This is an excerpt of the story, which is presently in a state of constant evolution.

One Less Voice

“I failed.”

There is little despondence that takes the human spirit lower than feeling that one has failed, whether themselves or others. I was in central Italy on the regional border of Tuscany and Umbria, sitting alone on a commuter train for the 30-minute return trip from Terontola back to Perugia. Staring out at the vastness of Lake Trasimeno through the train’s dull window, I was numb. Disappointed in myself. Defeated. The late October sun reflected brilliantly on the lake and my mind drifted off. I remembered reading that in 217 B.C., Hannibal and his army of 40,000 men ambushed the formidable Roman army at this very spot, killing 15,000 soldiers. Many of the men died from drowning in their heavy armor, the viciousness of their attackers, or both. I was distracting myself, trying to forget what just happened the past few hours. It was so fast, and now it was over. A golden opportunity fell into my lap less than 48 hours ago. Now it was over, and I felt like a failure because I had nothing to show for it. I was leaving Perugia the next day so there was no second chance. My dream to carry on a hero’s fading story from World War II felt as gray and worn as the dusty old window separating me from the sunshine outside.

It was 2016 and I was studying Italian for a month at a university in the medieval hill town of Perugia. The past year in Seattle, I had been taking a language class once a week after work with mediocre success stumbling through new vowel sounds and tongue-rolling syllables. Arriving at 5 p.m. each Wednesday evening, my mind was often already at full capacity from my government job planning for and responding to oil spills. Putting my brain to task learning a new language and remembering weekly lessons did not leave me with the most profound literacy of Italian, but the passion was there. An opportunity for a month-long scholarship was suggested by my teacher, and after applying and being awarded one of the spots, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that a dream to immerse in Italian culture could come true. This short sabbatical would mean an entire month without distractions, where my only job was to learn Italian.

One of the other reasons that I wanted to explore this particular area was because it was like a living museum to a remarkable story from World War II of the champion cyclist and Jewish rescuer, Gino Bartali. He died in 2000 at 85 years, but the sound of his name still warrants hushed reverence in his native Italy: Bartali L’Eroe – The Hero. Bartali Il Pio – The Pious. Bartali Il Campione – The Champion. Bartali who helped save 800 Jews during the Holocaust riding his bicycle stuffed with fake identity documents on secret missions for the Italian resistance. I had heard whisperings of this story long after his death as the English-speaking press picked it up in the early 2010s. I wondered, “How could a man contest against the Nazis….and essentially win….saving hundreds of people from the Holocaust…using only his bicycle and hiding documents in its frame?” I thought of my own bike frames and how the hollow tubing with traces of grit and grease could possibly store such delicate papers. The story seemed unworldly and it partially was since I had never been to Europe at the time. This man, Gino Bartali, was a mythical legend in a mythical land. Yet I could not stop thinking about the idea that good could fight evil using non-violence, on a bicycle no less, in the ultimate theater of the second World War.

My own grandfather and great uncle had served with the U.S. Army in Europe, but they never spoke about where they fought or what they experienced. To my astonishment, one family gathering revealed that our basement is the current home of a Nazi flag taken from the war in France back to Monessen. There a glimpses of their war time passed down in clipped retelling of stories, but most of the memories are interpreted from the black and white photos of them posing formally in their military uniforms. During the war, my great aunt kept a photo album of black paper pages bound with string. The stiff, delicate pages are a time capsule pasted with newspaper clippings of Monessen and other Mon Valley servicemen. The original small, square Kodak Brownie photos reflect images of her husband and my grandfather with their wives and mothers preparing to leave for training. Other photos taken by the Army show them smiling and posing at their base in France. My great aunt carefully wrote notations in blue pen on the photos if she knew where and when they were taken. They show her men charming as when she last saw them, but nothing of what they saw when the camera wasn’t focused or when their eyes closed to sleep.

Like many tales from this era, Bartali’s story is not well known beyond Italy’s shores. Voices from this generation are not so loud anymore in our world filled with constant noise competing for our attention. I felt duty bound to learn more about the story during my month in Perugia. The 2012 book, Road to Valor, was the first English-speaking book that uncovered the secrets of Bartali’s past. Part investigative journalism, part biography, the authors painted the story in riveting detail. Referencing it as canon and using it as a guidebook during my travels, I imagined the book’s cast of characters that lined the sides of this true story and where they lived in pockets of Umbria and Tuscany during the war. I planned out my own sort of reenactment of Bartali’s past. After class and on the weekends, I would venture out on my bike into the Umbrian countryside looking for traces of Bartali, for a section of the road he may have ridden on, chasing his ghost from 70 years ago. I rode across the valley to the hill town of Assisi and up the same narrow cobble streets to the immense cathedral of Saint Francis. I hiked through an olive grove under a hot October sun, down to the monastery of San Damiano to glimpse shadows of Bartali as he traded forged identification papers with Father Rufino Niccacci. I stumbled over words at a local café, asking the owner if they knew of someone who could show me vestiges of Bartali in this town that was so central to his mission, or the cloistered convent where the Mother Superior hid Jews and picked up documents from the tanned and muscular Tuscan. I hid from a rainstorm in the doorway of Saint Clare’s Basilica staring across the piazza for a sign of which storefront hid the secret Brizi family printing press long ago.

