Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 139

HARTFORD COURANT Wednesday, July 22, 1998 ERIC TO THE EXTRA STEPHEN BROWN, left, and John Mulvaney hear opportunity knocking in the possibility of computer systems crashing the world over when 2000 rolls around. The Middletown consulting firm produces software that cleans computers of date references that are expected to cause chaos when the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 1999. 93-Year-Old Travels With Family To Ancestral Home bastian's feast committee of St. Se bastian's Roman Catholic Church.

He and about 20 others formed the re enactment of the feast and grand festival celebrated at the original St. Sebastian's Church in Melilli, and, 93, Marino is the only surviving member of that original group. This year, the 77th anniversary of the St. Sebastian's feast and festival was celebrated. The feast pre-dates the existence of the Middletown church, Marino said.

He was 16 when he became involved in fund raising for the first festival, and he and other men would go door to door asking for pledges to help. They didn't go to the front doors, either, he said, they went to the kitchen doors, where they'd often find Italian-Americans busy preparing a tomato sauce and pasta dinner. Later, an empty storefront on Court Street was adorned with the statue of St. Sebastian, and it was turned into a makeshift chapel. Parishioners of St.

Sebastian's back in Melilli started to leave their offerings of thanksgiving there pinned to the saint, as is the custom and those involved believed it was a sign from St. Sebastian, a martyr who was clubbed to death, that he wanted a replica of the Melilli church here in Middletown, where so many residents of Melilli had immigrated to. And so a capital campaign ensued, and in two years, the committee had the $50,000 needed to start, which was how much the bishop said they needed to begin. ItalianAmerican craftsmen donated their labor for the first two weeks of construction, then worked at half their usual rates, Marino recalled. "There's a saying in Italian, 'Give me a trade, but not an Marino said, saying many of the Italians who made their home here brought with them skilled trades they applied to businesses of their own.

Marino worked for the state in the comptroller's office for many years. In 1940, he became chairman of the feast at St. Sebastian's, a responsibility he carried for 15 years. One year, he decided to travel to Italy to see what the original feast and festival were like. "It's an elaborate affair," Marino said.

"People from all over the island come to Melilli to celebrate the feast." Fireworks, confetti being tossed from rooftops, bells ringing and Y2K more Pinnacle's than 3,000 potential major including nearly every Fortune 1000 companies. Continued from Page 1 Brown, a Guilford many of those companies puter errors that are likely to occur when the world's computer systems fail to recognize the year 2000. It stems from the fact that many programs to free up once precious memory use only two digits to refer to the year in dates 99 for 1999, for example. Left uncorrected, experts say many systems will either believe the year 2000 is 1900 meaning that they won't be able to perform such routine calculations as figuring out people's ages or loan repayment schedules or they will simply shut down. Pinnacle has found a niche of sorts.

The partners say the software product they released in October, PinPoint, is the only one on the market that corrects the problem for computer systems whose programs are written in FOCUS the fifth most common computer language in the world. PinPoint combs through millions of lines of computer code to identify date sensitive terms. The alternative is having technicians actually read every line and make the corrections manually a process akin to reading a very large phone book very closely. Because FOCUS is so common, bands playing add to the vibrancy of the festival, where the statue of the saint is led on a meaningful procession. "It's really very emotional to see all this going on," Marino said.

The festival in Melilli dates back to the year 1414. That trip made solo and at the age of 50 would turn out to be Marino's first to Italy, but not his last. He made the journey 15 more times, the most recent trip being his 16th, he said. Marino was born here, as was his late wife, but her family didn't care for the climate in Middletown, Tina Loomis said, and when her mother was an infant, the family returned to Melilli. By the time she was 16, Carmelina was being approached by so many people in the village who wanted to buy her citizenship papers from the United States, that she figured there must be something worth coming here for, her daughter said.

She married Sebastian when she was 19, and he was 22. The family's connection to their relatives in Melilli is something they want to remain strong throughout future generations. "My cousins, when I first met them in 1989 for the first time were so loving and so happy to meet me," Tina Loomis said. "I wanted my children to keep that connection, and when I went then, I said 'One day, I'm going to bring my children Marino produced little slips with the addresses of people 1 from all over the world as testimony to the nice people he met. And he had no shortage of himself hugging pretty women from the world over, either.

