OUR LIFE IN SALT LAKE CITY

THE STREET WHERE WE LIVED
IN SALT LAKE CITY IN 1980
Our social life, which I have said before was a very active one in Quito, during the first few months of our stay was almost non existent in Salt Lake City. That made us a bit home sick, but, slowly and consistently we began to develop a relationship with a few friends in our neighborhood, among whom our dearest ones were Wilmer (a former LDS bishop) and Nelly Barnett, our next door neighbors, whose children had already gone from home (Wilmer is the Angel who saved me from the effects of the first snow storm in early October 1980); Dennis & Marilyn Adams and their three lovely children; Murry and Nancy Bemis and their three children (the only non LDS couple in the neighborhood besides us); Ken and Roma Clark, whom I got to see last January and have kept themselves in very good shape); Piero Ruffinengo and Tony Durando (engineers and lawyers, Italian and were about my age), both of whom worked for Northwest Pipeline also, and were married to Jennifer ( a medical doctor) and Nann (a lawyer) respectively. Piero and Tony had just started to grow their own families and had young children too; Joe Vallely, who at the time was Northwest’s HR VP, and his lovely wife Ceres (from Puerto Rico) who later on became Angie’s God Mother, were also a very important part of our small social circle. Ceres Vallely, and her lovely mother Angela, became one of our closest friends and later on she became Angie’s baptism’s God Mother. We also met and became very good friends with Oscar and Mina Abeyta, the finest people from Mexico which we have ever met. We have kept in touch with them throughout these many years until these days. They have a daughter who married and came to live in Tampa, FL, not very far from Orlando, where we live one half of the year.

THE ADAMS' HOUSE IN FONTAINEBLEU DR.
IN SLC AS SEEN IN JANUARY 2010

Most of our neighbors were very friendly and helpful to us, but, Dennis and Marilyn Adams and their children need to be mentioned especially. Marilyn, who passed away only a year and a half ago, was the sweetest lady one can think of. In spite of the fact she had been suffering from a serious illness for a long time, no one in my family can remember one single time when she was not in a good mood, smiling and trying to be helpful. At two years of age, our youngest daughter, Angie became very independent and would walk away from home to go visiting either Mrs. Barnett, who became her main candy supplier, or Marilyn for other sweets. One of those days, Marilyn found Angie happily sharing lunch with their little dog, eating from the dog’s plate. Over the last 28 years, this story has remained and will continue to be one of the favorite subjects of our conversations with the Adams’, every time we get together, provoking our uncontained laughter. In January of 2010, I visited Dennis and had dinner with him and his family, at their always warm and welcoming home, in Fontainebleau Dr where he lives by himself. Dennis continues to be a happy looking man. He is a great cook, and once he fixed the best hash browns I have ever had in my whole life.

THE CLARKS AT THEIR HOME IN SLC IN JANUARY 2010

The Bemis also became our dear friends. We helped them make personal arrangements with our dearest friends the Angeleris in their Buenos Aires, Argentina, to have Gail, their 16 year old daughter go to Buenos Aires and spend a summer with them. Gail, a beautiful and very charming girl, had a great time in Argentina and the two families became great friends thereafter. I suspect that it was Gail’s fascination with the Spanish Language one of the reasons that made her fall in love, and then get married to a Spanish speaking young man from Mexico, with whom they now have three beautiful children. I saw them in Salt Lake City in January 2010, when I went there skiing and took some time to visit our Utah friends. Nancy Bemis also lives by herself, after her husband passed away many years ago. She lives right next door to the Adams. It was Nancy who, in our early days in SLC, was trying to help Fanny learn English by speaking so slow it got to be kind of funny.



NANCY BEMUS AT HER HOME IN SLC IN JANUARY 2010


She used to greet Fanny like this: Gooood moooorning Faaanny, hooooow aaaare youuu?, caaan Iiiiii beee oooof heeeelp thiiiis mooorniiing?, and she continued to talk like that to Fanny for a long time after she made sure Fanny was on track with her English. That just tells the helping attitude all our friends had with us while we lived in SLC.