But more often than not, I cried at the weight built up of my own expectations to be granted permission to insert myself into this story, at the frustration of not knowing the language, endlessly tossing in a bad dream set on mute, and not being able to shout out my desire to make these voices heard again. I cried trying to explain in stilted Italian words who I was and why I was there as I watched my identify dissipate into irrelevancy in front of my eyes in a culture that was not mine. I cried because I couldn’t explain why a silly American woman riding a bike on her own in Italy would be so passionate about a legend from so long ago.

When one ventures away from the known tourist enclaves into the real Italy, the reward is discovering how generous its people are. Some think it’s a continuation of how important it was for their culture to take care of strangers during WWII. When word got around the scholarship community that I was interested in learning more about Bartali, I was encouraged to talk with Daniela Borghesi of Perugia’s Office of International Relations. Working in the mayor’s office, she has been integral to coordinating the Perugia sister-city relationships around the world and is known for often doing the work of three people. After sending her an inquiry after I arrived, we were finally able to meet during my last week in Perugia. Just as I’d been told, she was an impressive woman of action who made the impossible happen. In the matter of a few hours one morning, she had made some calls to the nearby village of Terontola and as luck would have it, they knew Bartali’s former bike mechanic, Ivo Faltoni, who still lived there and was an ardent Bartali storyteller. He and a small entourage would be happy to meet me the next day. “And they do not speak English,” she reminded me. I had no time to prepare. As I left her office, Daniela waved off my dread that I could barely speak the language and wished me good luck. I wanted more than anything than to bottle up this amazing woman’s confidence and charisma and take it with me.

On the floor of my apartment in a medieval building in Perugia’s old town center, I laid out all my maps, photos, and books that had led me to this point hoping they would coach me through the next day. I visualized that the language would flow from my mouth with ease and I would immediately connect with these voices from the past. I figured out how to record on my iPhone and hoped for the best. My stomach turned with nerves and I couldn’t sleep. This was one time that shyness and collapsing into introverted tendencies was not an option. Waking up, my brain was heavy and fuzzy, not running at the sharp capacity I wanted even with the extra coffee. My years of bike racing had taught me enough to know that the body and mind could push through great achievements even with little sleep, so I buckled up my resolve and packed my bag. Ready to catch the morning train, I took a few deep breaths, pulled on my vintage leather jacket to wrap a barrier against my insecurities, and stepped out the door to begin my journey.

The Terontola train station greets its visitors with a bronze plaque to Bartali mounted on a large slab of grey marble. That is where Ivo met me with his camel colored wool sport coat and cap and unmistakable face tanned by a life in the Tuscan sun. We were joined by his friend and fellow journalist, Claudio Lucheroni. Without pause we walked through the small train station’s doors and off on my tour. Right away my fears were confirmed as my comprehension of Ivo’s Italian language was so elementary that I felt I was already failing to do my time with him any justice. On our walks between his office, bike shop, and home, he cheerfully chatted nonstop for over an hour, paying no mind that I understood nothing. I literally had no idea if he was talking about what he’d eaten for breakfast or some hidden clue to the spirit of Bartali. He was sharply dressed, charismatic and generous, well organized and obviously excited to have another visitor – an American woman no less - interested in the story of Bartali. He xeroxed newspaper clippings and showed me vintage race bikes and filled my arms with gifts and more books to read, but my mix of nerves and tongue-tied-Italian left me unable to sound lucid or impart my passion for the story by asking questions that had weighed on my mind for years: “At the end of his life how did Bartali feel about his legacy? What did it mean for his bike to be a tool of non-violence against the Nazis?” and most of all for me, “What would he say to people now as they face fear and struggle to find the good in our world?”

Reality was that my month in Perugia had not magically transformed me into a talented, multilingual journalist. I felt that I had let down the thousands of brave voices from World War II that were becoming fewer and fewer as time marched on. Even Daniela said of Ivo, “He’s in his 80s now so there may not be another time.”

There was never another time with Ivo. A few days later I was back in Seattle unpacking my suitcase and bags. I sighed heavily at his thoughtfully xeroxed papers and books and stored them away in a large envelope, my life taken over by more pressing matters in the real world. Over three years later on February 10, 2020, I learned on social media of Ivo’s passing and felt struck in the chest. This voice of Bartali’s brave generation who risked their lives to save strangers during the Holocaust was no more. I also realized that I did not fail on that October afternoon near Lake Trasimeno. It took a few years to revisit the special moment that Ivo had given me, even if I did not fully understand at the time. The sharing of an important story, no matter when, is never a failure as long as it eventually begins.