Alumni Network

For those who have attended the American Overseas School of Rome at Tomba di Nerone (Nero’s mausoleum) at Via Cassia 811 over the past 72 years, since 1951, this is the only AOSR you’ve known. But for those of us who began attending five years earlier we have very different memories. In 1946, when we attended OSR’s first year classes, it was in less than a handful of rooms within Foro Mussolini (since renamed Foro Italico) thanks to the conquering American army’s generosity (and need for classes for its military personnel’s young offspring).

We were taught primarily by WACs who’d been teachers before the War, from texts scrounged up for us by the U.S. Army. I was in kindergarten then and don’t think I learned much, though it was here, in the officers’ pool, that I learned to swim.

By the second year, when the U.S. Army was impelled to return the Foro to the Italian government, new machinations gave us the Casino dei Principi on the Villa Torlonia grounds on Via Nomentana, today a multi-edifice museum. It and the main Palladian palace were built on famed architect Giuseppe Valadier designs and our charming three-story rectangular villa, anchored by two imposing Corinthian columns at its entrance, had housed the young Torlonia princes.

In 1925 the family ‘rented’, for a lira a year, the extensive estate to Mussolini as his official residence. He remained until 1943, first building an air-raid shelter, then, as the war progressed a much larger airtight bunker complex. It is doubtful he knew it was built on the remnants of a 3rd- and 4th-century Jewish 3,800-grave catacomb, discovered years later.

But my most vivid memories were of Madeleine Brown (Fabris) who sent me on errands to try and cure my shyness, and Peggy Henderson, both hired in 1947 by our founding mothers, who sent me out to the playground to retrieve Betsy Moore’s front tooth, snapped out when she fell off a swing and onto her face.

OSR, as it still was, remained at Villa Torlonia through May 1951
when the high school was added and OSR transferred to Via Cassia, the school you all know and love.

Margaret Stern (1946-1951 + 1953)

It was hot in Rome that summer. The War (back then there was only one that didn't have to be referenced by name) had ended a year earlier and Europe was still in the early stages of recovery. Homeless people, covered in tarps, were living in Roman ruins, and a carton of cigarettes, purchased at the Army PX for stateside prices, was exchangeable for a Leica camera. I was seven and, as an only child, sorely in need of friends.

Though I was only vaguely aware of it, I was also in need of a school. There were, of course, Italian schools but I did not yet speak the language and my experience with one of those a few months earlier had been, as they say, "difficult," resulting in my being home-schooled, with marginal success, by my mother.

As luck would have it, though, my parents had experience in creating a school from scratch, having participated in the founding of the Downtown Community School in Manhattan three years prior. And the United States Army, still very much a presence in war torn Italy, was in temporary possession of a sports stadium.

The Foro Mussolini (soon, for some reason, to be renamed "Italico") was an ideal location for an instant, do-it-yourself school. Built to host the ill-fated 1940 Olympic games, the campus included, in addition to what amounted to a well-appointed adult-sized playground and swimming pool, an administrative building, a section of which the Army handed over to be used as classrooms. 

And so teachers were hired, materials purchased, and in just a few months a school was conceived, brought into the world, and set in operation. There were a few peculiarities. No one could be found to run the school, so for that first year my mother, absent any relevant educational background, served as Principal – a circumstance received by me with equal parts astonishment and dismay. Some of the textbooks, having been donated by the Army, were a bit unusual as well. I distinctly recall one that taught me to read while also attempting to teach me how and when to use a gas mask.

The sojourn at the Foro Mussolini lasted just one year. In the summer of 1947 another scramble ensued and eventually space was found at the Villa Torlonia, on the Via Nomentana. (The ubiquitous Mussolini re-emerged: the classes were actually located in a small villa that had served as the residence of his mistress a few years before.)

