some debt. According to Rosella:
In the late 1950s, the tractor took the place of horses, and my father immediately put me behind the wheel of the machine, seeing as there were no other males in the family. My father wasn't always entirely pleased with how I carried out the work, but both he and I did our absolute best to get the job done right. I still remember the driving course we took to obtain our licenses, taught by Mr. Cagliari from Pordenone—a name that remains synonymous with driving schools throughout the entire district to this day. In the evenings, after a day’s work in the fields, we would all gather in the town hall’s council chamber—the only room large enough to accommodate the crowd of 46 men and two young women who attended. Silvia Bomben (from the "Gisti" branch of the family) and I were the only two women representing the female sex—so much so that we effectively became the very first two women in the area to obtain a driver's license, qualifying us to drive not only in the fields but on the public roads as well!
However, operating farm machinery—a role typically considered the exclusive domain of men—was not the only trade that began to spread among us women during those years. In the local dairy, for instance, the craft of the cheesemaker was traditionally entrusted to a man, assisted by an apprentice. In the 1970s, Maria Celotto (known as "la Morsana"), née Petris ("Zors"), arrived on the scene; she had been called in to assist Giorgio Bomben, and—when it came to cleaning and sanitizing the premises—she was second to no man. Quite the contrary! She could spot where dirt might be lurking sooner than anyone else. Those of us who assisted her—taking turns on the specific days assigned to our various families—were always made to scrub the floors using bucket after bucket of boiling water, while she constantly monitored our progress to ensure the work was up to standard. The cheesemakers who had preceded her, however, had neglected this crucial aspect—one that, both then and now, was and remains of absolutely primary importance.
The sudden influx of money also caused a shift from the farms to the factories as a more diversified industrial model grew. This, in turn, coincided with another wave of emigration—not just to the New World, but also out of the farming towns and into the cities. Shortly after the War, Felice’s brothers Allessandro and Silvio migrated to Argentina like many Friulani. When they later moved to San Francisco, the brothers tried to convince Felice and Mora to join them, but Felice and Mora did not want to leave Italy and chose to build their family where their roots were. Their daughter Caterina married Pietro Finos in 1954 and they moved to Toronto. Edda married Carlo Iacobbini and moved to Rome. When Rosella married Gianni Gorgotti, she chose to follow her parents’ path and stay nearby in Fiume Veneto.
The year 1958 was significant for the Bombens. Four events occurred that year. First, in February, Filisuti’s father Antonio died. Filisuti was no longer “the Kid”—now he was the pater familias. Two months later, Edda married and moved to Rome, leaving only one daughter at home. In July, Mora’s sister Emilia returned home after 28 years. She had recently become widowed and needed the support of home and her favorite sibling. (In the 1970, Felice and Mora would come to San Francisco and stay at Emilia’s house on Potrero Hill. They might have even been there for the First Friulano Ball, a celebration organized by Emilia’s son Battista for all the local Friulano descendants.)
“pacification” of Libya). The war led to the mass deaths of the indigenous people of Cyrenaica, totaling one quarter of the region's population. Italian war crimes included the use of chemical weapons, execution of surrendering combatants, and the mass killing of civilians, while the Senussis were accused of torture and mutilation of captured Italians and refusal to take prisoners. Italian authorities forcibly expelled 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica, from their settlements, many of which were then given to Italian settlers.
Felice was assigned to the 10th Heavy Artillery Regiment 15 Apr 1931. Luckily, he qualified for a reduced term of service because of his occupation and Mussolini’s Battle for Grain. After a six-month term of service, Felice was granted a declaration stating that he maintained good conduct and served with fidelity and honor, and he was placed on unlimited discharge leave on October 15, 1931. It would not be the end of his military career, though.
The Great Depression was in full swing all around the world, but, in Italy, there was a smaller drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compared to other countries due to a large, traditional agricultural sector that was relatively unaffected. Ironically, Italy’s relative poverty at the time protected the country somewhat from the Depression.
Despite the troubles of the outside world, life went on in Zoppola as it always had. One anecdote of the time passed down by Rosella was this:
In the early 1930s, there was a waltz competition in town during the annual celebrations (the festival), and Mora entered the competition with a man who was already married and had five children! This caused such a stir that in the Bomben household she was looked down upon, as such a thing was scandalous at the time. However, Mora entered and won the competition because she was a very good dancer, and evidently her dance partner was too. In town, this caused quite a stir! Grandpa, however, was in love and got married even though the family wasn't very wealthy.
Mora and Felice were married on January 11, 1936, at the Church of San Martino Vescovo, where her sister Emilia had married nine years earlier. According to Rosella,
Mora arrived at the church wearing a blue coat and a gray dress, which she had chosen for economic reasons. But the parish priest objected—Felice's uncle Don Alessandro Bomben—strenuously objected because, back then, a wedding dress was supposed to be white to signify the purity of the bride who was supposed to present herself at the altar as a virgin. Fortunately, Felice stood up to his uncle, silencing him, and ordering him to perform the ceremony anyway. Another unique aspect of the wedding was that a fireworks specialist was hired for the wedding to put on a fireworks display—an absolute novelty for the time in Zoppola!
Mora became pregnant almost immediately and, in December, a son whom they named Tarquinio was born. It was fashionable to give names from Roman history because it was a fascist cultural legacy, but Tarquinius seems like an odd choice. The name came from Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the legendary—and tyrannical—seventh and final king of Rome. In 509 bce, in response to the pace and burden of constant building, warfare against neighboring city-states, and his son’s rape of the virtuous Lucretia and her subsequent suicide, Tarquinius Superbus was driven out of Rome by Lucius Junius Brutus, the eponymous ancestor of the leader of the assassination of Julius Caesar. It is unlikely that Mussolini would have approved of the choice.
