I always heard of the ubiquitous Signora Lorenzo as a long-term Italian resident in the Philippines. She had been my Lola’s Italian language teacher back in 1963, after my parents married and established their conjugal abode in Rome. But I had never had the chance of meeting her in person until the early 1990s, when I attended a “Notte Italiana” at the Polo Club for the first time.
Then in 1999, closing the door on the fitness industry after more than six years selling gym memberships, I decided to look elsewhere. Having served as an interpreter for the Department of Foreign Affairs and a non-governmental organization in the previous year, it was only natural for me to look into my Italian heritage, and that decision took me to the doorstep of Signora Lorenzo’s office, the Philippine Italian Association, where I applied as an Italian language teacher.
I finally had the privilege of working alongside this remarkable woman, Lina Paolini Lorenzo, a Roman by birth, who made fostering and promoting cultural ties between Italy and the Philippines her lifelong mission.
She was a wonder to behold, so dedicated to the association that she made sure she would not miss work well into her 80s, equipped with a sharp mind trained by her daily activities. I do believe now that the secret weapon against Alzheimer’s is accounting and not Mah-jong, as others would say.
I fondly remember our chats reminiscing about Rome, our hometown: curiously, having experienced living there in different eras gave us varied recollections. When I told her my family address, she informed me that it used to be a lush countryside where her father used to bring his family for excursions near the parish of “S. Francesco fuori le mura”—St. Francis outside the walls of Rome, where I took my First Holy Communion.
Her family used to live in the vicinity of piazza Campo de’ Fiori, downtown Rome where her father was an entrepreneur, owner of a coffee-roasting facility and shop, a thriving mom and pop business then.
Born in 1914, she experienced the early years of the urban renewal after Rome was designated as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, while the consolidation by the combined effort of Garibaldi and the Savoy King, Victor Emmanuel II, was still in progress.
New districts were built to accommodate the incoming class of government officers and employees, as the newly minted capital was bustling with the excitement for new things. Her childhood recollections were filled with details of a bygone genteel era, when horse-drawn carriages were the main mode of transportation.
She then met the love of her life as a young girl in her teens taking up piano at the conservatory, Diosdado Magno Lorenzo, a dashing Filipino painter who was studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome who happened to live in the same apartment complex.
A man from faraway islands had swept her off her feet, and to her family’s apprehension and dismay, would eventually take her back to his country of origin.
Signora Lorenzo would recount how, after tying the knot at San Marcello al Corso in Rome on February 19, 1933, she left Italy the following year together with her husband and firstborn on a steamer bound for the East, and would chuckle relating how she was growing more fearful every time the ship would make a stopover.
In Ceylon, for instance, she saw people with red mouths spitting on the ground and feared for her baby’s health, thinking they had tuberculosis, only to be reassured by her husband that the hue was caused by their habit of constantly chewing betel nuts.
She was pleasantly surprised when she arrived in Manila and a committee of well-wishers welcomed the famed painter and his lovely Italian wife. Manila in the 1930s was also experiencing urban development under the auspices of the Commonwealth, which was halted during the Japanese occupation. Fortunately, they spent those bleak years in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, D.M. Lorenzo’s hometown, where they stayed until liberation.
She told me about meeting the Italian Royal Consul assigned to the Manila, Count Di San Marzano who establish the first Italian sociocultural center in Manila, and we laughed together when she recalled how the consul would go down in his pajamas at times, to quiet down his noisy compatriots having fun in the wee hours of the morning.
I never knew how much alike we turned out to be. For one thing we followed our hearts when we made Manila our permanent home. We both suffered a great loss when each of us lost a son to a dreadful kidney condition, and that made us kindred spirits.
I miss her to this day as I considered her kin in my heart and I hold her as a model of untiring service, which did not go unnoticed by her native country. She was bestowed the title of Grand Officer of the Star of Italian Solidarity, the highest level of knighthood of the Republic bestowed to expatriates and foreign nationals engaged in promoting the country’s prestige abroad, truly a model to emulate.