Over time, Tony and Nann Durando became our dearest friends, and have remained so all of these many years after we left Salt Lake City and the U.S. Tony and I talk two or three times a year and when we do, we do it for an hour or more till our ears hurt. We have many things in common, mainly a most old fashioned concept of what a family should be, and we are very proud of our families and love and care for all and every one of their members. We have recently become grand parents and we are deeply in love with our grand children too.


VISITING THE DURANDOS IN SLC IN 1981


During our stay in Salt Lake City, the Durandos and our family began to visit one another with certain frequency, as a result, we were able to develop a closer relationship, which we have maintained and improved over time. Their oldest daughter Chiara came to visit us and stayed with us in Guayaquil during the summer of 1992; Fanny and I saw them again in mid 1997, in Tucson, AZ, where they have lived since the late 80’s, and we saw them again in Phoenix, AZ, at the end of April of 2000, when Mariuxi, our oldest daughter graduated from Thunderbird, The American International School of Business as a Master of International Business. Tony and Nann drove the 500 miles from Tucson, to be with us during that great day for our family. Tony and I maintain a fluid correspondence via internet and among other things, I have promised Tony that I will learn Italian (which I’m doing so), and he has promised me to improve his already fluent Spanish.
On the work front, at Northwest Pipeline, during my first few weeks at the home office, nobody knew what my responsibilities were going to be; later on and for a few months, I was assigned meaningless responsibilities, it was like they brought me in without a clear plan, no one was in charge of me, and no one would care about the cost of having me there. I began to wonder whether I made the right decision when accepting to move to Salt Lake City without a clear definition of what my new job was going to be. I understood later that in a big corporation like Northwest Pipeline, the decision making process was slow, sometimes very slow and some other times extremely slow. I was drawing a very good salary but I was not producing anything in return, and that made me feel concerned and somehow guilty. I had to be patient, but at the same time I was beginning to feel a bit nervous about the whole thing. It wasn’t until March of 1981, that my former boss Glenn Nelle, in Houston, at my request, took the initiative and suggested my presence in his office beginning mid April. He wanted me to be in charge of the controllership of APCO Argentina, the Northwest’s affiliate located in Houston, TX.
In my next posting: HOUSTON IS OUR NEW HOME TOWN

A NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY ARRIVES

NEWBORN ANGIE IN HER SISTER'S ARMS
IN SLC, UT, OCTOBER 1980

Prepared we were. Fanny´s mom, who then lived in NYC, came over to help me with the kids. She was then 50, and was full of energy and willingness to help. I just don´t know how would I have faced the facts without her. On October 30, 1980, one day before Halloween, at 8:00 O´clock, our new baby, our youngest daughter was born, at the LDS Hospital up in "the avenues" near down town Salt Lake City. The place was adorned all over for the occasion, with lighted orange pumpkins and spooky witches flying on brooms. She was the only black haired child in the whole room. She was the subject of attention from almost everyone entering the newborns´ room, where there were at least another ten children, all of them blue eyed blondes, who had been born that same day.