Everyone was happy about the birth of a boy, but he unfortunately died just 29 days later due to pneumonia. Felice and Mora tried to have another son but had three daughters: Catterina was born in 1937, Edda in 1939, and Rosella in 1942.
In 1939, Felice was recalled to the Army. He arrived at the 9th Mixed Depot of the Frontier Guard in Gorizia on 21 August 1939. Over the next four years, Filisuti was bounced back and forth between the Army and agriculture:
- 5 Oct 1939: Sent on extraordinary leave for 60 (sixty) days because he had been assigned to agricultural work.
- 6 Dec 1939: The above leave was extended for 20 (twenty) days by order of the Duce.
- 21 Dec 1939: After completing the above leave, placed on unlimited extraordinary leave without pay.
- 31 Mar 1940: Removed from active strength and entered into the register of reserve forces of the Military District of Treviso on.
- 30 May 1940: Recalled to military service for training, and arrived at the 9th Frontier Guard Artillery Regiment.
- 11 June 1940: Assigned to the 17th Grouping and placed at the disposal of the mobilized forces. [His grandson Paolo said, “Grandpa was called back to Pula (now Croatia) in 1940 but never went further.”]
- 10 Oct 1940: Ceased to be mobilized because transferred to the Depot of the 9th Frontier Artillery Regiment.
- 11 Oct 1940: Sent on unlimited extraordinary leave.
- 13 Oct 1940: Placed on unlimited leave/discharge.
On February 4, 1941, Mora’s father Giobatta died. With all the other children dead or away in America, her mother Rosa was living alone, probably for the first time in her life. Her granddaughter Edda often stayed overnight with Grandma Rosa. Edda remembered that the townspeople thought of Rosa as a modern woman because she smoked a pipe. Rosa would live until January 4, 1949.
To continue with Filisuti’s military odyssey:
- 17 Dec 1941: Recalled to military service for training.
- 4 May 1942: Entered into the reserve force of the G.A.F. (Guardia alla Frontiera / Frontier Guard) of the Military District of Sacile.
- 13 Feb 1943: Recalled to military service and then left on unlimited leave.
- 26 Aug 1943: Entered into role 115 of the reserve force of the Military District of Sacile.
- At the bottom of his military record, written faintly in pencil is the single word: "Partigiano." Felice had joined the Partisan Resistance!
In July of 1943, the Italian government entered into negotiations with the allied forces and placed Mussoliini under arrest. An armistice was announced on September 8. In response, the Germans released Mussolini and spirited him north to the town of Salò on Lake Garda, in Brescia, where they established an Italian Socialist government in exile. They also decided that Friuli, Istria, and the Adriatic coast of what would become Yugoslavia was too important an area to be left to this new government and annexed the area directly, forming the Operational Zone of Adriatic Littoral. Zoppola was under German occupation again, as it had been 26 years earlier. Filisuti’s response was to join the Osoppo Brigade.
The Brigate Osoppo-Friuli were autonomous partisan formations founded in the headquarter of the Archbishop Seminary of Udine on Christmas Eve, 1943, by resistance groups already active in Carnia and Friuli before the Armistice. The name Osoppo was a symbolic reference to the city of Osoppo which, during the Italian unification of 1848, resisted the Austrian troops for seven months.
The Osoppo Brigades, of which there were five, were eclectic groups of volunteers with divergent ideologies: both secular and Catholic, socialist and liberal. The Osoppo intended to cooperate independently with the communist Garibaldi Brigades and to contribute to the antifascist fight against the occupying German forces. They were led by two captains of the Royal Italian Army—Candido Grassi and Manlio Cencig—and Don Ascanio De Luca, a chaplain of Alpini in Montenegro and parson of Colugna.
The two groups operating in Carnia, the ancestral home of the Petrises. It is likely Filisuti served there. During the summer and early fall of 1944, with Allied forces nearby, partisans attacked behind German lines. This rebellion led to several provisional partisan governments throughout the mountainous regions, including the Republic of Carnia. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Germany's commander of occupation forces in Italy, estimated German casualties fighting partisans in the summer of 1944 amounted to 20,000: 5,000 killed, between 7,000 and 8,000 missing / "kidnapped" (including deserters), and a similar number seriously wounded. The partisan losses were lower. By the end of the year, German reinforcements and Mussolini's remaining forces crushed the uprising.
Like “old-timers” throughout history, later in life, Filisuti would talk about the War with his grandsons. Fabio Iacobbini recalled,
Every now and then, he would talk about the Second World War—specifically the time he spent as a partisan waiting for American planes to drop supplies (including weapons, I believe) for them in the countryside. It was a very risky situation because the German military command was actually headquartered in their home. He once came close to being deported to a concentration camp in Germany; he was saved while already on the train by a German soldier who had been quartered at the command post in his house—"a good German" who helped him escape.
