Marino di Teana

The story of Francisco Marino di Teana is an remarkable and inspiring one. His
beginnings were very humble. He was born in 1920, in the small town of Teana
in Potenza, in the south of Italy, where nothing had essentially changed in
hundreds of years. There were no schools, and the tradition was to learn a
trade. At the age of five, Marino worked in the fields with his grandfather, and
was a shepherd. He taught himself to count using pebbles.
When he was 16, his grandfather sent him to Argentina to find his father, who
had abandoned the family a number of years earlier. He succeeded in
finding his father in Buenos Aires, but his father was far from pleased to see
him, and was unwilling to support him. Marino found work as a mason on a
construction site. By the age of 22, he was heading the entire project, and
had ten workers under him. At night, he went to the National Polytechnic
School in Salguero, where he earned a degree in architecture.

Submitted by Galerie Dutko