Miracle in San Marco

San Marco d'Urri is like scores of villages that cling to the Apennine foothills southeast of Genoa. It is a half-deserted huddle of 50 decaying, slate-roofed houses, without telephones, cars or even a policeman. Life has changed little since Genoese Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World, creating a path that many Italians have followed since. The people of San Marco live mainly on chestnuts and vegetables, seldom taste meat, except on four feast days each year. Last week the dour and cagey villagers danced self-consciously in the streets before the cameras that had come to record the biggest event ever to take place in San Marco d'Urri.

Joy Every Quarter. One of the townspeople--whom no one really remembered--who set forth to make his fortune in the New World was a Genoese foundling named Leopoldo Pietro Saturno, whom a San Marco farmer and his wife adopted to help with the chores. At 20 he left for the U.S. and settled on an irrigated farm beside Reno's Truckee River. Soon he was able to send back to San Marco for his bride--his village sweetheart, Teresa Tissians. By the time he died in 1919, Leopoldo had raised five children and laid the foundations of a fortune in downtown Reno real estate. In the years since, by prudent investment, Leopoldo's two sons, Joseph, now 71, and Victor, 64, boosted the family's wealth to an estimated $2,000,000, but continued to live in bachelor simplicity in an unostentatious bungalow on Reno's Arlington Avenue.

One day, remembering their parents' talk of the hard poverty in their old-country village, the two brothers--who had never been there--decided on a gift for San Marco. Everyone in the village would be given 25 shares of Bank of America stock, worth $1,200, with annual dividends running to $80 or more. Said Joseph: "We felt that giving them stock, so they would get a dividend check every quarter, would put joy in everyone's heart." Argued Victor: "Then we thought that because of America's trouble with Russia . . . this might be a pretty good move. Because if Italy went Communist, the whole of Africa would be open to Russia." He added: "If these people hang onto their stock, it will be worth a lot of money someday."

To See the Pope. Several weeks ago a Bank of America officer moved into the village, quietly began listing everyone entitled to stock-- from 18-month-old Orietta Perasso to 90-year-old Giovanni Ferretto. Unaccustomed to stocks and banks, or for that matter to generous, impulsive gestures from strangers, the villagers were suspicious. But last week all save a few skeptics donned feast-day clothes to sign their names--or "X"--to their Bank of America stock certificates. Few had decided what to do with their money. "We wait until tomorrow," said one peasant. "I might buy a suit." allowed another. "And I'd like to see the Pope, only I'm afraid I'd get lost in Rome."

Some in the village wanted to erect a plaque in the churchyard to their distant benefactors, financed by the first $40 from everyone's dividend check. Later they decided that $8 a head should be plenty. Other villagers argued that instead they should rename the village Saturno. "It's a great honor" said one, adding slyly: "And it costs nothing."

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