Origins

My dad was born in the municipality of San Giacomo degli Schiavoni, province of Campobasso in the Italian region of Molise...about where the base of the calf begins on the Italian boot.
San Giacomo is a small town on the Adriatic coast - a charming union of craggy hills, sunflower choked fields, pristine sandy beaches and sapphire blue waters.  In the fall of 1945, about 1200 people called it home.  The town's population hasn't varied in numbers by more than a dozen since then.

My uncle Dante, my father & their cousins Ivana & Franco in San Giacomo circa 1955. (Family collection)

Antonio Francesco Rotondo came into the world on September 2nd, 1945 - the first-born son of Giovanni and Donata Rotondo (neé Sorgini).  There is some confusion surrounding the exact time of my dad's birth.  My grandmother maintained (and she would know) that he was born "on the second, after midnight".  She would scoff when anyone pointed out the obvious.
At any rate, the house he was born in still stands.  At least the stone walls do.  The roof has long since rotted away and the ever-present sunflowers that grow like weeds now call it home.

My dad in Termoli, aged about 18 years old, circa 1963. (Family Collection)

There is nothing in my father's origins or upbringing that would suggest a love for flight or any sort of aptitude for aviation.  His parents were farmers.  He liked hunting as a kid.  He once built a make-shift pistol which promptly backfired and put a rather large hole in his cheek.  He was an atrocious athlete and won the dubious nickname of "mani de merda" - literally "hands of shit."  He claimed to play the harmonica.  He was an above average student and graduated from a community college with the title of "geometrist."  He was well-liked and charming...and flighty.

Dad in Toronto, 1965. (Family Collection)

I suppose it was that inclination - a desire to leave home, see the world, strike out on his own - that brought him to Canada in 1965.  He lasted 2 years in Toronto and then took a job in Africa.

He was 23 and project manager tasked with building a water treatment plant in Bukoba, Tanzania. 

Trying to start a generator in Bukoba, 1968 (Family Collection)

He lived in the captain's cabin of a rust-bucket moored to the shore of Lake Victoria.  There was likely nothing to do except work, sweat, burn in the sun, worry about malaria and slowly go insane from mosquito buzz-jobs.

My dad wasn't one for vices - in fact, he hardly drank.  He enjoyed wine because it was constantly on the table as he was growing up but, other than that, he deplored anything in excess and, in his mind, getting blind drunk, even a few times, was the mark of an alcoholic.

Striking a pose in his office, Bukoba, August 20th 1969  (Family Collection)

Despite this, he was arrested once - with his entire crew of workers - for threatening a bar owner who refused to serve them drinks.
They had spent 18 hours pouring concrete and needed to put out some fires.  Turns out the bar was closed.  A few heatstroke, fatigue fuelled words later and the local gendarmes were called. 

Building the water treatment plant in Bukoba, September 1970 (Family Collection )

So, he came home one sticky night with a paper bag filled with basement gin and vermouth and set out to drink it all.  And when he shot his only living household companion, a fern, full of holes with a pellet gun because he "had nothing better to do", I suppose he figured he needed a hobby.

He found it in Nairobi, Kenya...at Wilson Airport and Wilken Aviation.