This story begins in the western Pennsylvania coalfields and follows the WWI military service of Alfonso Chiappelli, his visit to his Italian ancestral land and return to America.
Chiappelli is the name of a family that originated in an Etruscan culture, survived one thousand years of Roman rule and provided a storied presence within an Italian region for another thousand years before emerging as an American saga. It would take a Great War to transform the amalgamation of this extensive history.
This is the story of Alfonso Chiappelli and his service in World War I. Certainly it is a story that can be replicated in every American household with modest variation. It is a tale of becoming an American.
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