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Today's Featured Biography
Carol Taylor Torsello
Carol Taylor Torsello
Hello Classmates! I haven’t seen almost any of you for the past 50 years, and I’m very curious – and a bit timorous – about this class reunion, but I plan to be there. A lot of the names on the bios and in the Newsletters ring a bell, but, all in all, I feel completely out of touch! The only person from L.A. High I’ve stayed in contact with over the years is Zulay Iturralde Frommel, who is now back in L.A. after a long, long time in Germany. Thanks to these reunion plans, Vicky Carver contacted me and brought back some very faded memories, and later Carlos Galindo did too. I was very glad to see that Emerly Hattori remembered me and my sister Joan, who died of heart failure at the age of 22. I remember Emerly very well. Particularly, I remember the two of us and Ralph Stiers, sitting in Ralph’s car after school, talking on and on about existential problems. Poor Ralph died of leukemia leaving three small children. I remember how much I always admired Sonya Haney, who managed to be perfect in everything, the most popular girl in the school, and still not put on airs. I wasn’t even envious because I knew I could never be like her! I also remember a bus trip down into Mexico with two classmates during the Christmas holidays. I wonder if they remember that. I count on you classmates present at the reunion to help me put names and faces and memories back together, after a long time elsewhere.
So, would you like to know what I’ve been up to since 1961? I went to UCLA. From there I left for a junior year abroad, which could have been in France, Spain or Italy, in that order, since these countries corresponded to my first, second and third foreign languages. I got my application in late and only Italy would accept it, and this road taken has made all the difference in everything that follows. During my year’s study in Padua (Padova in Italian), I met a charming young medical student, Giovanni Torsello, and wrote a footnote to an ordinary letter to my parents: “P.S., I’m in love.” At the end of my year abroad I tearfully went back to finish my studies at UCLA and Giovanni and I exchanged real letters (let’s explain to our grandchildren what they are) for a year and a half, then I came back to Padua and we were married in October of 1967. Against all odds, we’re still married. In Italy I went on to further studies in English language and literature, and in linguistics. I taught at high schools here, getting a tenured position, and at the same time began doing some teaching assistant work at the university. I won’t go on with a rundown of my career – which has been very rewarding, since I managed to make it all the way to full professor of English Language and Linguistics, directed university language centers, was president of the Italian association of university language centers (AICLU) for 3 years, and president of the European association of university language centers (CERCLES) for 4 years. Such matters are documented in my curriculum on the Padua University website at http://www.maldura.unipd.it/dllags/docentianglo/index.html where you can also find a list of my publications.
Instead, let me tell you a bit about me personally and about my family. Giovanni (former head radiologist at the hospital in Vicenza, now retired and working just two days a week in a diagnostic center) and I have two sons. Our older son, Marco, born in 1969, has a law practice in Bologna as well as a tenured teaching and research position for comparative civil law at the University of Bologna in Ravenna. Our younger son, Andrea, born in 1973, is in artificial intelligence and specializes in computer vision; he has a tenured research and teaching position at the University of Venice. Andrea and his wife Vera gave us a fantastic grandson, Giuliano, who is now 17 months old; Marco and his wife Francesca gave us a darling granddaughter, Emma, who is four months old. About me, I’ve always loved good food and wine, dancing, being with good friends, swimming. Now that I’ve retired, (October 2009), I have a season ticket to a spa with five pools and swim a kilometre three times a week. Giovanni and I also have a season ticket to the theatre, and we belong to an art association, with which we take art tours. Giovanni’s better at art than I am, and sometimes I let him go alone on these tours while I do other things.
Somehow I’m always very busy and behind on a thousand things, even now that I’m retired. I wonder how I ever managed before!
I’ll see you in October!
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