MARIAN RETURNS TO FLORENCE WITH THE DIARY SHE KEPT AT 21!

Marian knocks on a door in Borgo Santa Croce. She has a bag of food and an address. A different family answers. She leaves the food with them anyway.

It is Florence in the days after the 1966 flood. Marian Newsim is 21, from New York and studying in the city. At 81, she has returned for the reunion of the flood volunteers known as the Mud Angels. She shared the story of those days with La Nazione, drawing on the diary she kept. That is where the story of the door comes from.

First the books, then the doors

She spends the first three days helping at the National Library. The young volunteers clean the books one by one. The library is close to the Arno, and the water reached rooms where collections were stored. Think of how many books fit on the lowest shelf of a single bookcase, and you can begin to imagine the work.

Then Marian starts helping people left at home without water, food or medicine. She goes out with another volunteer. They call up to people at their windows and ask shopkeepers who needs help. A relief centre in Via dei Rustici distributes whatever they can find, from bread to blankets.

A door, a bag and a dinner

The diary even makes room for a dinner the volunteers got terribly wrong. They tried mixing tuna and milk, only to discover too late that the milk was sweetened and condensed. Adding more ingredients did little to save it.

And then there is that evening in Borgo Santa Croce. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says that when you feed someone who is hungry, you feed him. Marian had a name to look for and food to deliver. When the door opened, she saw the people in front of her.

On CHIARA! you can also read about the exhibition keeping the memory of the Mud Angels alive in Florence.