Michelle McCleary

May 10, 2001

Narrative

Luisa Solomito, was born in Naples Italy on May 5, 1927. Now 74 years old, she remembers with vivid detail, the story she has told so many times over the years, of how she and her husband met and got married. It was during WWII that she met her American husband Carmen, in Naples.

While stationed there, he and his friends helped out Luisa and her starving family. With a father lost to the war and seven hungry mouths to feed, Luisa fell in love because Carmen rescued not only her, but the rest of her family. Luisa Solomito’s experience as a young, 19-year-old war bride when she came to America, are candid as well, and include how she overcame both her cooking inability and the language barrier between her and her American neighbors.

Luisa also talks about how younger generations will never understand what it was like to grow up during the war. She says something has been lost on newer generations that hers had – love and compassion.

Luisa also discusses her initial fear over marrying an American soldier. Although she didn’t know what she wanted to do in her life, she says had her father not been killed in the war, she would never have married an American soldier because she had not experienced life yet. Her husband, the man with whom she had three children, and clearly fell in love with, passed away seven years ago, but she still talks about him as if he were alive.