My memories of AOSR (it was just "OSR" when I was there, there being no reason to distinguish it from other "overseas" schools) are, I'm sorry to say, few and fragmented. I do recall as one of the highlights of that first year one of my classmates coming to school with a live round of ammunition which he claimed to have found on the playground. Needless to say, we were all chagrined when the teacher confiscated it. That "playground," by the way, was huge and surrounded by marble statues of athletes, all of whom seemed to bear a remarkable resemblance to Benito himself, competing in various track and field events. 

Coincident with the move to the Villa Torlonia, the school hired a professional Principal, who memorably instituted an administrative structure modeled on British feudalism, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of responsibilities, rewards and punishments. Every student was assigned to one of four positions, ranging from Serf to Knight, and given a badge of a specific color depicting his or her rank. These roles came with special privileges and duties, and the key to the system was that through one's behavior one could move up or down in the hierarchy. Looking back on it, this system seems absurdly strict and regimented but at the time, for me at least, it seems to have worked. I recall being demoted from Knight to Herald for some minor infraction and as a consequence being forbidden to take out sports equipment during recess. I don't recall whether I ever got back my exalted rank.

Did I actually learn anything at the school? I must have, but there's a funny thing about learning – after you've done it you don't remember having done it. Today, in my eighties and after 22 years of formal education, I know lots of things; how and where I acquired that knowledge is, more often than not, a mystery. I do recall two memorable learning experiences, however, that I associate with those years in Rome. Somewhere along the way I learned the difference between the contraction "it's" and the possessive pronoun "its" and when to use each. At another juncture, and perhaps less usefully, I seem to have memorized a description of the Mediterranean climate ("Warm Wet Winters With Westerly Winds").

I'm sure there was more – never mind, I have fond memories of my time at The School (I left in 1950) and am ever so proud and happy to see what it has become!

My siblings and I were OSR students from the first day at Foro Mussolini. My father, Guido Nadzo, was sent to Rome with UNRRA (in Italy it soon became UNRRA CASAS) after Italy’s surrender to the Allies. The family arrived in Italy in June 1946 aboard USNS Marine Carp. Here are some random memories.

When my family arrived in Rome, US Army jeeps were all about the city, and US military personnel were at Foro Mussolini (later Foro Italico) using its facilities. I remember watching a movie with my sister Tonia at the US Army commandeered theater on Via Barberini just above Piazza Barberini. Tanks and other military vehicles were scattered here and there in nearby fields. Some of them were converted by Italian farmers into tractors and other farm vehicles. There was a sign “Achtung Minen” at the beach in Ostia. When we picnicked and swam there, which was often, my mother Marian Nadzo reminded us to take it seriously.

In the movie “Roman Holiday,” the group of girls at Fontana di Trevi are OSR students, among them the daughter of the movie’s director, William Wyler. One day at Via Cassia, while students were playing softball, actor Anthony Quinn visited, took over the pitcher’s spot, and, assuming one of his most ferocious characters, frightened OSR’s batters. My brother Nicholas still remembers it. One summer, my mother and Paul Horwitz’s mother, Sylvia, drove him, my brother, and me,
from Rome to a summer camp in Switzerland called International Rangers Camp. My best memory there is of trekking across a glacier. Also with us in the car was my sister. After dropping the three boys off, Marian and Sylvia drove her to Paris for a flight to New York and from there to Vermont to attend Putney School for her senior year. Tonia too was an original OSR student, but my mother was concerned about whether there was yet a sufficient senior class at OSR to prepare her daughter
for college. In fact, after Putney, Tonia successfully went on to Sarah Lawrence College. As for the three of us boys, when our Swiss camping adventure was over, Thomas Cook & Son shipped us home to Rome.

Another summer, I and two other OSR students, Leslie Yen and Riyadh (I have forgotten his full name), decided to go camping at Ostia. Leslie had a Royal Enfield motorcycle with a back seat on which he agreed to carry my brother; Riyadh and I had motor bikes. My father borrowed a tent an sleeping bags from the US Army facility in Livorno. We carried a bunch of canned foods, but lived on pizza instead. Leslie’s father had been with the Chinese embassy until the communist revolution,
when he opened a restaurant in Rome. Riyadh’s father was with Aramco.