Unfortunately, we do not have more specifics regarding Filisuti’s time with the Osoppo, but, for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Italy in 2025, Ugo Bari—who would later rise to the rank of General in the Italian Army—was interviewed about 10-year-old Ugo living in Udine and about his 22-year-old brother who was with the Resistance. In WAR: Historical Memoirs. Friuli: The Final Months of the Second World War Through the Eyes of an Eyewitness (InsiderTrend.it, 2025), Ugo had this to say:
My brother qualified as a schoolteacher in 1944. He had not been called up for military service because he had taken a competitive exam to become an officer cadet. According to a family story I heard as a child—though its veracity has never been fully confirmed—all the eighteen-year-olds were rounded up, conscripted into a battalion, and dispatched to conduct a sweep of the area above Cividale. The officers, however, deemed it sheer madness to send inexperienced youths to fight against Tito’s partisans—men who were by then hardened to a life of clandestinity and violence. Consequently, the unit disintegrated, and my brother defected to join the Italian partisans in Upper Friuli—specifically in the rugged valleys of the Arzino and the Prealps—where he would remain until the end of the war. My mother would go in search of him to bring him food at least once a week. He had headed into the mountains wearing nothing but a canvas shirt and trousers; he possessed absolutely nothing else, and winter was fast approaching. Worried for his safety, my mother filled a rucksack with woolen clothing and set out on foot toward the mountains. She even managed to cross the Tagliamento River by walking along two ropes strung across the riverbed, as all the bridges had been destroyed. At a certain point, however, she was forced to stop, having been spotted; she could no longer move about freely. Yet, in the meantime, the situation had shifted: the partisan struggle had gained official recognition, and with it, the attitude of the local population had changed as well.
In that area, a whole series of sabotage operations were carried out against bridges and roads, and he, too, had likely participated in some of these actions—such as the operation to damage the Pinzano bridge. However, they never attacked enemy units; instead, they operated primarily on the defensive, aiming to prevent the Germans from entering the valley. These were essentially harassment actions; they lacked significant resources and tended to remain largely in hiding. They were resupplied by American aircraft, which parachuted supplies down to them. Ammunition was scarce—since the Americans did not fully trust the partisans—so while they sent food, clothing, equipment, and other supplies, actual weaponry and ammunition were in very short supply. To obtain those, the partisans had to rely on conducting raids—perhaps targeting an isolated barracks to seize a few rifles. Consequently, they were very poorly armed. After carrying out an action, they would disperse into the mountains, leveraging their intimate knowledge of the terrain; they would spend the night in one location, then move on to another. The Germans did not bother hunting them down; to do so would have required mounting extensive search-and-sweep operations. They no longer had the interest—they were losing the war.
Yes, it was 1944. The local people clothed them and helped them, offering comfort on many occasions. My brother stayed as a guest in Armida’s home in Cassacco. She was a friend of my mother’s; they had met before the war, when they were hospitalized together. My brother was up in the mountains, but when the roundups began, he had to come down to the valley, where he spent a week staying at her house.
Mora, like all the women of that time, worked as much as, if not more than, a man, because in addition to household chores, she also had to work in the fields and tend to the farm animals. She was a tough woman. With Felice and his two brothers called up for military service during the War, the work in the fields became even harder. There were no tractors yet, and farming was done with horses and oxen. These were certainly not easy times for a woman with three little children to replace the men in the fields without neglecting anything at home.
By late 1944, Northern Italy was becoming a target of nearly constant air raids by the Allies. The presence in the southern part of the municipal territory of two important regional transportation routes—the Venice–Udine railway and the Pontebbana State Road—made the area around Zoppola a target. The Cusano-Pescincanna railway yard and the bridges over the Fiume and Tagliamento Rivers were hit several times over the last six months of the War, but it seems that the town of Zoppola was spared direct attacks.
On April 25, 1945, Italian partisans launched a general insurrection, liberating major industrial centers like Milan, Turin, and Genoa before Allied troops even arrived. This date is celebrated today as Liberation Day (Festa della Liberazione) in Italy. Three days later, Mussolini was captured and executed near Lake Como. (This prompted one of John Quattrin’s favorite Italian jokes: Who put the 21 bullet holes in Mussolini? 5000 Italian sharpshooters.) The unconditional surrender of all German and Axis forces in Italy, which had been negotiated on April 29, officially went into effect on May 2. The War in Italy was over.
From Ugo Bari’s perspective, when asked “When did it all end?”,
Well… I’d say there was a moment of chaos; you couldn’t tell anymore who was for and who was against. We would run into one another, but we no longer exchanged nasty remarks. We might have avoided each other a little, perhaps, but there wasn’t even any lingering animosity. And here, I must say, the social life of the parishes proved helpful, for we kids went back to catechism, to meetings, and to games—in short: the younger ones began to drift back into the fold of their friendships, while the older ones simply grew tired of being at odds with one another.
Recovery in Zoppola after the Second World War was not much different than recovery after the First. Fields needed to be repairs and livestock and tools needed to be replaced in order to return to the level of subsistence farming. What was different was the massive influx of cash to the country from America’s Marshall Plan. The most visible change was the introduction of tractors and motorized machinery (like mechanical reapers and threshers), which allowed farmers to cultivate larger plots of land faster and with fewer workers. Less visible was the There was a rapid adoption of chemical fertilizers and biochemical inputs, which significantly boosted crop yields alongside the new mechanical tools. This went hand-in-hand with improved roads and railways which allowed farmers to shift toward perishable crops like asparagus and fruits, which could now reach distant markets before spoiling.
By the mid-1950s, the Bombens were able to buy a used tractor, thanks to the sale of two horses and some debt. According to Rosella:
In the late 1950s, the tractor took the place of horses, and my father immediately put me behind the wheel of the machine, seeing as there were no other males in the family. My father wasn't always entirely pleased with how I carried out the work, but both he and I did our absolute best to get the job done right. I still remember the driving course we took to obtain our licenses, taught by Mr. Cagliari from Pordenone—a name that remains synonymous with driving schools throughout the entire district to this day. In the evenings, after a day’s work in the fields, we would all gather in the town hall’s council chamber—the only room large enough to accommodate the crowd of 46 men and two young women who attended. Silvia Bomben (from the "Gisti" branch of the family) and I were the only two women representing the female sex—so much so that we effectively became the very first two women in the area to obtain a driver's license, qualifying us to drive not only in the fields but on the public roads as well!
