In 1979, Joanne Milner was a student at the University of Utah, and she
also worked at a bookstore. She remembers that Alex Haley came to town
that winter, to promote his newly released "Roots." She recalls that
her job was to stand next to him during his bookstore appearance.While he greeted his readers, Milner took one book after another off
the stack and opened them and handed them to him to be signed. When all
the customers were gone, the author turned to Milner and asked her
about herself.
What were her roots? he wondered. On her mother's side, she said, she
is Italian. "And have you written your family's story?" Haley asked.
Well, she had to admit, she hadn't.
Haley inspired Milner to take a tape recorder on one of her frequent
visits to her 75-year-old grandmother. That conversation led her to
interview other relatives and started her on a quest, the results of
which can be seen this coming week in a documentary on KUED.
The title of the film is "Our Story: Italian-Americans in Utah." As
Milner uncovered her own family's story, her appreciation for all
Italian-Americans deepened. Her appreciation deepened for all
immigrants, actually. "It doesn't take many generations for people to
forget the sacrifices of their grandparents," she says.
So "Our Story," is not the story of her family, or of any one family.
It takes the broadest possible look at the Italians in Utah.
Milner begins with Brigham Young University professor James Toronto
talking about his ancestor, Giuseppe. Giuseppe Toronto was a seaman who
was a convert to the LDS Church. He came to Nauvoo, Ill., just after
the death of Joseph Smith.
Milner recounts the stories of the miners and railroad men, farmers and
stone masons. She delves into Italian cooking and music, faith and
family. Anyone who grew up in Utah will recognize at least some of the
names in her documentary, such as Caputo, Siciliano, DePaulis,
Pignanelli, Colosimo, Ravarino, Mariani and Motta.
Philip Notarianni, director of the division of state history, is
interviewed prominently in the film. In fact, Milner structured her
documentary around the outline he uses to teach his Italian-in-Utah
history classes at the University of Utah.
There is far too much Italian-Utah history to be contained in a
one-hour show, Notarianni says. He has spent his life working with
Italian history, writing articles and chapters for books. He believes a
film such as this is long overdue. The Italian-Americans in Utah have
not been as well recognized as the Greek-Americans in Utah, or the
Jewish Utahns, he says.
But the Italians have not been as cohesive as some of the other
communities, Notarianni concedes. There were, and are, Mormon
Italian-Americans as well as Catholic Italian-Americans in this state.
When we think of the history of the Catholic Church in Utah, we tend to
think of the Irish immigrants, he notes.
So to make a documentary about Italians in Utah takes special powers of
organization, Notarianni says. "What Joanne did was bring all of the
elements of the community together."
If you ask Milner if there were any difficulties, she'll smile. She
says that not only do the LDS Italians and the Catholic Italians move
in separate spheres, the Northern Italians and the Southern Italians
each tend to think their stories are the best. But somehow, all of them
were able to catch the vision of what she was trying to do.
And really, she says, her film is nothing special. "It is a home movie.
Just simple vignettes." She hopes Utahns will look at it and say, "I
could do better than that," and then go out and make a film about their
own ancestors.
She hopes her film will stimulate thoughts and memories and send Utahns
down to the basement or out to the garage to look through old boxes for
their own family records. "We get too caught up in consumerism," Milner
says. The true treasures in all our lives are the photos, the
passports, the ship manifests that show when our ancestors came through
Ellis Island.
When she began researching her family's history, Milner knew only that
her great-great-grandparents were very poor. She did not even know
their names, she says. She was touched to learn that she had actually
been born on the same day as her great-great-grandmother, Rosa Carlino.
Milner learned that her great-great-grandfather, Paolo Carlino, and his
son-in-law, her great-grandfather, Pasquale Mariani, had come to the
United States in 1902 and 1894, respectively. Rosa Carlino and her
daughter, Mariannina Mariani, joined their husbands in Utah in 1906.
They all lived in a little home where the Salt Palace stands today.
Mariannina and Pasquale had eight children living when she died of
complications of childbirth at the age of 39. He died four years later
of throat cancer.
The orphaned children were raised by the oldest daughter, and the
children remained devoted to each other all their lives, Milner says.
In their old age, her great-aunts and uncles all lived next door to
each other in a mobile home park.
Meanwhile Paolo and Rosa Carlino survived their daughter and
son-in-law, and they did what they could to help the family. Milner
says the records show that Paolo was a laborer on the railroad until he
was 80 years old.
As Milner went about visiting the graves of her ancestors in the Mount
Calvary Cemetery, she discovered that Paolo and Rosa Carlino did not
have a marker on their burial site. She eventually had a marker placed
there. Still she remembers well the day the sexton showed her the
unmarked plot where they lay.
Milner says she stood at their graves and looked out over the valley
and thought about the opportunities she had had. She thought about how
she was able to go to college, able to serve on the Salt Lake City
Council and even in the Utah State Legislature.
She says she grew up knowing she was Italian, knowing that her family's
food and music was different from that of the other kids in her
classes. But it took becoming an adult to realize the full extent of
her family's story. It took going back to Italy with her parents and
siblings, and meeting their cousins and seeing the beauty of the land.
It took standing at the unmarked graves, she says, to be fully grateful
for the struggles and sacrifices her ancestors had made.
If you watch
What: "Our Story: Italian-Americans in Utah," a documentary
When: Monday, 9 p.m., and Sunday, June 22, 3 p.m.
Where: KUED/Ch. 7