One winter, an OSR teacher (I have forgotten his name) took a busload of students to Terminillo for a day of skiing. I remember there being only one slope and a tow rope. After a day of activity, he called the group to the bus. One of us was missing. A girl. I do not remember her name. The teacher told me to help him search. We found her, alone and exhausted, but safe. As at every American Embassy, there were Marine guards at the American Embassy in Rome. When off duty, they frequented a German beer garden off Piazza di Spagna. One day, my sister and I were there with one of them. Another Marine at another table got into a heated argument with a Marymount senior. My sister’s companion tossed his motorcycle key to me, and said “Take her home.” On the back seat, she wrapped her arms tight around me, her head fast against my back. She smelled delicious. The whole of it lasted only until I dropped her off at her home, but for that short while I was a young OSR boy in love with an older Marymount girl. One December, an officer from the Embassy gathered a bunch of OSR students to sing Christmas Carols. Among the locations we did so was Villa Taverna, the American Ambassador’s residence,

And now, the extraordinary Miss Brown:
I remember learning she had been engaged to an RAF pilot who lost his life in the Battle of Britain, and that was why, at war’s end, she moved away from England to Italy, to the ultimate advantage of everyone who came to know her.  She spent two summers with us, at Santa Marinella and Sorrento. One day in Sorrento my sister and brother and I were walking with her when we encountered a tough looking farmer beating his donkey hauling a wagon full of stuff. Miss Brown grabbed the man’s stick, broke it over her knee, and scolded him. My siblings and I were impressed, but not surprised. By then, Miss Brown was known to us as a civilizer. Another day in Rome, on a student outing along Via Appia Antica, we came upon a crew putting up signs and other stuff for filming of the movie “Quo Vadis.” Miss Brown spotted an error in one of the signs’ Latin, and informed the workmen. She made them promise to correct it. They did so; promise, that is.

Early on, Miss Brown taught me to say “Please and Thank You every time.” Of course, being a kid, I’d say it like, “Please and thank you every time, may I go outside to play?” But I learned it, and it has served me well. Whenever we visited a church with her, Miss Brown would cover her hair with a cloth. She would not make a fuss of it, but she would make sure we noticed. I remember a meeting with Pope Pius at the Vatican. She said “It does not matter that you are not Catholic. What matters is that you respect others, whatever they are.” Miss Brown was always teaching.

Years after leaving Rome, I was an officer aboard a US Navy destroyer anchored at Portofinwhile participating in a Sixth Fleet event. I took the occasion to visit Rome. At OSR I was directed to Miss Brown’s office where she was seated at a desk. At the door, I said, “I am Stefan Nadzo.” Miss Brown looked up from some papers, stared at me for a few minutes, and then, with a smile spreading across her face, exclaimed, “So you are!” While at lunch that day, a member of the OSR kitchen staff remembered me. She told me of Ian Taylor’s leaving the school. I remembered him as having been the English teacher who led a group of us on a trip to Assisi.

And finally this, a favorite story from 1946 not about OSR but too wonderful not to share. It was told to me by someone who was there. Involved is a village in the Apennines whose name I do not remember, so here I will call it “Montevillagio.” A large group at an Embassy cocktail party had gathered around a US Army bomber pilot who was talking about his experiences over German positions. He said, one day he and his fellows began receiving on their radios a woman’s voice pleading in English, “Do not bomb Montevillagio. We have gathered children here. Please do not bomb Montevillagio.” Over and over again. The pilots’ concern was obvious: Is it a legitimate voice or is it the voice of the enemy? If it’s the latter, Montevillagio must be important to the Germans, so bomb it. But if it’s the former, well ... The pilot said that after extended consideration, the decision was made to believe the voice, and not bomb the village. At that point at that cocktail party, a woman who was among the group listening to the pilot’s story, spoke up. “That was my voice,” she said.