However, operating farm machinery—a role typically considered the exclusive domain of men—was not the only trade that began to spread among us women during those years. In the local dairy, for instance, the craft of the cheesemaker was traditionally entrusted to a man, assisted by an apprentice. In the 1970s, Maria Celotto (known as "la Morsana"), née Petris ("Zors"), arrived on the scene; she had been called in to assist Giorgio Bomben, and—when it came to cleaning and sanitizing the premises—she was second to no man. Quite the contrary! She could spot where dirt might be lurking sooner than anyone else. Those of us who assisted her—taking turns on the specific days assigned to our various families—were always made to scrub the floors using bucket after bucket of boiling water, while she constantly monitored our progress to ensure the work was up to standard. The cheesemakers who had preceded her, however, had neglected this crucial aspect—one that, both then and now, was and remains of absolutely primary importance.
The sudden influx of money also caused a shift from the farms to the factories as a more diversified industrial model grew. This, in turn, coincided with another wave of emigration—not just to the New World, but also out of the farming towns and into the cities. Shortly after the War, Felice’s brothers Allessandro and Silvio migrated to Argentina like many Friulani. When they later moved to San Francisco, the brothers tried to convince Felice and Mora to join them, but Felice and Mora did not want to leave Italy and chose to build their family where their roots were. Their daughter Caterina married Pietro Finos in 1954 and they moved to Toronto. Edda married Carlo Iacobbini and moved to Rome. When Rosella married Gianni Gorgotti, she chose to follow her parents’ path and stay nearby in Fiume Veneto.
The year 1958 was significant for the Bombens. Four events occurred that year. First, in February, Filisuti’s father Antonio died. Filisuti was no longer “the Kid”—now he was the pater familias. Two months later, Edda married and moved to Rome, leaving only one daughter at home. In July, Mora’s sister Emilia returned home after 28 years. She had recently become widowed and needed the support of home and her favorite sibling. (In the 1970, Felice and Mora would come to San Francisco and stay at Emilia’s house on Potrero Hill. They might have even been there for the First Friulano Ball, a celebration organized by Emilia’s son Battista for all the local Friulano descendants.)
Finally, sometime during that year, Mora and Felice became grandparents for the first time with the birth of Caterina’s daughter Fulvia Finos. This was bittersweet. Thought they were proud and excited, Fulvia had been born in Toronto and her grandparents would not meet her for almost a decade.
There would be seven grandchildren in all. Edda’s first child, Massimo, was born in 1959, followed quickly by Fabio in 1961 and Paola in 1963. Fulvia had a sister named Patrizia in 1964. Caterina would have another daughter in 1964, and Rosella would have two sons—Marco in 1969 (the same year in which Felice’s mother passed) and Paolo in 1972.
Edda’s son Fabio had wonderful memories of his grandparents:
I have wonderful memories of Grandpa Felice and Grandma Mora; they were truly special people. To me, Felice was a legend, and my own passion for agriculture stems from the love he had for the land. Grandpa Felice was friends with everyone—a true leader in the village of Zoppola whom everyone knew and respected. He had friends wherever he went; he had a very open nature and, as he used to say, "I am *Felice* [Happy] in name and in deed." He was a hard worker on the land, though at 11:00 a.m. he would go to the village bar to have a glass of wine with friends. Like many people in Friuli, he was a wine enthusiast.
I remember Grandma Mora as a truly kind person—very affectionate, especially toward me. I have very touching memories of her. She was a deeply religious homemaker who prayed often. They remained a loving couple even in their old age—something that seems incredible nowadays. Unlike Grandpa, Grandma Mora rarely left the house; she only went out to go to church. She was skilled at sewing—a talented seamstress—and I still keep a shirt she once mended for me. My mother, Edda, remembers that she made her a dress using fabric from an American soldier's parachute.
Because his grandmother passed before he became an adult, Paolo’s memories of her were more about general presence than one specific memory. He said that she was a strong, tough woman who worked just as hard as a man—and often even harder, and that she had a clear understanding of family dynamics. His grandfather was a wise, authoritative figure both at home and in the town. Farmers from Zoppola would often ask him for advice or opinions on their work. He was a well-respected man.
Fabio and his siblings were born and raised in Rome, but they spent summers working on the farm in Zoppola, like Battista and Danny spent summers on the Antonio Petris farm in Kingsburg. Thinking of htat time, Fabio said, “Yes, I used to help my grandfather with farm work during the summer—wonderful memories. He taught me to drive the tractor and introduced me to what is known as cultura contadina—a real school of life!” When asked to explain about what he learned about cultura contadina, Fabio, who would have a long career in an agricultural research institute, said,
Peasant culture (or agrarian civilization) encompasses the values, traditions, practical knowledge, and social rules linked to life and work in the fields. Until the mid-20th century, it formed the foundation of society, relying on self-sufficiency, respect for natural rhythms, and the oral transmission of knowledge. The fundamental pillars were:
1. Work and the land: A subsistence economy centered on agriculture and livestock farming, where every resource was precious and nothing went to waste.
2. The cyclical nature of life: Life was governed by the changing seasons, the harvest, and natural cycles, rather than by the time kept by modern clocks.
3. A sense of community: Strong solidarity among neighbors and families, based on mutual aid (such as helping one another with arduous tasks like the harvest).
4. Oral tradition and folklore: The heritage of folk songs, proverbs, fairy tales, beliefs, and rituals (including religious ones) that united the generations.
