Centenarians recall growing up in two countries

Intermountain Catholic

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Dolores Marinoni Marchino said the car is the greatest invention in the 100 years she has been alive because automobiles don't have to be pulled by horses. IC photos/Christine Young

PRICE — Ancelia Dolores Marinoni Marchino celebrated her 100th birthday last Sept. 17, while her brother, Giovanni (Johnny) Alfredo Marinoni, turned 99 on Dec. 3. They reminisced about growing up in Italy, coming to America, experiencing two world wars, the Great Depression, voting in every presidential election since 1932 and how they reached their milestones.

The Notre Dame de Lourdes parishioners were raised in Rovetta, Italy in the northern province of Bergamo, by their grandmother. In Italy, Marchino remembers the terrace her grandfather built to grow grapes, and her grandmother and mother making a small batch of wine that turned to vinegar.

"Vinegar was in high demand in the Italian military as an ingredient in ammunition at the time," Marchino said.

World War I began when Marchino was 3 and Marinoni was 2. One day the soldiers came bursting in their home with weapons, accusing them of bootlegging the vinegar. Marchino hid behind her mother as her grandmother showed the soldiers the vat where they had stomped the grapes with their feet. The soldiers laughed and told them they were fine as long as they didn’t sell it, Marchino said.

What Marinoni remembers about Italy is his grandmother and mother telling him not to play near the river. When he returned to Italy later, he was surprised the river was only a foot wide, he said.

They immigrated to America in 1919 with their mother and younger brother, settling in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, where their father was working as a mason.

"They had to carry me on that big house (ship) on the ocean," Marchino said. "I thought it would sink. We sailed forever and had many adventures, but we finally made it to New York, Chicago and then Idaho with the help of an honest sailor. We lived in Lava for three months, when my father was swindled by a contractor, so we moved to a farm in Arimo. We couldn’t go to school until we learned enough English to satisfy the teachers."

"We were called slang Italians names," said Marinoni, who has never forgotten the ill effects of the name calling. "But my mother instilled in us a strong Catholic faith and took us to church whenever she could. We received our sacraments in Italy from a cardinal. I learned then, without God you have nothing."

When the Depression hit, the family lost the farm. In 1930 they moved to Carbon County to find work in the coal mines.

Marchino met Mario Marchino in 1931. They married two years later and eventually had three children. She helped her husband operate a service station in Carbonville from 1939 to 1952 and later the Crest Motel in Price until their retirement in 1974. After retirement, they toured the United States and Canada. Mario died in 1996.

Marchino is an avid Jazz fan and says sports have always shaped her life. She recalled listening to the radio in 1925 on the farm in Arimo one day while she was supposed to be helping in the fields. She told her father she was sick so she could listen to the World Series. She loved the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Marinoni’s life was shaped by welding. He is a self-taught electrical engineer. He bought a book for $1 and sat up nights studying. His nephew, John Marchino, said his uncle is a "mathematical genius."

Marinoni furthered his education in Bremerton, Wash., in 1942, and worked as a welder and a safety engineer for the Navy. He returned to Utah in the later 1940s to work in a family-owned coal mine in Nine Mile Canyon.

"My father donated coal to Notre Dame Church and School, the rectory and convent and any church that needed coal," Marinoni said. "I also welded many items for the church, including a large Advent wreath."

Marinoni married Annie Caserio in 1938 and had two daughters. His wife died in 2003. He now has four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

The Marinoni family was inducted into the Southeastern Utah Energy Producers Association Hall of Fame in 2005 for their legacy of three decades of successful ownership and operation of the Soldier Canyon Mine.