THE DAY ANGIE WAS BORN, THE LDS HOSPITAL
IN SLC WAS DRESSED UP FOR HALLOWEEN

Since our new baby´s older sister and brother had been delivered through a C section, it was just to be expected that this baby would be delivered through the same procedure, therefore, I had requested the doctor to allow me to be present during the operation, which I did. I was asked to dress up just as the doctors do, with a long-green attire with a head cover and a mask, just as the doctor's assistants did. I was in the operating room during the whole procedure, separated from the operating team just by a light blue curtain with a small "window” which allowed me to see almost everything that was going on in there. The anesthesia Fanny got allowed her to be alert during the whole operation, therefore, she was looking at me and I was looking at her all the time providing her with an "eye support" she seem to need. Everything seemed to be going as desired.
In a matter of minutes, the doctor was holding my new baby up by her feet in his right hand. He said in a relatively high voice, “it’s a girl”, and suddenly slapped the baby´s butt so she could cry, but she didn´t cry…she screamed, making us know she was alive and very well.
Deep in my mind I had been hoping that it would be a baby boy, however, almost instantaneously I felt a great feeling of happiness. She was held up in the doctor`s hands for a while, her body was all covered by a whitish greasy looking substance which they soon had to clean the baby from. Fanny was awake and smiling at the baby and, in a matter of minutes, the medical team placed the baby in her mother's hands and soon the baby was feeding herself like an expert. Mother and baby smiled out of happiness and comfort. I kissed my wife and my new and beautiful baby and thanked Fanny for the wonderful gift she just delivered to our family.
Fanny and I had agreed about the bay’s names beforehand, so we started calling her Angie as soon as she was born. Her name is Angela for many reasons, not the least of them because she was, she is and she’ll always be an Angel to us, but she carries her mom’s middle name, which is also that of my only aunt’s, my father’s sister first name. My aunt died of cancer of the uterus when I was very young, and I have a very lovely memory of her and her caring character. She used to say I was her favorite nephew. My Angie’s middle name is Judith, for my mother’s middle name. Time has shown us that Angie carries in her character the vision, the sweetness, the firmness of character, the readiness for hard work and the determination of my mother as well.
Back in September, when we took our two young children (6 and 4) to Woodstock Elementary, Mariuxi (6), who at the time spoke no English, was accepted for kindergarten and was given a special tutor to help her with the language. We were told that she could be moved to first grade but she would need to understand and speak English by Christmas; otherwise she would remain in kindergarten for the entire year. Mariuxi not only passed the test of English, but she did it two months before it was due. The speed at which she learned the new language was astonishing and the School Principal personally congratulated us on her progress. Rafaelito was registered in pre-kinder and, at the beginning he had some minor difficulties learning the language and adapting to the new surroundings, but, by Christmas time he was already communicating mostly in English with his big sister and feeling comfortable with his peers.

Fanny and I had decided that in order to help in the preservation of our culture and our heritage, we would always speak to our kids in Spanish, making sure they would never forget their mother language. By mid school year, in March 1981, both Mariuxi and Rafaelito were fully bilingual. At home, the rule was that they should speak English in their School, with their teachers and peers, and among themselves, but they should speak Spanish with us. The rule functioned very well for some time; however, by the end of the school year, in June 1981, they spoke English to us, while we would always speak Spanish to them. That worked well because it helped Fanny in her efforts to learn English too.


HALLOWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA WAS
DISPLAYED ALL OVER THE LDS HOSPITAL
THE DAY ANGIE WAS BORN

On Halloween’s day of 1980, I took Mariuxi and Rafaelito to the hospital to visit their little sister Angie. They were extremely curious and happy to be able to see their mom, whom they hadn’t seen for two days, and their newborn sister. They were also very happy to see the entire Halloween extravaganza displayed all over the hospital. I believe that was the day and the moment when Mariuxi made of Halloween her favorite holiday. Both Mariuxi and Rafaelito had behaved admirably at home in the absence of their mom. I was proud of them and so were their mom and grand mom as well. That night, Mariuxi, Rafaelito and I went trick or tricking in our neighborhood. Mariuxi was already pronouncing the key words very well, but Rafaelito was just saying "tick o thick" which sounded funny to our neighbors. They laughed and gave candy to our kids very generously.


DOWN TOWN SALT LAKE CITY IN WINTER

Two days later we took the mother and the new baby back home. It was a great day for all of us, we loved little Angie who was a real doll, she was slightly brown skinned, had brown eyes and had a lot of dark hair, she ate a lot and her mom was very happy to breast feed her, which she did it for the following six months. Angie was born with 7 pounds and 2 ounces but, at the end of the first six months she was already a 14 pound robust baby. Both the mom and the new baby were extremely healthy. On the Monday after we brought home little Angie, we were visited by ten ladies from the neighborhood who brought individual-handmade baby girl’s clothing presents for our new baby. It was like the Wise men visiting Bethlehem. They wanted to tell us they were happy to know we had a new member in our family and, therefore they welcomed their new neighbor. By then, we hadn’t even been introduced to most of these sweet ladies, but they wanted to show us we were welcome to their neighborhood. Nine of them were LDS ladies while the tenth was a Lutheran one. We received from these fine ladies an unforgettable lesson of good will, of kindness and religious openness. Here we were, Catholics in a land supposedly not very friendly to our faith, being greeted and treated with love, just like only brothers and sisters would, by people we hadn’t even been formally introduced yet. That was Utah's people at their best, which was also America at its best!. That very day we began to love Utah, as if it was our own homeland, that same day we began to love America more than ever before and we still do.
Little Angie was a quiet and charming baby. Her brother and sister loved to carry her in their arms. We allowed them to do it but were very careful to be close by just in case. Soon the holiday season preparations started and we, just as almost everyone else, began getting ready for Christmas and the New Year. It’s hard to believe, I'm writing all this in December 16, 2010, it is almost exactly 30 years ago that all of this happened, our lives have run fast, when I think of it, it seems that all of this happened only a few years ago.