Felice lived though that mid-century transition and taught his grandchildren to value the strengths of both sides of the agricultural divide.
The holidays were always special, since farm life was closely tied to the agricultural and spiritual year cycles. (Felice had been a major contributor of memories to Usànsis Via Pal Àn (Quaderni Zoppolani, 2007), an article by Nerio Petris, which was about the church festivals of old. Food was always part of the memories. Paolo recalled:
Christmas reminds me of nougat and the nativity scene, which, although small, was really cute. Felice, as an old man, built many nativity scenes, making wooden houses with figurines inside. His favorite dishes were brovada with cotechino at Christmas. Frappe at Carnival. Capon broth for Easter. At Mora and Felice's, beans were always present.
Brovada consists of white turnips that are fermented in grape pomace (the skins and seeds left over from winemaking), which gives them a beautiful pink color and a tangy, sauerkraut-like flavor. Cotechino is a rich, heavily spiced, and fatty northern Italian pork sausage similar to mussette. When paired together, the bright, acidic bite of the fermented turnips perfectly cuts through the heavy, rich fat of the slow-simmered sausage.
In Friuli, frappe are traditional, crispy, deep-fried ribbons of dough eaten during Carnevale. While known nationally as chiacchiere, they are most commonly called cròstoli in Friuli. They are flavored with local ingredients (like grappa, anise, or white wine) and dusted with powdered sugar. Three generations later, Zoppolani descendants in California still regularly make cròstoli at Christmas.
Always civic minded, Felice, with Libero Pighin, helped found a local chapter of the 3P Club in Zoppola. Similar to the 4-H Club (Head, Heart, Hands, and Health) in America, the 3P Club was an Italian youth association with the motto “Provare, Produrre, Progredire” (To Try, To Produce, To Progress). The 4-H Club aimed to “engage young people so that they might reach their full potential within the scope of youth development.” In Italy, the 3P objective was “the introduction of agricultural techniques into farm enterprises; collaboration and cooperation within the agricultural sector; experimentation aimed at improving the agricultural economy; and the moral education of its members.”
In an article written by Rosella for Quaderni Zopolani,
In Zoppola, too—albeit on a small scale—the 3P Club found a home, thanks to my father, Felice Bomben, and to Libero Pighin, president of the then-“Associazione Contadini” (Farmers' Association). This organization was later renamed the “Associazione Coltivatori Diretti” (Association of Direct Cultivators), a change that effectively altered the connotation of the word “contadino” (peasant/farmer)—a term too often used pejoratively, as it was inextricably linked to a past of poverty that the town, with the advent of the post-war economic boom, was eager to shake off. Membership in the 3P Club also guaranteed a basic level of healthcare assistance. Members could access these benefits by paying a fee which, once they reached a certain age or had accrued the requisite number of contributory years, entitled them to a small pension. This was a revolutionary development; while other categories of workers already enjoyed the benefits of a social security system, this provision was extended to farmers only much later—making the 3P Club a true pioneer in this regard. Unfortunately, to become a registered member, there were certain minimum requirements—specifically, owning at least one field and one cow. In practice, this continued to exclude a significant number of people who would often knock on our door, pleading with my father or Libero to intercede on their behalf so they might obtain that coveted membership card. It was heartbreaking for my father to have to turn down some of these requests; the people who turned to them were poor, yet they viewed that mirage of a pension as a form of security for their old age—much in the same way people do today. My grandmother, on the other hand—who had managed to secure a membership card by virtue of being a property owner—began receiving a pension upon reaching the qualifying age: a grand total of 10,000 Lire per month!
In 1960 dollars, 10,000 Lire was a little over $16.
In 1964, Felice was elected to the town council. His great-grandfather Angelo (di Antonio) Bomben had served on the first expanded town council in 1834 (when the council spread from four members—who were mostly from the Panciera family—to 22 members more representative of the community) and continued on the Council until 1902. As an aside, Mora’s grandfather Giacomo Antonio had served on the 1864 Council and his brother Giorgio had served from 1866 to 1902.
There would be seven grandchildren in all. Edda’s first child, Massimo, was born in 1959, followed quickly by Fabio in 1961 and Paola in 1963. Fulvia had a sister named Patrizia in 1964. Caterina would have another daughter in 1964, and Rosella would have two sons—Marco in 1969 (the same year in which Felice’s mother passed) and Paolo in 1972.
Edda’s son Fabio had wonderful memories of his grandparents:
I have wonderful memories of Grandpa Felice and Grandma Mora; they were truly special people. To me, Felice was a legend, and my own passion for agriculture stems from the love he had for the land. Grandpa Felice was friends with everyone—a true leader in the village of Zoppola whom everyone knew and respected. He had friends wherever he went; he had a very open nature and, as he used to say, "I am *Felice* [Happy] in name and in deed." He was a hard worker on the land, though at 11:00 a.m. he would go to the village bar to have a glass of wine with friends. Like many people in Friuli, he was a wine enthusiast.
I remember Grandma Mora as a truly kind person—very affectionate, especially toward me. I have very touching memories of her. She was a deeply religious homemaker who prayed often. They remained a loving couple even in their old age—something that seems incredible nowadays. Unlike Grandpa, Grandma Mora rarely left the house; she only went out to go to church. She was skilled at sewing—a talented seamstress—and I still keep a shirt she once mended for me. My mother, Edda, remembers that she made her a dress using fabric from an American soldier's parachute.
