The Serafini family ran the Cafe de Luxe in Kirk Wynd.
Umberto Serafini and his wife Emilia (ms Equi) were first generation immigrants, His father, Pietro Serafini, was a farmer in his homeland.
When Umberto died in 1957, his wife took over the shop and business.
Umberto and Emilia had two children Peter and Gloria.
Their daughter Gloria’s story is the stuff of Holywood movies. It has been published in a book “Letters to Ilio from the Cafe de Luxe: A Selkirk Story”. The book is based upon some 200 letters written by Gloria to Ilio Orlandi, a former Italian prisoner-of-war.
Ilio, a farm boy from Tuscany, was called up to fight in Mussolini’s army in 1940 and taken prisoner in 1943. Shipped to Scotland to a camp just outside Selkirk, he was to meet and fall in love with the teenage Gloria. Ilio was sent back to Italy a few weeks after Gloria found out she was pregnant. She had not told anyone.
After Ilio was sent home Gloria started writing letters to him, almost daily. Sadly, despite both wanting to be reunited, fate continually conspired against the young lovers to make this impossible.
In due course, Gloria married in Scotland. And for more than 60 years the letters that documented her first love lay hidden in a secret place in an old villa high in the Tuscan hills.
Gloria and Ilio’s son, Peter, lived in Selkirk until he was 11, when he went to Bishop Auckland to live with his mother and stepfather.
When Gloria died, Peter and his wife, Barbara, started a search to find Ilio. In due course, the couple made contact with him and regular visits to Italy every year became the norm.
Barbara had already amassed considerable family information from Gloria while she was alive and it was this, information from Peter and the letters, that allowed her to put together the narrative of Ilio and Gloria’s relationship.
In Barbara’s words: “If these were only love letters, it would be of only personal interest – although that will be the appeal for a lot of readers. But to me it’s history. It tells what it was like living (in Selkirk) in the years just after the war. It’s the sort of history that just gets lost. The sort of thing people don’t think about. And things you find out are fascinating social history.”
It is not yet known when the family business ended.
(Footnote: In Shawfield Cemetery there is a headstone to Umberto Seraffini (born 18-7-1887, died 15-1-1957). Erected by his ever loving wife, Emilia. His children Peter and Gloria, And his sister-in-law Teresa Biagioni.)
Read more at: http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/news/wartime-love-affair-is-brought-to-book-1-1868271