We bough a natural Christmas tree and a lot of lights and ornaments, the children loved it all. By then, Mariuxi was already speaking fluent English and Rafaelito was getting there too. Advised by our friend and Angie’s God Mother Ceres Vallely, Fanny decided that on top of everything else she had to do at home, she would attend English classes at the University of Utah. That showed her determination to overcome the limitations imposed on her by the language. In the following six months she was speaking and understanding English enough to make her life much easier. She was by then, beginning to get used to her new style of life, she was by then just like any typical American housewife, no maids to help at home. Regarding me, for the first time in my life I began to do the lawn mowing and other house work I had never done before. I adjusted myself to the new life with no sweat too.



ALTA, IN SLC, UTAH-BEAUTIFUL
MOUNTAIN, GREAT SKIING
The winter season started and skiing is the sport almost everybody practices in Salt Lake City. Skiing is for Salt Lakers what soccer is for Brazilians. Therefore, winter is by far the favorite season for most Salt Lakers. The winter of 1980 was a great snow season in the Utah Rocky Mountains, which are widely known to have “the best snow on earth”. Fanny, Mariuxi and Rafaelito were soon in the “skiing mood” and so was I. We wanted to learn and start practicing skiing, so I had to buy skiing gear for the whole family except Angie. Soon we became skiing nuts as we were able to buy inexpensive season skiing passes through the Northwest Pipeline's Skiing Club which used to buy massive numbers of tickets for its members at wholesale prices and sold them to us at a 50% subsidized price. We skied the whole season which prolonged itself until late April 1981. We never got enough of it during that whole winter. Just as most Salt Lakers we began to think of winter as our favorite season too. We began to love Salt Lake City, its people, the snow, the winter, the whole thing…

In my next posting: OUR LIFE IN SALT LAKE CITY

SALT LAKE CITY

OUR SWEET HOME
IN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH IN 1980

The dice had been thrown on the table, Northwest, through Glen Nelle and Piero Ruffinengo proposed and elaborated the idea of my transfer to the U.S, while my wife and I had discussed the idea thoroughly, and no possible point of disagreement was left out to chance. Fanny and I had decided to face the challenge, so, by mid May 1980, I submitted my resignation to Jose Antonio Correa, the CEO of COFIEC, and gave him a month to find a replacement for me. Correa was shocked by my resignation, he tried in many ways to convince me to stay, and he thought and said it, that I was taking a risky step in exchange for a high and solid position in one of the most prestigious banking institutions in the country, where I had an open future in my hands. I thanked Correa for his words but I told him I had already made a decision and that I was a man whose word was more important than his signature. There was no possibility of revesing our decision. Dr. Correa announced my resignation to the bank and invited my wife and me for a farewell cocktail party at his luxurious 11th floor apartment in one of the nicest buildings in town; “El Gato Pardo”. The highest ranking members of COFIEC and a few other executives of the Quito banking community attended this cocktail party, in which Correa spoke a few words “to say many thanks and good bye, and wish the best to a good friend and an extraordinary executive of COFIEC who will be hard to be replaced”. I said also a few words to thank Dr. Correa for guiding me through the world of banking of which I was a complete neofite when I entered COFIEC, I also expressed my gratitude “to Dr. Correa and all those in the bank and outside it, who helped me successfully go through the core of the banking business”. Finally, I said farewell to all of those in the organization who helped me successfully accomplish my responsibilities.
Our group of Guayaquil friends in Quito organized at least three separate farewell parties for us, in each one of them, tears were shed, as all and every one of our friends, boys and girls, said in very few but expressive words how much they were going to miss us, and how much they wanted us to succeed in our new life, far away from them. Those were unforgettable times; we fully appreciated then, and we will continue to remember those real demonstrations of friendship and camaraderie.
In July 1980, I flew to Salt Lake City all by myself, to try to find housing for my family and schooling for my two young children; Mariuxi and Rafael Jr. (“Rafaelito”). By the beginning of August my family joined me in SLC. Fanny was seven months pregnant so we would not be able to postpone her trip any longer, lest she was forgiven to fly. We stayed for a full month in an apart-hotel before we found a three bedroom nice house in South East Salt Lake City. We chose this house mainly because it was located in a very quiet neighborhood, had a price that I could pay for, but, more than anything else, because the school nearby, Woodstock Elementary was, according to the information we gathered, an excellent school for our children and was only four blocks away from our place.