Because his grandmother passed before he became an adult, Paolo’s memories of her were more about general presence than one specific memory. He said that she was a strong, tough woman who worked just as hard as a man—and often even harder, and that she had a clear understanding of family dynamics. His grandfather was a wise, authoritative figure both at home and in the town. Farmers from Zoppola would often ask him for advice or opinions on their work. He was a well-respected man.
Fabio and his siblings were born and raised in Rome, but they spent summers working on the farm in Zoppola, like Battista and Danny spent summers on the Antonio Petris farm in Kingsburg. Thinking of htat time, Fabio said, “Yes, I used to help my grandfather with farm work during the summer—wonderful memories. He taught me to drive the tractor and introduced me to what is known as cultura contadina—a real school of life!” When asked to explain about what he learned about cultura contadina, Fabio, who would have a long career in an agricultural research institute, said,
Peasant culture (or agrarian civilization) encompasses the values, traditions, practical knowledge, and social rules linked to life and work in the fields. Until the mid-20th century, it formed the foundation of society, relying on self-sufficiency, respect for natural rhythms, and the oral transmission of knowledge. The fundamental pillars were:
1. Work and the land: A subsistence economy centered on agriculture and livestock farming, where every resource was precious and nothing went to waste.
2. The cyclical nature of life: Life was governed by the changing seasons, the harvest, and natural cycles, rather than by the time kept by modern clocks.
3. A sense of community: Strong solidarity among neighbors and families, based on mutual aid (such as helping one another with arduous tasks like the harvest).
4. Oral tradition and folklore: The heritage of folk songs, proverbs, fairy tales, beliefs, and rituals (including religious ones) that united the generations.
Felice lived though that mid-century transition and taught his grandchildren to value the strengths of both sides of the agricultural divide.
The holidays were always special, since farm life was closely tied to the agricultural and spiritual year cycles. (Felice had been a major contributor of memories to Usànsis Via Pal Àn (Quaderni Zoppolani, 2007), an article by Nerio Petris, which was about the church festivals of old. Food was always part of the memories. Paolo recalled:
Christmas reminds me of nougat and the nativity scene, which, although small, was really cute. Felice, as an old man, built many nativity scenes, making wooden houses with figurines inside. His favorite dishes were brovada with cotechino at Christmas. Frappe at Carnival. Capon broth for Easter. At Mora and Felice's, beans were always present.
Brovada consists of white turnips that are fermented in grape pomace (the skins and seeds left over from winemaking), which gives them a beautiful pink color and a tangy, sauerkraut-like flavor. Cotechino is a rich, heavily spiced, and fatty northern Italian pork sausage similar to mussette. When paired together, the bright, acidic bite of the fermented turnips perfectly cuts through the heavy, rich fat of the slow-simmered sausage.
In Friuli, frappe are traditional, crispy, deep-fried ribbons of dough eaten during Carnevale. While known nationally as chiacchiere, they are most commonly called cròstoli in Friuli. They are flavored with local ingredients (like grappa, anise, or white wine) and dusted with powdered sugar. Three generations later, Zoppolani descendants in California still regularly make cròstoli at Christmas.
Always civic minded, Felice, with Libero Pighin, helped found a local chapter of the 3P Club in Zoppola. Similar to the 4-H Club (Head, Heart, Hands, and Health) in America, the 3P Club was an Italian youth association with the motto “Provare, Produrre, Progredire” (To Try, To Produce, To Progress). The 4-H Club aimed to “engage young people so that they might reach their full potential within the scope of youth development.” In Italy, the 3P objective was “the introduction of agricultural techniques into farm enterprises; collaboration and cooperation within the agricultural sector; experimentation aimed at improving the agricultural economy; and the moral education of its members.”
In an article written by Rosella for Quaderni Zopolani,
In Zoppola, too—albeit on a small scale—the 3P Club found a home, thanks to my father, Felice Bomben, and to Libero Pighin, president of the then-“Associazione Contadini” (Farmers' Association). This organization was later renamed the “Associazione Coltivatori Diretti” (Association of Direct Cultivators), a change that effectively altered the connotation of the word “contadino” (peasant/farmer)—a term too often used pejoratively, as it was inextricably linked to a past of poverty that the town, with the advent of the post-war economic boom, was eager to shake off. Membership in the 3P Club also guaranteed a basic level of healthcare assistance. Members could access these benefits by paying a fee which, once they reached a certain age or had accrued the requisite number of contributory years, entitled them to a small pension. This was a revolutionary development; while other categories of workers already enjoyed the benefits of a social security system, this provision was extended to farmers only much later—making the 3P Club a true pioneer in this regard. Unfortunately, to become a registered member, there were certain minimum requirements—specifically, owning at least one field and one cow. In practice, this continued to exclude a significant number of people who would often knock on our door, pleading with my father or Libero to intercede on their behalf so they might obtain that coveted membership card. It was heartbreaking for my father to have to turn down some of these requests; the people who turned to them were poor, yet they viewed that mirage of a pension as a form of security for their old age—much in the same way people do today. My grandmother, on the other hand—who had managed to secure a membership card by virtue of being a property owner—began receiving a pension upon reaching the qualifying age: a grand total of 10,000 Lire per month!
In 1960 dollars, 10,000 Lire was a little over $16.
In 1964, Felice was elected to the town council. His great-grandfather Angelo (di Antonio) Bomben had served on the first expanded town council in 1834 (when the council spread from four members—who were mostly from the Panciera family—to 22 members more representative of the community) and continued on the Council until 1902. As an aside, Mora’s grandfather Giacomo Antonio had served on the 1864 Council and his brother Giorgio had served from 1866 to 1902.
