Interviewed by: 
 Betty Dotson Lewis               

Saturday, December 2, 2001

   I got up at 5 am anxious to get to War  and meet Giulia, the 98 year old immigrant. 
 I headed south on the WV Turnpike toward Tazewell, Va; then to Bishop; then to War. 

 According to Josephine, Giulia's daughter, I should go past Big Creek High School, Emanuel Baptist Church (the big church with a flag on front)  and then stop at  the large stone house.  I found it with no trouble; was met at the door by Josephine,  who took me to the kitchen to meet Giulia.   I was in for the treat of a lifetime:  recording the oral history of  Giulia Ferrante Zando.

Because of my arrival time, I was at the house with Mary, Giulia's other daughter while Giulia went to the beauty parlor with Josephine for her weekly hair appointment and before our photo. 

 Mary brought out a family album and while we perused the album, she revisited memories of her immigrant family as she remembered them and as well as those told her by her mother and father. 

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Mary 

My brother Raymond was an interpreter during WWII.  He served under Gen. Patton during WWII.

My father would build on the house after working all day. The house had a wine cellar.  He, my father, would cut out the stone at night and mark each one.

I live in the house next door now, the 1st one my father built.  See the stone fence in front of the house, my father built it. 

All 4 children  were born in the house next door. The house I live in now. He built a bigger house  for the family when the family grew too large for the first house. 

My father boarded at my grandmother’s house and mother had to get out of school and take their lunch to the boarders' workplace each day.

 My father was good looking and he would walk so straight and tip his hat to the women.  He was a gentleman. 

My mother wants to go back to Italy but she hasn’t been back at all. 

My father was from Falcade, Italy and he had 3 brothers and 1 sister.  His father built a big stone house with 4 floors: one floor for each boy and a little house next to it for the daughter.  During the War one of the armies took it over and used it.  Later it became an orphanage.

All of my father's brothers came to America.  One went back, but he was sick and had children over there.

The grandmother kept them, my mother and her bother and sister, when the father and mother came to America.  All those years they lived with my grandmother  and when they left she was heartbroken and didn't live too long. 

  My mother must have been the active one because my grandmother had to always go with her to make sure she got to church and things like that and on the boat she was the only one who didn’t get sea sick. 

  My mother has always been very active in the church, and other organizations. 

They used to say my father always went over the mountains to work with his father (when he was a young man in Austria) like in the Sound of Music.

My mother’s family had vineyards over in Italy. 

They had left paradise for Hell:  Coke ovens blazing and snow on the ground.  They spoke no English and had never seen snow before, coal mines nor coke ovens.  They came for jobs. The Land of Opportunity. 

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