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- Herausgeber: Youcanprint
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
A true Story of a man who, fatherless and poor faces his life’s challenge, becoming a successful man, a piece of history, from the Avalanche operation with the Americans and Allies’ landing for liberating Italy, to the After War years, Italy’s reconstruction,the spirit of the After War men nowadays.Through the story of Orazio Boccia who in the After War period, in 2008 was knighted for services to industry being awarded the honorary title of Cavaliere del Lavoro, we can see pieces of the history of a time period and of the changes of a country, Italy. A charming book, to read in one breath, the reading of pages telling a real story is exciting, a leap into memory, past, present and future. A human existence in which destiny and hardships are accepted with spirit of sacrifice and hard work, courage, entrepreneurial intuition, passion and hope for the future. A still up-to-date message for the time we are living, which helps us to rediscover the future from our past. Bruno Bisogni and Roberto Race, the authors, write: “A deep, intense, story of passion, suffering and sense of responsibility, told through the eyes and voice of Orazio Boccia born in 1932. Orphan of father, when he was only 11 years old and an only son within a family with 5 children, he finds himself hanging out like a street-urchin with the Americans and the other allied military men. Shut in his town’s orphanage, called the “Enclosure”, he suffered from hunger and from the cold, together with a lot of boys of his age. The eyes of whom has nostalgia for the future and comes from a great life lesson.To go along his life again has been for us a unique experience”.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Orazio Boccia
Story of a Street Urchin
Edited by
Bruno Bisogni & Roberto Race
Introduction by
Benito Benedini & Vincenzo De Luca
The image on the cover is a find belonging to the Museum of Ceramics in the Castle of Arechi
Thanks to Tano Press for the pictures of Orazio Boccia included in this volume
Youcanprint Self-Publishing
ISBN 9788892649514
Translated and Edited by ADAD www.adadonline.com, Milan
Photocopies for personal use of the reader can be made at a cost of a percentage of 15% of this volume under payment to Siae for the right as in the art. 68, 4 and 5 of the law 22nd April 1941 No 633. Photocopies for professional, economical or commercial use or for a use other than personal can be done under specific authorization by Clearedi, Centre for Licenses and Authorizations for Editorial Reproductions, corso di PortaRomana 108, 20122 Milano, e-mail [email protected] and web site: www.clearedi.org
To my grandchildren wishing them a bright future and hoping they will keep in mind that you can risk of going back if you forget where you are coming from Orazio Boccia
Preface
Benito Benedini
National President of the “Cavalieri del Lavoro” Federation
If anyone who, reading this volume without any particular interest, thought they might have come across a ˝run-of-the mill˝ story about firms, they would be pleasantly surprised. First of all because the events of a company are always unique and unusual, and even if sometimes it can appear just the opposite, it probably depends on the way they are narrated or on the relative amount of the period of work described in the enterprise.
Therefore the misunderstanding in this case would be double.
First of all because the man Orazio Boccia is not a common person (really outstanding). He is the typical self-made man, but, as anyone who “risen to the top from a bad start in life” he has a background in life made of daily struggles for survival, of anecdotes where comic and dramatic aspects coexist, “sliding doors” when a choice or sometimes even a random coincidence, can determine the way to success or misfortune of a person, not depending on that person’s worth.
This is what we can learn from Orazio Boccia: “My misfortune has been the key to my success”. The love for risks comes from the what he went through as a young child in the years of conflicts and soon after the end of the Second World War, when you seem trapped by your own miserable destiny, Neapolitan urchin among Neapolitan urchins, fatherless at 11 and then sent, by the political party of the time, to an orphanage, where the rules were so strict that it was called “a cage”.
It is not the future entrepreneur, but more precisely this man, Orazio, who shaped his own destiny... And if I am allowed to say it, stories of life as it is his own, give once more the idea of how it is selective and based on merits the path to become a ˝Cavaliere del Lavoro˝ for an entrepreneur.
We are proud of him. We know that many other men, like Orazio, have contributed to create, although in bad and good events, in difficulties and different problems in specific areas of the country, a typical Italian industry that has placed Italy in the position of one of the most important economic countries in the world.
We are living in a difficult period of time. Not only Italy, but all the Western countries, have to cope with the new aggressive commercial behaviour of Countries which are redefining the traditional balance of the world economical power, and in such a crisis, that can be similar, even if different in reasons, to the one which came about in the thirties.
The example, Orazio and men like him give us, shows that any challenge can be successful. Perseverance, ingenuity and determination, even if concerning different models of innovation in enterprises, in which competitiveness is measured in team work and acting, are a heritage of our behaviour in enterprises. In a word, it is what defines our people
Preface
Vincenzo De Luca Mayor of Salerno
Orazio Boccia. An honest worker, a brave man.
I introduce with a special pleasure this booklet in which Orazio Boccia tells us about his extraordinary life: born in a very poor family, lived in an orphanage, became a successful entrepreneur.
