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Marisa is the registered
owner of
istrianet.org
and its affiliates, as well as the primary creative and technical force
behind
the internet project by the same name.
She was born in Rijeka / Fiume and her parents in the Arsa Valley region
of
Istria, homeland of their ancestors since at least
the 16th century. The family heritage is multi-ethnic and multi-lingual
- including Venetian, Austro-Hungarian, and Istro-Slavic - but it is
predominantly
Istro-Romanian in tradition, and proud to be so.
Marisa left Istria at the age
of three with her parents and baby sister in April of 1947. After
about a week's stay in
Silos, a refugee holding station in Trieste,
Italy, they went to live at 7 Isorelle, Savignone, a bucolic suburb of
Genoa near the town of Busalla, where they were
joined by many other
people from Fiume and Istria.
In late September 1951, after several months of processing in two
additional refugee camps - first Campo Bagnoli near Naples, Italy and
then Camp Lesum in Bremen, Germany - the family crossed the Atlantic Ocean on
the
General S.D. Sturgis, an American
troop ship and arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA on October 11,
1951 - poignantly, the day before Columbus Day - expecting to be on
their way to an anonymous farm in the state of Colorado. In mid-ocean,
however, their sponsorship was
switched from institutional (Catholic Charities) to private (a paternal
uncle), so their ultimate destination was accordingly changed. They traversed
the country - first heading North (changing trains in Chicago, Illinois)
and then East - to reach Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, and to then
join family and many Istrian friends in New York City, the
"melting pot of the world".
As corny as it may seem, as the family was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge
(that connects Brooklyn with Manhattan), Marisa (sitting on her uncle's
lap in the taxi) marveled at a wondrous statue that suddently appeared
on a nearby island in the bay - the Statue of LIberty! - not knowing
then the singular significance of this symbol of freedom to all
immigrants to the United States of America.
Marisa lived with her family in Park Slope, Brooklyn (a borough of New
York City) in an Istrian enclave until 1967, then she moved to Astoria,
Queens (another borough of the same city) for two years. Her next home became Manhattan, the heart of New York City,
where she has lived since 1969 and
always at the same address on the Upper West Side. In late 1995, her
recently widowed mother, Nina Ciceran, finally left
Park Slope herself to go live with Marisa, her elder daughter.
Marisa's educational
background is diversified and, as is the case with many immigrants,
was mostly undertaken as a parttime student while working fulltime. Her
first plateau was an Associate's Degree from Brooklyn College in
Accounting and Business Management - a detour made necessary to become
financially self-sufficient. Next came a Bachelor of Arts degree in
Romance Languages and Art History from Hunter College in 1974, with most
of the coursework completed at Columbia University. This was followed by
enrollment in architectural courses at Columbia University, which then
precipitated a career opportunity in Space Management at the same
university.
Having previously worked
alongside consultants from the accounting and management firm of Coopers
and Lybrand, she was instrumental in the installation of a computerized
space management system from Massachusetts Institute of Technology which
she had proposed and whose implementation project she jointly supervised
with M.I.T.'s consultants. In the process, she earned several
certificates in Computer Technology and Space Management from M.I.T.,
and one from the American Business
Association. In 1982, she set aside her middle-management position at Columbia
University to complete her Masters in Architecture and to pursue a PhD.
With a Generalist
Paralegal Certificate from Adelphi University already in hand,
Marisa capped off her education in 1990-1 with a year of law school, thereby acquiring
more than routine exposure to what is commonly referred to as
"the paper trail"!
Marisa's first trip back
home was in 1973 (four weeks in Italy, one week in Rijeka and Istria)
and has made several other extended trips to Istria (including Trieste and Rijeka) in the late 1990s-early 2000s, during which time she's snapped over 1,600 photographs and
collected many books, articles, and brochures on the magical land called
"Istria". You will find excerpts of many of these on this website.
Family Albums: |
