Umberto Boscolo Woodns was born in Rovigo in 1932, by John the Apostle Boscolo and Ida Bernardi. The couple had nine children, three girls and six boys, five of them died in infancy and Umberto found himself the only male survivor and her sisters. His father, John the Apostle, came from nearby Submarine Chioggia, where he lived from fishing, practiced both at sea and in the channels. When she married and moved to Rovigo, was adapted to odd jobs, especially those of laborers, given the physical grandeur. Ida's mother came instead from the nearby Ferrara was of good family, wealthy and educated, ran a small tailor shop.
The small Umberto manifested early inclination for art, his talent was noticed by his aunt Gina, sister of the mother and math teacher, who had the intention to study and to optimize it so that vocation. Then the Great War and, in '42, the death from tuberculosis of the mother. For him, life changed radically. The loss of his mother was really a shock. He stayed three days and three nights at the tomb. He was only ten years old. After that tragic event the father, unable to care for their children, was forced to entrust their children to orphanages and emigrated, going to work in the steel mills in Germany. A Umbertino that life was too narrow. Repeatedly answered by colleges, giving himself to a life of wandering and free. He tried often, but, being a minor, was riacciuffato promptly and returned to the hotel. And so, in and out of institutions that were sometimes very inhospitable, came the end of the war. Among the memories, the hiss of their bombs explosions. From the sky and the clouds do not rain drops fell, but by an endless stream of bombers rained death. He always said: "With each explosion was as if I broke your heart."
After the war, the economic conditions of the family did not change, but something changed for him: he left the Veneto. Her older sister, Elena, who had started the novitiate to become a nun Guanellian, moved to Como and took it with him, finding him shelter and hospitality at the college of the same name Don Luigi Guanella. And there Umberto achieving primary school, also won a medal in the football tournament with the team Guanellian own, in which he played as a quarterback. But above all, became Man. At eighteen he left for good experience, shared along with other companions in misfortune, but he never forgot what the priests of Don Guanella had done for him until he had life, was grateful to him.

An image taken in an orphanage in Padua, with his father John Apostle Boscolo (Submarine Chioggia1896-Rovigo, 1965), before they departed, for work, for Germany.

<<< Introduction -  The youth >>>