Adopt me as grandad, lonely widower pleads

From Richard Owen in Rome

A lonely widower has been «adopted» by a family of four in northern Italy after advertising his services as a grandfather.

Giorgo Angelozzi, 80, a retired classics teacher, was inundated with inquiries from around the world after his search for grandchildren to keep him company was featured in The Times.

His new «family» was chosen from hundreds of applicants, many of whom responded to an advertisement he placed in Rome newspapers, in which he offered to contribute $ 500 a month towards their household expenses.

He chose Elio and Marlena Riva and their two teenage children in Spirano, near Bergamo, because when he spoke to Signora Riva by phone her voice reminded him of his late wife, who died 12 years ago. «It was as if Lucia herself was talking,” he said. “I knew at once I had found my new home».

Signor Angelozzi said he looked forward to sharing the joys of reading Horace and Catullus with his new grandchildren, Mateush, 18, and Dagmara, 16, who are pupils at a liceo (grammar school) in nearby Caravaggio.

The family home has a large garden, with pomegranates, cherry trees, apple trees and roses. The Rivas also have a two-year-old beagle called Pablo and a pair of singing canaries, replacements for Signor Angelozzi’s seven cats, left with a friend and neighbour in San Polo dei Cavalieri, a hilltop town outside Rome.

The plight of Signor Angelozzi struck a chord in a country traditionally noted for its highly knit extended families but where large numbers of older people must now care of themselves. Latest estimates suggest more than a third of Italy’s ten million pensioners live alone.

Roberto Bernabei, a sociologist at the Catholic University of Rome, said that family ties were breaking down under the pressures of modern life.

Signora Riva, a religious affair teacher of Polish origin, said that Signor Angelozzi’s arrival in their life was «a gift from God». Her husband, Elio, 58, had taken early retirement but was currently undergoing «a minor operation»

at a Milan hospital. Her husband’s parents and brother were dead, and her own relatives were in Poland. «Our new Grandpa needs help, and we need him», she told the Correiere della Sera daily newspaper. Dagmara said: «I just want to have a granddad, the rest is not important». She said she was looking forward to taking him to Poland next year to meet her mother’s relatives. Her new grandfather’s only daughter, Loredana, 53, joined Medecins Sans Frontieres, the charity, as a doctor. He had last heard from her at Easter, when she phoned from Afghanistan.

Signor Angelozzi taught Latin and Greek for 40 years until his retirement in 1991. Until now he had spent his days listening to music with his cats or sitting in his garden reading. He had made a weekly shopping expedition to Tivoli, the nearest town, and a local policeman had stopped by now and then to make sure he was all right. «But I found myself talking to my wife as if she were there», he said.

He said that a report of his plight in The Times had brought «a flood» of responses from around the world, including Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil. A popular Italian Television entertainer who had once been his pupil had offered to take him in and he had a stream of phone calls from «lonely elderly ladies».

Signor Angelozzi said he would give the experiment three months, and was prepared to return to san Polo dei Cavalieri if it did not work out.

(«The Times», 24.09.04)