Uguccione Sorbello

Together with his family, he spent his early life between Rome and Perugia, Italy.  His mother’s American heritage and his British nannies, influenced Uguccione as he matured. As a boy, he was surrounded by the English language and its culture, and his ensuing love for both Italy and America inspired him to create a cultural bridge between these countries.  He fulfilled this at the age of twenty-five when he taught Italian language and literature at Yale and summer courses in Italian at Middlebury College. Later, in 1936, he was the director of the Italy-America Review and collaborated with the Corriere d’America in New York.  By corresponding with these two organizations, he was able to combine his love of literature and writing with his desire to educate Americans about Italian culture.  During World War II his early training in English and his allegiance to America during his twenties proved to be an asset for the Anglo-American troops.  He served as a captain, then as a major, in the Allied Intelligence Service 159 (A-Force) and helped to free allied prisoners in occupied Italy.  He eventually earned a silver medal for military valor in his work with the A-Force.  In 1952, he served as a cultural attaché to the Italian Embassy in Washington D.C. where he was also able to incorporate his love of writing by publishing “The Italian Scene”, a periodical by the foreign ministry written for English-speaking embassies to inform them of events in Italy. In 1957, he returned to Perugia, to help his community by writing articles on protecting Perugian monuments in the Corriere della Sera and La Nazione.  Uguccione served his community and worked to bridge Italian and American cultures until his death at the age of sixty-three in 1969.