I went to the AOSR for 3+ years, 1957-1960 (would have been class of 1964). Despite how long ago that was, I still have vivid and fond memories of my time there. Started classes in the original “villa”, but the new building was completed, I think during my second year, so had classes in there also.  I remember art class at the very top of the villa. One thing that still greatly impresses me is that, in 5^th grade, I was taking a class in Religions of the World, and another in Greek and Roman Mythology. Nothing like that happens anymore, at least in American schools. Just goes to show what a young student can learn! Field trips to places like Florence were amazing, and my interest in the Etruscans began when we took trips to Etruscan towns and cemeteries. I believe all of this was the origin for my love of learning, as well as an appreciation and love for travel and international cultures. My wife and I have visited 69 countries, and lived in Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, Canada, and Ireland, as well as my 4 years in Rome. I went on for higher education at the University of Arizona, a doctorate in (marine) Microbiology at Georgetown University, and postdoctoral studies in biochemistry at the University of Ottawa. That led to a faculty position at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where I recently retired after 47 years of research and teaching. Now enjoying retired life in the North Carolina mountains, with (between my wife and I) 5 children and 5 grandsons. Life is good, and it absolutely started at the AOSR.

I immensely enjoyed reading the stories from alumni who had been at OSR (as I knew it) from the very beginning in 1946. Fascinating. I arrived in Rome in 1958 as a 10 year old and have wonderful memories of my year in the villa with Mrs Fabris, one of the best teachers I ever had. I remembered I had a school calendar many old photographs from 1958 and in case you have never seen it, I will attach some of the photos, possibly one with Mrs. Fabris. There is one of the cook who I remember distinctly, a picture of staff, the secretary and the bus drivers. Plus more of children making and doing things. I thought it might be a picture of Mrs Fabris on the picture called Christmas plays but I remember her as looking older.

I wish there had been a picture of the formal hedges planted in squares in front of the Villa as I think we spent our playtimes jumping over them which probably didn't do them much good. We also had a vegetable garden within one of the squares. Having come from America to Italy, I loved being in a Victorian villa and having a formal garden to play in. It was like living in a story. As was having an English teacher who taught us about the Empire! Maybe that's why I ended up in the UK.

Here is part of a memoir I wrote about 1970-73 when I was guidance director at OSR. Reading such touching recollections in this post by former students of teachers like Tony, made me find my thoughts about them in my memoir: EXCEPTIONALLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS

Many of the teachers in the elementary school were British, having started teaching there during the Allied Occupation of Italy after WWII when it was a joint American-British school. They married Italians, and of course, stayed. Many other teachers were married to Italians and lived permanently in Rome. Being a private school, OSR did not have to bother with teacher certification and education courses.

The faculty was enriched by the cultural draw of Rome: art teacher Gwen Martinez came on a motorcycle from England with her Welch-Spanish artist husband Ray who won a scholarship at the British Academy of Rome. Music teachers Barbara Ciolli and Giuseppe Ruggieri came to Italy to sing opera and study music conducting. Biology and chemistry teachers Ron Gillespie and Bob Silvetz (MD), came to Rome for medical school and needed a way to support a family. Art history and graphics teacher Allan Ceen (Ph.D.), an authority in Roman urban planning, gave assignments in paper folding which morphed into the history of architecture. Desmond O’Grady, a published, iconic Irish poet with a Harvard Ph.D., found that teaching was simply sharing his passion for the language, and in doing so, a rich incubator for his craft. Tony Brophy, an Irish ex-cleric who studied at the Vatican found the inquiring minds and hearts of teenagers, as fuel for his passion for literature. Nearly all of the foreign language teachers were native speakers of Italian, German, or French. (Sadly, while I was at OSR, Latin was dropped because of low enrollment). A majority of the teachers were bilingual, and in the primary grades, since many of the children were Italian, the teacher would be speaking Italian with them.

