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A lovely story
Jun. 29th, 2006 08:29 pmHundreds of former and current students spent six months to organize a huge reunion in Rome to celebrate the retirement of their old elementary school teacher, Giovanna Bittoni, who reached the legal retirement age after forty years of unbroken service in the same school, Villa Paganini. Several made time to come from abroad, as far as China, and one person drove down all the way from Switzerland - a mere ten hours' drive.
It took long hard work, mostly on the phone and internet - tracking down old classmates, passing the word and hoping it would be passed in turn, even trying a name on e-mail companies such as yahoo and hotmail in the hope that the person concerned had an account there. Eventually, pretty much everyone was tracked down. A surprise party was organized. A few who really were unable to come, sent presents. There were piles of personal presents and a common gift from the whole group - a luxury trip abroad. It was their way of showing that they understood how much of her life she had given: "Giovanna has had a tough life, but she never asked for a moment's rest," said one of the organizers.
The lady, not being altogether a fool, had felt that something was being organized, but she was stunned at the scale of the event: "I could never have imagined such a surprise," she said. She recovered and more or less reviewed everyone present, remembering almost everyone back to the first year she had ever taught: "You," she would say to a successful-looking middle-aged man, "you would do nothing but play football. Italian and you were two completely alien things." But when she was given the presents, she was near to tears: "All this enthusiasm and generosity from my kids, and to think that they still remember, makes me feel happy, feel rich inside".
Ms.Bittoni on realizing the scale of her retirement party
Some of the ex-students added that more good had come out of it: a lot of friendships have been born and reborn, and "now that we found each other again, we're not going to forget each other so easily again." "We send dozens of e-mails a day, chat away, swap views and advice, or simply remember the old days".
It took long hard work, mostly on the phone and internet - tracking down old classmates, passing the word and hoping it would be passed in turn, even trying a name on e-mail companies such as yahoo and hotmail in the hope that the person concerned had an account there. Eventually, pretty much everyone was tracked down. A surprise party was organized. A few who really were unable to come, sent presents. There were piles of personal presents and a common gift from the whole group - a luxury trip abroad. It was their way of showing that they understood how much of her life she had given: "Giovanna has had a tough life, but she never asked for a moment's rest," said one of the organizers.
The lady, not being altogether a fool, had felt that something was being organized, but she was stunned at the scale of the event: "I could never have imagined such a surprise," she said. She recovered and more or less reviewed everyone present, remembering almost everyone back to the first year she had ever taught: "You," she would say to a successful-looking middle-aged man, "you would do nothing but play football. Italian and you were two completely alien things." But when she was given the presents, she was near to tears: "All this enthusiasm and generosity from my kids, and to think that they still remember, makes me feel happy, feel rich inside".
Ms.Bittoni on realizing the scale of her retirement partySome of the ex-students added that more good had come out of it: a lot of friendships have been born and reborn, and "now that we found each other again, we're not going to forget each other so easily again." "We send dozens of e-mails a day, chat away, swap views and advice, or simply remember the old days".
