`Man finds family in Italy`

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

The town of Porto Cesareo in southern Italy is a fishing community, reliant on the Ionic Sea fishery.

The fishery is rarely consistent, making fishing a tough-at-best occupation. Other employment is scarce.

For the Macchia family, whose means of support was fishing, tough times meant breaking up the family.

Luigi was sent to Switzerland to live with an aunt. Antonio moved to an orphanage. Marisa and Mario were adopted by Italian families, and Giuseppe and Patrizia were adopted by families in the United States.

Giuseppe was 1½ when he was picked up by his new parents, Matthew and Marian Wansack, on May 8, 1967, in Buffalo and renamed Mark. He joined a family that also included the Wansacks’ natural daughters, Diane and Mary Beth.

“I couldn’t have been more lucky to end up where I did,” said Mark, 34, of Shenango Township. “I have the best family and the best mom and dad anyone can ask for. They’ve always been super to me.”

Marian Wansack died when Mark was six, and Diane, who is 11 years older, took over many of the mothering duties, he said.

The Wansacks let Mark know early on that he was adopted, and he wondered about his roots. He has no memories from before he became a Wansack.

“I always felt I had brothers and sisters looking for me,” he said. He was right, but it was his own search that reunited him with them.

The Wansacks instilled a love of family in him, and his father encouraged him to search for any natural family.

“The more family the better for me,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Wansack started looking to see if he had any natural family left in 1993. He contacted Catholic Charities, the agency through which he was adopted. While the agency claimed it could not give him any “revealing” information and much of what it released was wrong, some of it, including names of relatives and birthdates, proved helpful in his search.

Many Italian friends in the Shenango Valley offered assistance and one who had a house in Italy sought information — he didn’t find anything helpful — on a trip there.

On May 1, Wansack was on the Internet and called up a list of Italians named Citiolo, his mother’s last name; she never took her husband’s name, he said.

Randomly picking the name Vencenzo Citiolo, he called the telephone number listed with the name. While Wansack didn’t speak Italian and the man didn’t speak English, Wansack was able to understand enough to know he was on the right track. The man is his natural mother’s brother. “I thank God that I found them,” said the self-employed logger. “There was a whole list of Citiolos. I just said, ‘I’ll try this one.’”

Vencenzo gave Wansack Luigi’s telephone number.

Luigi speaks several languages but English isn’t one of them, and he handed the phone to his daughter, Carmella, who knows some English. They traded dates and names to try and determine if they were related.

Wansack said Carmella told him, “This is your family. You have found your family. You are my uncle.”

Two days later, Wansack bought an airplane ticket for Italy.

On June 3, Wansack stepped off a plane into the arms of three brothers, Luigi, 50, Antonio, 45, and Mario, 30, and sister Marisa Geanone, 35.

“I was so excited I forgot my luggage at the airport,” he said. “We had to drive back and get it.”

Wansack has been studying Italian with Shenango Valley Italian friends, but at the time he didn’t know any.

“They say Italians talk with their hands; there was a lot of hand signaling going on,” he said. “It was like charades.”

His parents, father Nerrone Otello Macchia and mother Maria Citiolo, were happy to see him, although his father has middle-stage Alzheimer’s disease and frequently gets names mixed up. Meeting them filled “a real void” in his life, Wansack said.

Wansack, who also met his seven nephews and nieces, said he wanted to tell his mother not to feel bad for putting him up for adoption, that he loves her and that he came out OK. “I just want her to be content in herself.”

“She was sad that she couldn’t take care of us but she was glad when I was given up for adoption to the U.S. because I could have a better life.”

Luigi, who continues the family occupation as a commercial fisherman, and his wife visited Wansack in September, and Wansack returned to Italy in November to surprise his mother on her birthday.

Wansack, who had two brothers and two sisters die in infancy, said he calls his family members every week.

“It’s like we never missed a beat,” he said. “We get along like I was always there with them. They showed me so much love.”

In June, Wansack is taking his wife Lori, daughter Maggie, 10, and son Matthew, 4, to Italy.

The search continues on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for Patrizia, who was born June 26, 1962, in a hospital in Leece, Italy. Wansack said she might be in this area because many adoptions of Italian children from that time came through the Erie Catholic Diocese.

Wansack said he has requested information from the Immigration and Naturalization Service so he can find out where she entered the country.

Wansack invites anyone who might be able to aid his search to call him at 347-5313.

“I’ll find her one way or another,” he said.

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