A life’s course that the Author describes through emblematic events, meeting of people, tips of wisdom, learnt at the university of life. The structure is the one of an autobiographic diary, the style is clear, the plot is involving. The reader can see the running of Orazio Boccia’s life and be won over.
Orazio Boccia’s story is a model and I am really delighted that He, himself, overcoming his own privacy, had the idea to publish it. There are some bonds that represent a moral and civil heritage, which I hope it will be completely understood and learnt ˝in toto˝ especially by new generations. Orazio Boccia is an honest person, a tireless worker, a generous man. He admits to have experienced hunger in the years of his childhood and youth. But there was such a dignity in his poverty that in restrictions and solidarity it was possible to find reasons for hope and efforts to build a better future, for himself, his family, his own friends and collaborators.
A vivid sense of justice and rebellion against moral and social injustice of any type is a characteristic of his own. A man who does not bow down to of any arrogance, who does not surround in front of adversities, who deals with people of power in respectfulness, not in obsequiousness.
And moreover his innovative genius, his intuition of investing in new machinery and new technology giving value to professional power. Such kind of attitudes have brought his firm, also with a valid cooperation of his family, to an appreciated quality in the highest national levels. Orazio Boccia is one of those men who have contributed to the progress of Italy in changing a country ruined by the World War II in an industrial and economical superpower of the last century.
The life as a man and entrepreneur of the Author flows across the decades, with the big events of the times together with short local stories, the opinion movements and ideologies. In the background, thanks to the work of men like Orazio Boccia, the transformation of our community which becomes, in the years, a city symbol of the civil, urban and productive renewal.
In wishing him a long life full of serenity and satisfaction, which he deserves because of all his efforts, I recommend the reading of this volume to those who already know him personally, as well to those who are going, through the pages of this book, to learn to appreciate him.
Introduction
Bruno Bisogni and Roberto Race
Orazio Boccia, born in 1932, who lost his father at 11 years of age being the only male soon found out about the grim realities of life at that time:
His life adventure stretches down through critical events in the history of the Country.
During the Liberation period he is among the Neapolitan urchins ˝scugnizzi˝ in Salerno in the midst of American and other soldiers of the Allied Army.
Inmate in the orphanage of the city, called the ˝Cage˝, he suffers from hunger and cold together with other children of the same age, while Salerno is licking its wounds caused by the war.
His personal story takes us from opening of the printing enterprise that dates back to the late ‘50s, right at the time of the economic boom. In the following decades, the growth of Orazio’s enterprise is placed in a period of sharp political dialogues, youth revolts and women rights demonstrations that partly involve also the life of the enterprises.
We now get to our days, when Orazio is rewarded as an entrepreneur of success, a ˝Cavaliere del Lavoro˝ (the highest national recognition for Labour) and the president of his own society that he founded: “Le Arti Grafiche Boccia”.
A firm that, in 2012, in the occasion of the celebration of the 50 years + 1, the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano has declared to be ˝the image of a Mezzogiorno˝ (the South part of Italy) that has the chance to emerge and value its best energies, taking part with its own contribution to the development of whole
Italy.
Orazio’s story runs fast, it seems taken from a film. Stubbornness, optimism and stoicism have always been his characteristics. And this even and especially in the critical periods of his life and the history of the Country. Italy and “Mezzogiorno” of that time are the frame of this story in which difficult times and funny events happen by turns. (are mixed together)
An example, important for our memory and for our future. Orazio Boccia has a determination which is typical in men and women, who starting in an area full of ruins, were able, thanks to a hard work, a lot of efforts and sacrifices to rebuild a big country, Italy and its attitude to a factory work.
Reading this volume is a deep insight in the reality of the spirit of that after war period, thanks to which we had been able to change an economy mainly based on agriculture in a modern industrial power.
It can be a message for the period we are living in, helping us to discover our future from our past.
An emotional story, full of passion, suffering and sense of responsibility, told through Orazio’s words and ˝eyes˝; those eyes that belong to someone who has a nostalgic feeling for the future and comes from a great and emotional learning in life.
Running through it again has been a unique and rewarding experience for us.
The Beginning
I
The Bet
I was born on 26th November in 1932. My father Vincenzo died of tetanus in February 1944. I remember very little about the years before 1940. That was the time of the big depression. Salerno had nearly thirty thousand inhabitants. In the after war period it was destined to expand and even prosper. At that time it was smaller as well as poorer.
***
My father worked at the port. It was an on-off job: in the sense that the job for him was depending on the arrival of a steam ship. But steam ships did not come every day. For loading and unloading procedures, some pieces of wood were placed to join the ship to the dock. The workers used to carry the loads on their shoulders; at that time it was like that. After some time my father was appointed as the head of the convoy.
Ships meant average incomes, but, as I said, from time to time. For the rest, it was necessary to do the best we could. And my father did it. He had organized another job. He bought chairs, desks and other furniture, asking a loan from other workers in the port. If the
Orazio Bocciain the historical centre of Salerno at Vicolo Caste. Terracena at San Ciovanniello (photoby Francesco Pecoraro -Tano Press)
