Mario Capecchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mario Capecchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Mario Capecchi was born in the Italian city of Verona in 1937. His father was Luciano Capecchi,[2] an Italian airman who would be later reported as missing in action while manning an anti-aircraft gun in the Western Desert Campaign,[3] His mother was Lucy Ramberg, an American-born[4] daughter of Impressionist painter Lucy Dodd Ramberg and German archaeologist Walter Ramberg. During World War II, his mother was sent to the Dachau concentration camp[4][5] as punishment for pamphleteering and belonging to an anti-Fascist group.[6] Prior to her arrest[2] she had made contingency plans by selling her belongings and giving the proceeds to a peasant family near Bolzano[3] to provide housing for her son. However, after one year,[7] the money was exhausted and the family was unable to care for him. At four-and-a-half years old he was left to fend for himself on the streets of northern Italy for the next four years,[3] living in various orphanages and roving through towns with groups of other homeless children.[7]
He almost died of malnutrition. His mother, meanwhile, had been freed from Dachau and began a year-long search for him. She finally found him in a hospital bed in Reggio Emilia,[3] ill with a fever and subsisting on a daily bowl of chicory coffee and bread crust. She took him to Rome, where he had his first bath in six years.[7]"