BRUNO DEGOL

BRUNO DEGOL

On the cover of this year’s third edition of PRIMO is a man many of us would do well to emulate.

He is Bruno DeGol, a self-made man if there ever was one. Along with his wife Lena, he built from the ground up a lumber supply business that today is a diversified international business, the DeGol Organization, based in Altoona, Pennsylvania. With the way the economy is going today, we may wonder if the American Dream is still possible. The DeGols show it is…but that depends on how you approach attaining it.

Read the DeGol’s inspiring story in this edition and you will see a more realistic and practical way of reaching wealth and prosperity in America than what we are told by our leaders in government and academics.

****

Our feature article on Bruno DeGol covered a lot of ground, except for details of his military service in World War II where he won the Bronze Star.

Drafted when he was 18, DeGol trained with the 102^nd Infantry Division first in Camp Maxey, Texas, before moving on to Fort Dix, New Jersey. His division made it across the Atlantic Ocean, to Cherbourgh, France where they engaged the enemy almost on their arrival there.

DeGol’s military service was exemplary. A specialist in laying wire for communications during battle, he was in the army for five years and spent much of his time on the front lines. He spent almost six months straight in a fox hall. He witnessed his buddy killed by enemy mortar.

DeGol shared many of his war experiences with his children only in the last decade of his life.

Like all veterans, he saw the worst life had to offer. He saw scores of men killed, piled high on trucks for mass burials. He saw a barrage of bullets from enemy fire whiz by him. He saw nearby buildings crushed within an instance from exploding mortar shells and German grenades. He saw war refugees, many of them Germans, scrounging for crumbs to avoid starvation.

As he said to his son Bruno Jr., “I gave five years to the army.”

We are in debt to Bruno DeGol’s and to all Italian American veterans.

****

PRIMO PRESENTS: TWO NEW PUBLISHING PRODUCTS

Besides our wonderful magazine, PRIMO also offers a new book and calendar for readers to buy. Both make ideal gifts for Christmas.

The book is “Italian Sketches: The Faces of Modern Italy” by PRIMO contributing writer Deirdre Pirro.

Based in Florence, Pirro wrote an informative and inspiring article for PRIMO’s second edition 2010 on how Italian women won the right to vote in Italy.

Pirro knows modern Italy well. With “Italian Sketches,” she gives us over 150 pages that recount Italy’s most important figures of the 20^th century. Our lives today are shaped by Italian ideas and innovations in art, architecture, cinema, commerce, politics and philosophy. These are Italian icons of modernity who achieved success in the past 75 to 100 years. They are great men and women such as Federico Fellini, Maria Montessori, Gianni Agnelli, Alberto Moravia, and many, many more. They may be overlooked by U.S. mainstream media, but not by PRIMO. “Italian Sketches” comes with drawings by one of Italy’s top illustrators, Leo Cardini. Consider buying “Italian Sketches” as a gift to a family member or friend for this Christmas.

The second publication product we offer is a 2011 calendar with our titled theme “The Saints of Sicily.”

Featured on every other page as painted by some of Italy’s greatest artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods is a Sicilian saint. Like Mount Etna, Sicily’s religious history is a volcanic pot of passion and perseverance, tragedy and ecstasy, the mystery of Roman Catholic faith as personified by men and women of extraordinary courage, as only seen in Italy’s most unique and fascinating region.

Like me, you will be as interested in the biographies of Sicilian saints as you will their deeds and miracles that led to canonization. “The Saints of Sicily” calendar will inspire and inform, enlighten and provoke religious and historical conversation among your family and friends.

“The Saints of Sicily” calendar will inspire pride in your Italian and perhaps Sicilian heritage.

Buy PRIMO’s “The Saints of Sicily” calendar, perfect for Christmas.