Our kids’ teachers were among the outstanding. Clair Chodorkoff, Sarah’s preschool teacher, hit the nail on the head when she described Sarah at four as having ‘joie de vivre’, (joy of life). That’s still an apt way to describe Sarah today. Both Sarah and Philip had kindergarten teacher Jehanne Marchesi. Philip’s music teacher, Barbara Sparti was trained at the Orff Institute in Austria, which emphasizes the use of percussion with children. Mrs. Sparti remarked about Philip’s enthusiasm in music class when he was three. Today Phil’s avocation is playing guitar and singing in public. Peggy Arduino, who had been at OSR from its inception, taught Sarah to read. We were amused when Sarah read to us from her primers with her teacher Mrs. Arduino’s British accent: “Stawp Bawb, stawp!”

THE ODYSSEY OSR was a remarkable school at all levels. Third graders studied ancient Greece from Homer’s account of Odysseus (Ulysses), and the Trojan War. Lower School Principal Madeline Fabris would captivate OSR’s eight-year-olds with tales of Odysseus, Hercules, Achilles, and Athena. On our first spring vacation, we drove to Brindisi (map of Italy: the heel of the boot) and took the car ferry to Greece. “Why so many OSR families on that boat?” Because they have third-graders who persuaded their parents to go to Greece to see what they’d learned in ancient history from Mrs. Fabris.

COLD WAR JEWISH IMMIGRANTS Rome was a stop-over during the Cold War for Jews who had been allowed to leave the Soviet Union and Communist countries. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), found housing and schools for Soviet Jews while awaiting visas and documents for immigration to the United States, Canada or other free countries. OSR welcomed children from these families as tuition-free students, even if their stay was only for a few months. Scant English skills didn’t hinder their proficiency in advanced math classes. One account I remember was an Iron Curtain refugee in Neil MacFarlane’s Advanced Calculus class who, after the teacher filled the blackboard with numbers and equations, said, “Mr. MacFarlane, why don’t you solve it this way”… and he proceeded to arrive at the same answer in half as many steps. Stefan had arrived in Rome far too late to take the College Board Exams. One day when college counselor Jeff Davidson was in my office a call came in from Princeton University. Jeff’s reputation with Princeton must have been stellar, because this math genius was accepted to an Ivy League college without SAT scores. Stefan became a published theoretical math professor at Canadian University.

A STUDENT WITH AUTISM THRIVES IN A PRIVATE SCHOOL The parents of a nonverbal teenager with autism came to OSR in the summer of 1971 to see if we would be able to accommodate Greg in high school. My experience with students with disabilities in New York State public schools led me to be very skeptical about this kid’s ability to adapt and succeed at OSR. The parents had come from another foreign assignment, and as they described their son and his diagnosis by a psychiatrist who I knew had written a textbook on autism, I concluded in my mind, that they should have returned to the States and placed Greg into a special school for the autistic. He was enrolled in the junior class. Soon after school started, one of the high school students planned a party, inviting anyone to come. An outgoing and compassionate classmate junior, (it kills me I can’t remember this “Good Samaritan’s” name), invited Greg to go with him and his friends. Greg wrote a shirt pocket full of notes in preparation for his first party. The notes were conversation starters: he’d hand the paper to another kid, asking questions and making remarks about the school, sports, etc. He had a great time, and his parents were thrilled. That year, Greg gained a reputation for taking on anyone in ping-pong during the lunch hour - usually trouncing them. He never ate lunch. At the end of the school year, a school piano recital in a palazzo near the Campo de Fiori featured Greg playing one of his own compositions. Wow! No special ed program could have orchestrated a spontaneous socialization experience that existed within the OSR student body. Watching Greg mix socially, and seeing other students show compassion to include this awkward-acting teenager with autism, was beyond my imagination.  Before year’s end, Greg was communicating with staccato phrases. His parents didn’t make the wrong decision to come to Rome and enroll Greg at OSR. Students at OSR and other international schools are often referred to as ‘Third Culture’. They are not part of the culture where they came from (USA, Israel, Canada), nor are they part of the culture where they now live (Italy). This may just develop empathy or sensitivity to differentness that an autistic student in regular classes like Greg needed to thrive and blossom.