“She was one of my closest friends, but we never met.”
My friendship with Giovanna started in 1982, when I was 20, by means of an advertisement from a company called International Pen Friends. For a nominal fee (paid by check or money order), along with the completion of a brief survey, a would-be correspondent was matched with a like-minded individual from their country of choice.
I gravitated toward having a pen pal from Italy. My father’s grandparents and their eight children had traveled across the Atlantic from Calabria, Italy, to Ellis Island in 1924. The family eventually settled in Blue Island, IL, a suburb of Chicago.
About a month after putting a stamp on my International Pen Friends envelope, I received in the mail Giovanna’s name and address as well as her completed questionnaire. My grandfather’s birth name was Giovanni, so I felt
