Amity Neumeister, UW Rome Center (UWRC) Resident Director, shares about her recent visit to Cività di Bagnoreggio with UWRC alumna Leah Martin ’97 to meet with the husband of the late Astra Zarina, founder of the UW Rome Center.
The first time I visited Cività di Bagnoreggio, I was on a holiday break from my study abroad program in Siena. My father and stepmother had come to visit for Christmas and we spent several days driving around Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio, discovering interesting towns to explore for the afternoon, getting lost in the beauty and intrigue of this foreign land that was already starting to feel like home. We set our sights one day on Cività di Bagnoreggio.
After parking our car before the long bridge up to the tiny town that sits perched on top of a plateau of volcanic tuff (“tufo” in Italian) overlooking the Tiber river valley, we traversed that long bridge up to the town. As we entered into the main piazza of Cività, I remember looking to my right and being blown away by a sign that said (among other things) “Università di Washington”. While I wasn’t a Husky at the time—I had opted to go to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma for my undergraduate studies—I distinctly remember being struck by this coincidence, wondering who, what, when and how there was a connection between the massive UW and this little, tiny hilltop town in the middle of Italy, thousands of miles away from Seattle. We didn’t have cell phones or regular access to the internet in those days, so those questions remained with me for quite some time.
Fast forward five years, and I’ve completed my MBA at UW (now finally a Husky), and I’m working at the UW School of Medicine. One of my colleagues mentions to me one day that his daughter, Lauren Easterling, is doing an internship at the University of Washington Rome Center. I remember asking myself, How did I not know the UW had a Rome Center? (even though I had lived less than a mile from it after I ended my study abroad program and moved to Rome for a bit before returning back home).
And we fast forward again to three weeks ago, when I had the opportunity—now as Resident Director of the UW Rome Center—to go back to Cività for the first time since that first venture long ago when I was at university and to meet Anthony (Tony) Costa Heywood, husband of the late Astra Zarina, founder of the UWRC. Over the years, I’ve heard lots of stories about the history, vision, challenges, influence and ultimately unparalleled legacy of Professor Zarina. Knowing that her husband Tony, who helped Zarina design and renovate the UWRC in the early 1980s, was just a little over an hour away with answers to questions I still had from my very first visit to Cività felt like pieces to a puzzle that hadn’t been accessible before Leah Martin, a 1997 alumna of the UWRC, stopped by to see the renovated UWRC last month. Leah mentioned that she might go visit Tony, and I jumped on the opportunity, inviting myself to join her on her tip. So up we drove up those windy roads to Cività to see that marvelous tiny town once again, and once again I saw the sign that proudly says “Università di Washington” in the main square.
But more importantly this time, I got to traverse the bridge and make a connection with Tony, who’s one of only now seven permanent residents of the town. Having no phone number or email for Tony, we went unannounced and had no idea what to expect. We found his front door literally open (the Cività Institute that Tony co-founded with Astra was hosting an educational program that week), and after calling his name for a bit and waking him up from a nap, he welcomed us into his home that he had shared with Astra since the early 1960s. I saw signs of Astra’s influence and legacy on the UWRC everywhere in his home—but most immediate and striking were the same red architect lamps that we still have at the UWRC. Tony shared stories of Astra and the UWRC, and Leah and he reminisced about her study abroad experience in Rome, driving up to Cività with Astra as a bossy copilot by her side, having elaborate dinners Astra cooked for the students in her effort to introduce her students fully to the culture and traditions of the Italian people, only occasionally washing their clothes in the public wash basins carved out of the same tufo upon which the town sits.
It’s a bridge I’ve wanted to cross for a long time since I became the Resident Director in 2015. Perhaps not by coincidence, my father and stepmother are visiting again this week, and I’ve asked Tony if we could come up again for another visit. I look forward to learning a little bit more again this time about Tony’s life and Astra’s legacy to the University of Washington.