Felice served two full terms, being reelected in 1970 and serving as Deputy Mayor during his first term. On June 2, 1976, Felice received the honor of Cavaliere del Lavoro (Knight of Labor) in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Italy's principal civilian honor. This honor is generally award for distinguished service and notable contributions to the nation in fields such as public service, industry, labor, culture, or community service. The award is signed by both Giovanni Leone, President of the Italian Republic at the time, and Aldo Moro, the Prime Minister.
In September of 1968, Rosella married Gianni Gorgatti. According to her son Paolo,
Grandpa cried that day because his last daughter was leaving home... though she actually looked after him for the rest of his life, right up to his final day, visiting him several times a week—and, after Grandma died, every day. She would cook his dinner, while for lunch Grandpa would fend for himself with some pasta or an omelet. Simple food, but always tasty.
In September of 1968, Rosella married Gianni Gorgatti. According to her son Paolo,
Grandpa cried that day because his last daughter was leaving home... though she actually looked after him for the rest of his life, right up to his final day, visiting him several times a week—and, after Grandma died, every day. She would cook his dinner, while for lunch Grandpa would fend for himself with some pasta or an omelet. Simple food, but always tasty.
In 1976, an earthquake devastated half of Friuli. Known in Italy as Terremoto del Friuli (Friulian earthquake), the shock of magnitude 6.5 struck on May 6, 1976, centered near the town of Gemona del Friuli, a small town about 32 miles northeast of Zoppola. 990 people were killed, up to 3,000 were injured, and more than 157,000 were left homeless. Aftershocks continued through the summer and did not end until September.
Mora had cousins who lived in San Tommaso di Majano, and their house was destroyed. Felice was part of the rescue and recovery effort, bringing them food, water, and basic relief, because of the many problems with transportation and services. The Bomben house in Zoppola was not damaged—though, Castle Zoppola lost its iconic tower—but Felice and Mora slept on the wagon outside for a few days, because of the great fear of the aftershocks. There were at least four major aftershocks in September alone: 5.5 and 5.4 on September 11, and 6.0 and 5.9 on September 15. By the time Battista and his family visited, Zoppola had fully recovered, and there were few signs of the destruction, but parts of Trieste and elsewhere were still in rubble.
Mora had cousins who lived in San Tommaso di Majano, and their house was destroyed. Felice was part of the rescue and recovery effort, bringing them food, water, and basic relief, because of the many problems with transportation and services. The Bomben house in Zoppola was not damaged—though, Castle Zoppola lost its iconic tower—but Felice and Mora slept on the wagon outside for a few days, because of the great fear of the aftershocks. There were at least four major aftershocks in September alone: 5.5 and 5.4 on September 11, and 6.0 and 5.9 on September 15. By the time Battista and his family visited, Zoppola had fully recovered, and there were few signs of the destruction, but parts of Trieste and elsewhere were still in rubble.
In 1978, Battista turned 50 and his wife decided the family should travel back to his home town, as well as to Florence, Rome and Ireland. Initially, they thought Emilia would go with them, but she had a stroke and, despite extended attempts at recovery, she would pass away in March. After flying into Milan and visiting Venice with Dolores’ cousin and her husband, Felice met them at the Pordenone train station and brought them to town. Felice and Mora hosted Battista, Dolores, Kevin, and Laura for five days, during which Battista was treated like returning royalty. They feasted with all the Quattrin and Petris families still in Zoppola and were regaled with stories of the old days. Battista did not translate all the stories, and, even if he had, it would have been wasted on Kevin, who was 18 and not recognize what he was missing. The high point for him was drinking grappa with his father and Felice at 8:00 in the morning before they left to catch the train to Florence.
The Petris line seems to have been plagued by heart issues. Not only had Mora’s siblings Emilia, Lolli (Giorgio), and Jack (Giacomo) died of heart attacks and stroke, their Zio Tony Petris had died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Kingsburg at the age of 54. Following cardiovascular complications, Mora suffered her first a heart attack in 1984, but she recovered. Unfortunately, she died suddenly two years later while in the kitchen in the presence of Felice and his cousin Oreste Bomben. She was 75 years old—one year older than Emilia had been.
After his wife's death, Felice realized that having Rosella as his youngest child was a blessing, because a son would not have taken care of him as Rosella and her children had. As Paolo said,
Our mother Rosella was also truly happy to be able to take care of her parents, and they were both very grateful to her. For her, taking care of her loved ones was a moral and emotional duty above all else.
Felice’s suffered another blow in 1988 with the death of his first daughter Caterina. But he soldiered on.
Felice survived without his beloved Mora for 16 more years. In a 1997 article about Primo Carnera, the 1933 heavyweight boxing champion from Sequals, in the newspaper Friuli nel Mondo (April 1997), Felice was described thus:
To his consistently jovial and cheerful nature, he adds a blend of candor, warmth, and a big heart—qualities that, despite his advanced age, make him a leading figure and a vital point of reference for both relatives and friends. Moreover, he has accumulated a wealth of folk wisdom which, combined with his personal attributes, makes him one of the most beloved individuals in the village.
Tall, with snow-white hair always kept closely cropped, and a powerful physique—standing nearly two meters tall with shoulders of remarkable breadth—he was one of the few men who, given his own stature, could speak to Primo Carnera while looking him straight in the eye. It is precisely these moments spent in the company of the great boxer from Sequals that Bomben recalls with deep emotion.
