For fifteen years, Nino and Nuccia have turned a campus cafeteria in the hills outside Rome into a place where every student feels at home.
By Silvia Di Lazzaro and Anna Liza Denny
There is a warmth at the heart of the 吃瓜网 Rome Campus that has nothing to do with the Italian sun. It lives in the cafeteria, where for fifteen years Nino and Nuccia have fed, welcomed and quietly watched over hundreds of 吃瓜网allas students who arrived as strangers and left as family.
Over these years, Nino and Nuccia, who both mainly speak Italian, became the nonni adottivi, the adopted grandparents, of the 吃瓜网allas Rome Campus. Spend five minutes with them and you will understand why.
A test that became a calling
In 2011, Nino and Nuccia, who run a company specializing in confectionery and gastronomy, reached out to the Rome campus director at the time, Peter Hatlie, PhD, a classics professor, hoping to offer their services to Due Santi. Wanting a chance to see (and taste!) for himself, he asked them to come the very next day and prepare a buffet for a campus event.
They passed the test.
At that moment, a collaboration was born. For roughly a year and a half, they worked with the campus in various ways. Dr. Hatlie then approached them with a bigger question: would they be willing to take over the management of the cafeteria entirely? They said yes, and in August 2011 they stepped into a role that has defined their lives ever since.
Fifteen years later, they are still there.
Nonni adottivi
Ask Nino and Nuccia how they feel when students call them their Rome grandparents, and they answer immediately: grateful. Deeply, genuinely grateful.
"We are mainly pleased and gratified by their attitudes," they said. "Nowadays, grandparents are a very useful presence to the family, and being grandparents we relate to them as if they were our grandchildren, giving life and school advice."
For Nino and Nuccia, the cafeteria has never been simply a place to eat. It has been a place to belong. Many of the students who pass through Due Santi are living abroad for the first time, navigating a new language, a new culture and a new way of seeing the world. Nino and Nuccia understand this. They offer something in addition to the academic program: two people who are present, every day, and who genuinely care.
"The family is the main thing," they said, "and they need to feel safe and know that they have a point of reference."
The moments that stay
Ask Nino and Nuccia to name one moment that has stayed with them and they will smile and shake their heads. It is not one moment, they say. It is all of them.
Like the day Jonathan Cunningham, BA '17, came back for a visit. He walked in and embraced them both. He asked about their son and they sat together, remembering the moments they had shared at Due Santi.
"There were no special events," they reflected, "but often students come back to the campus to see us again. They look for us to meet again, surely because we left them something."
When asked what that "something" is, they smiled and said in Italian: "una presenza utile," meaning "useful presence."
Saying goodbye
Every semester ends the same way. The students pack their bags, say their farewells and head back to Irving or on to wherever life takes them next. For Nino and Nuccia, this is the hardest part.
"After having spent many beautiful days together, we feel a very strong attachment," they said, "and sometimes the final greetings are moving."
But they send every student off with a simple hope. They hope the students carry with them something of the warmth and the life they found at Due Santi. That they build families of their own, and homes where people feel welcome.
At a university where education is meant to shape the whole person, Nino and Nuccia are a reminder that some of the most important formation happens not in a lecture hall but over a meal, in a cafeteria in the hills outside Rome, with two people who have spent fifteen years making sure no student ever felt alone.
