Last October, Utah geneticist Mario Capecchi was awarded the the Nobel Prize. But he discovered an even greater reward last month: a long-lost sister.
Last October, Utah geneticist Mario Capecchi was awarded the greatest honor possible in his field: the Nobel Prize. But incredibly, he discovered an even greater reward last month when he traveled back to his native land: his long-lost sister, Marlene Bonelli.
Capecchi, now 70, hadn’t seen his sister since the start of World War II. Both were young children at the time, and their liberal American mother turned Marlene over to family friends who would be able to provide better care for the baby. “In 1939 the Germans were already keeping track of my mother. The Italians jailed her and she knew she couldn’t keep the child,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Capecchi lived with his mother for two more years until she was arrested, and in the years that followed, he was forced to fend for himself on the streets. When the war ended, he was finally reunited with his mother, who’d been incarcerated in a Nazi prison camp for five years because of her outspoken liberal views. They soon emigrated to America, but Marlene remained in Italy - and, because Capecchi had been so young when his sister was given away, he was unaware of her existance.
But when Capecchi’s Nobel Prize win brought him international fame, his sister Bonelli took notice. She’d always known that she had an older brother, but didn’t know what had become of him. “She had been under the impression that our mother and myself had died in the war,” said Capecchi.
But when she saw his name on the cover of her local newspaper, she knew she had to reconnect with her older brother. So last month, Bonelli’s local newspaper arranged a reunion for the siblings in their native Italy.
Bonelli, who had been raised by her foster family in Austria, speaks only German, and Capecchi knows only English, so the siblings’ translators had their hands full, but it was a wonderful reunion by all accounts. “She is a very nice person, as any sister should be,” said Capecchi.