THE WASATCH MOUNTAINS, RIGHT
IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE IN SLC

Like most other schools in Salt Lake City, this was one where 90% of the children were Mormons. We were a bit concerned about this fact, as we had been told by many of our friends that, given the fact we were catholic, our children might not be well accepted in the school and we as a family might not be welcomed in the community. On the contrary, we soon found ourselves within a community that not only had happily accepted our children in the school, but to us as their neighbors. I can’t find the proper words to express our gratitude to all those neighbors who in one way or another made us feel welcome to their community. Contrary to what many people had thought, none of our neighbors ever tried to change our religious believes (which have always been strong) and they didn’t miss one single chance to be helpful and gracious to us.

By October the 1st, 1980, we moved in to our new place, located at 5986 Fontainebleau Dr, SLC, Utah, 84121.The house was a three bedroom, ten year old, previously owned by a couple of retired people who were moving to Las Vegas and who were pleased to leave in the house, at no cost to us, a great part of their furniture and kitchen stuff, including some fine dining ware. We bought the house for $85,000, with a 25 year mortgage, with monthly payments of approximately $600. We were very happy with our place; it had a nice front yard with two beautiful pine trees by the sidewalk, and a large backyard with a very tall oak tree and a beautiful cherry tree which gave the house a sense of an age which it really did not have. A beautiful and well cared for grass was part of both, the front and the back yards, something that I really began to love and care for. From the front window of our house we could see the impressive Wasatch Mountains which became all covered by snow in the winter. Commuting time to my office in downtown SLC was about 30 minutes in the morning and afternoon rush hours and taking the kids to school was only a matter of minutes.

WOODSTOCK ELEMENTARY, THE SCHOOL OUR CHILDREN ATTENDED IN SALT LAKE CITY


It hadn’t been two weeks yet since we moved in, when one morning, at seven A.M , I woke up and looked through the front window, just to find out that a heavy snowstorm had fallen during the night, which had completely blocked our drive way. I was literally blocked by two feet of snow on the ground and by two large branches of one of my pine threes which had fallen victim of the heavy snow. I came out thorough my front door just to look around and think about what to do to be able to go out to work, while wondering of how unprepared I was for this kind of weather. I must have looked pathetically terrified, thinking that I had to manually remove all that snow, just at a time when my next door neighbor, Mr. Barnet (I later found out he had been a very respected Bishop of the LDS Church), who was wearing a heavy jacket and a furry head protector which at the time seemed one of those used by the Eskimos, loudly said hello to me and asked what I thought of what I had in front of me. “Good morning, I said, I’m terrified at what I’m seeing, It seems that I won’t be able to get my car out of the garage”, he smiled and said to me:”don’t you worry neighbor, I’ll help you in just a moment”, and in a matter of minutes, he, in fact, brought out his chain saw and cut the fallen pine tree branches in pieces small enough to be removed from the driveway, which he did it himself, and immediately he brought his snow blower and blew off the snow from my drive way, even before the street began to be cleared for traffic, which also happened before it was time to take the kids to the school and for me to go to work.

UTAH UNDER SNOW


Mariuxi and Rafaelito had a ball when they came out and saw the snow on the ground. They were extremely happy to see the snow for the first time in their lives and began playing with it as soon as they got out of the house. I took them to school and as they entered it, they were still laughing and playing with the snow, just as many of their peers were doing that morning in mid October 1980. Meanwhile, Fanny’s tummy was getting bigger and bigger, the doctor had said the baby was due by end October and advised us to get prepared for the great day.

In my next posting: A NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY ARRIVES