Move to Italy??
It all started when I realized I could become an Italian citizen. I am one-half Italian, one-quarter Irish and one-quarter French Canadian. The Italian government will grant you Italian citizenship if you can prove that your Italian ancestor was still an Italian and did not naturalize to become an American until after he or she had their offspring. And the offspring, passing their Italian citizenship down from one generation to the next, also must not renounce this Italian citizenship, even if they are not aware that they are actually Italian citizens. This preserves the unbroken bloodline, and is known as jures sanguinis.
In my case, my family was able to use my grandfather’s heritage and documents as my father, Julius Prigioni, was born in the United States before my grandfather became an American.
Now, a little bit about my grandfather, Giulio “Jimmy” Prigioni. I always knew him as Poppi, so I will refer to him as such. In the 1920s when Poppi was a teenager, he and his cousin traveled on the ships that went back and forth from Italy to the Americas. Onboard, they entertained the guests with their violins.
After doing this for several years, Poppi’s cousin decided to settle down in Argentina, while my grandfather decided to stay in New York City. There, he met a young woman named Amelia Rossi and fell in love with her. She was of Sicilian heritage but was a first generation American. He wanted to marry her but he had not entered the United States legally. Therefore, she had to agree to leave her family and friends in New York City to marry him in Italy. She agreed, and they traveled by ship and were married in Rivanazzano, a small town in northern Italy.
When I was growing up in New York City and Connecticut, I had always been fascinated with knowing my Italian relatives. Poppi’s home town was near Milan and my grandmother, Noni Amelia’s family, was from Palermo, Sicily. I had seen photos and heard stories, but this was the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, my grandparents’ viewpoint was to NOT teach us the Italian language. We were Americans.
It wasn’t until the internet and email that my family was finally able to contact our northern Italian relatives around 2004. This gave us the opportunity to reconnect after an almost 30-year hiatus. In 2006, my husband, son and I traveled to Italy for the first time and finally met my northern Italian relatives. There, they took us to Rivanazzano to see Poppi’s birthplace and the church where my grandparents got married.
Then in 2009, after some consideration, I decided to prepare and submit the paperwork for the jure sanguinis process to become an Italian citizen. My older sister had just obtained her Italian citizenship through this process. That laid the foundation for me to apply for myself, my son, Nathan Godding, and my younger sister and her three children. In June of 2010, the Italian government recognized me as an Italian citizen. Now, not wanting to feel left out, my husband, Larry Godding, wanted to become an Italian citizen even though he wasn’t of Italian heritage by birth. Applying through marriage, he was granted Italian citizenship in 2013. My husband and I were now dual citizens!
My dream was to move to Italy when I retired. I had been saying this for the last 4–5 years. Then in 2016, after having worked for the State of Wisconsin for the last 31 years and reaching the “magic age” of 57, I was eligible to retire with full benefits. We told our families and friends that we would now both retire and move to Italy! Saying it aloud made it real. Not sure if anyone really believed us, but we did!!