As the leader of the Bomben Clan, Felice was the first to be approached by Maria Bomben about throwing a family reunion in 1985. As Maria wrote in The Bomben Family of Zoppola (Quaderni Zoppolani, 2025:
April 13, 1985, marks an historic date for the large Bomben family of Zoppola. Indeed, that was the day of the first gathering of all the families in the village who bear the surname Bomben. The idea came to me following the reunion of all the Petris—a family who had gone so far as to organize a trip all the way to Sauris, their village of origin. So, I thought: “Why not bring together all the Bombens for a day? After all, there are truly so many of them in Zoppola!” First, I approached Felice Bomben—known as “il Felisuti”—who, by virtue of his physical stature and his age, was the family patriarch. He gave his assent with these words: "Ah, good Lord, let's do it right away!"
The reunion has been an event every five-years since then, with one respite for 2020 and Covid.
Among Paolo’s favorite memories are the times he spent as an adult with his grandfather.
Once my brother Marco and I came of age, we spent a lot of time with our grandfather, so much so that we often went on trips to the mountains above Pordenone (Val d'Arzino and Val Tramontina), which he loved so much. When he could no longer drive, we would pick him up and take him to our house for Sunday lunch. But first, we would take him to the tavern for one or more aperitifs. For me and my brother, it was a privilege to have been able to enjoy our grandfather's company as adults. His presence was a guide for all of us and also for many people in the village. He was an authoritative figure, and it was great to have discussions with him. The best part was sitting with him on spring evenings under the porch, drinking a glass of wine and talking politics. Nonno was a pillar of the family and the village, too.
Felice passed away on October 30, 2002. He was 92 years old.
Mora and Felice were a well-matched couple. They were strong, loving, wise, and generous members of their community. Born at a time and place where life was difficult and often harsh, they lived through two World Wars, a major depression, and an epic sea change that was both societal and agricultural. They leaned into each other’s strengths in order to survive and thrive for over 70 years together. Their efforts built better lives for generations to come, and the example of their lives gave hope to all who passed under their shadow. May the memories we have of these magnificent people continue for many years to come.
The Petris line seems to have been plagued by heart issues. Not only had Mora’s siblings Emilia, Lolli (Giorgio), and Jack (Giacomo) died of heart attacks and stroke, their Zio Tony Petris had died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Kingsburg at the age of 54. Following cardiovascular complications, Mora suffered her first a heart attack in 1984, but she recovered. Unfortunately, she died suddenly two years later while in the kitchen in the presence of Felice and his cousin Oreste Bomben. She was 75 years old—one year older than Emilia had been.
After his wife's death, Felice realized that having Rosella as his youngest child was a blessing, because a son would not have taken care of him as Rosella and her children had. As Paolo said,
Our mother Rosella was also truly happy to be able to take care of her parents, and they were both very grateful to her. For her, taking care of her loved ones was a moral and emotional duty above all else.
Felice’s suffered another blow in 1988 with the death of his first daughter Caterina. But he soldiered on.
Felice survived without his beloved Mora for 16 more years. In a 1997 article about Primo Carnera, the 1933 heavyweight boxing champion from Sequals, in the newspaper Friuli nel Mondo (April 1997), Felice was described thus:
To his consistently jovial and cheerful nature, he adds a blend of candor, warmth, and a big heart—qualities that, despite his advanced age, make him a leading figure and a vital point of reference for both relatives and friends. Moreover, he has accumulated a wealth of folk wisdom which, combined with his personal attributes, makes him one of the most beloved individuals in the village.
Tall, with snow-white hair always kept closely cropped, and a powerful physique—standing nearly two meters tall with shoulders of remarkable breadth—he was one of the few men who, given his own stature, could speak to Primo Carnera while looking him straight in the eye. It is precisely these moments spent in the company of the great boxer from Sequals that Bomben recalls with deep emotion.
As the leader of the Bomben Clan, Felice was the first to be approached by Maria Bomben about throwing a family reunion in 1985. As Maria wrote in The Bomben Family of Zoppola (Quaderni Zoppolani, 2025:
April 13, 1985, marks an historic date for the large Bomben family of Zoppola. Indeed, that was the day of the first gathering of all the families in the village who bear the surname Bomben. The idea came to me following the reunion of all the Petris—a family who had gone so far as to organize a trip all the way to Sauris, their village of origin. So, I thought: “Why not bring together all the Bombens for a day? After all, there are truly so many of them in Zoppola!” First, I approached Felice Bomben—known as “il Felisuti”—who, by virtue of his physical stature and his age, was the family patriarch. He gave his assent with these words: "Ah, good Lord, let's do it right away!"
The reunion has been an event every five-years since then, with one respite for 2020 and Covid.
Among Paolo’s favorite memories are the times he spent as an adult with his grandfather.
Once my brother Marco and I came of age, we spent a lot of time with our grandfather, so much so that we often went on trips to the mountains above Pordenone (Val d'Arzino and Val Tramontina), which he loved so much. When he could no longer drive, we would pick him up and take him to our house for Sunday lunch. But first, we would take him to the tavern for one or more aperitifs. For me and my brother, it was a privilege to have been able to enjoy our grandfather's company as adults. His presence was a guide for all of us and also for many people in the village. He was an authoritative figure, and it was great to have discussions with him. The best part was sitting with him on spring evenings under the porch, drinking a glass of wine and talking politics. Nonno was a pillar of the family and the village, too.
Felice passed away on October 30, 2002. He was 92 years old.
Mora and Felice were a well-matched couple. They were strong, loving, wise, and generous members of their community. Born at a time and place where life was difficult and often harsh, they lived through two World Wars, a major depression, and an epic sea change that was both societal and agricultural. They leaned into each other’s strengths in order to survive and thrive for over 70 years together. Their efforts built better lives for generations to come, and the example of their lives gave hope to all who passed under their shadow. May the memories we have of these magnificent people continue for many years to come.