"I went to Italy two years ago, and I figured that was it," Marino said. He's glad he got the chance to go again, he said. "I had a wonderful time flirting with girls. I had a wonderful time being able to converse in Italian, and when people knew of my age, they treated me so wonderfully like I was a celebrity!" Marino said. It wasn't hard for Marino to sum up the trip his daughter and her family had dreamed of taking with him: "The best," he said.

Know of someone else's "summer sojourn," or want to share your own with us? Send in a letter to Amy Ash Nixon, editor of The Middietown Extra at The Hartford Courant, 373 E. Main Middletown 06457, or call (860) 343-5229. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LOOMIS FAMILY Sebastian Marino, 93, was treated to a two-week tour of Italy with his daughter, Tina Loomis, to his left, her husband, Mark, behind Tina to the left, and three of the couple's Jodi (front left), Tony (rear right) and taken in Naples. For Sebastian Marino, the trip was a reminder to him of trips he had taken with his wife in years past, and at certain points, he recalled songs she had sung to him in Italian, which brought back loving memories, Tina Loomis said. She said some of those memories and songs brought tears to their eyes.

Their mother died in October 1995, a month before the couple's 69th wedding anniversary. Sebastian "Mike" Marino is proud not only of his heritage but of his family, saying his four children, 15 grandchildren and 18 greatgrandchildren "are a beautiful legacy." Marino took a trip to Italy two years ago with another of the Loomis' children, Ricky, and, at 91, viewed that as his last trip to the land of his ancestors. But after a little reluctance, Tina and Mark finally got his OK for the trip, and the maZDa summer Sell Down Sale 0.9% APR Financing Available 1998 PROTEGE DX 1998 626 1995 Your 1995 Now Only Mazda USED Mazda $13,999 AC, 626 AT Miata V-6, LS, Only MX6 34K Miles $11,793 5 Stereo, CD Player, Plus Much More. Dual Air Bags, CD Player, Floor Mats and ONLY Includes $1,750 Rebate to Dealer. Much More.

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"It's doing the job," said Jack Perun, manager of data warehousing at the GE Capital division in Danbury. Perun described the program as the best cure for the millennium bug in FOCUS systems. And the state of New Jersey has reached a tentative agreement to pay Pinnacle about $3 million to update its systems, according to a state treasury official there. Mulvaney and Brown said they expect PinPoint, for which a corporate license costs $100,000, to make up the lion's share of the company's revenues over the next 15 months. Experts diagree on the gravity of the millennium bug problem.

"There will definitely be systems that won't function," Brown said. "But I don't predict doom and gloom. Overall, the world will survive." The more dire predictions include airplanes falling out of the sky and power grids collapsing across the globe. The chief economist of Deutsche Bank Securities predicts a 70 percent chance of worldwide recession stemming from the millennium bug, The New York Times has reported. Sen Christopher J.

Dodd, D- said last month that the nation's largest utility companies are not prepared for the day the clock strikes Jan. 1, 2000. There have already been Y2K problems, and Mulvaney said he expects them to accelerate in the coming months. Systems that look ahead a year, budget programs for example, will experience problems this January. Other experts argue that while the costs may be great as much as $600 billion, according to a prestigious research group in Stamford the armies of computer technicians working on the problem will solve it before it even happens.

Their faith is placed, in part, in companies like Pinnacle and in products like PinPoint. But even Brown and Mulvaney say many systems will suffer. For their parts, they'll be spending the change of-millennium New Year's Eve at home, though they're not even sure their VCRs will work. The company's Web site address is By AMY ASH NIXON Middletown Extra Editor MIDDLETOWN On the Isle of Capri, Sebastian Marino received a marriage proposal from a lady he says with a hearty laugh, "was too rich for my blood!" It was one of the stories the SUMMER SOJOURNS 93-year-old city resident brought home from a recent trip to the Italian countryside with his daughter, Tina Loomis, a nurse at Middletown High School, her husband, Mark, a teacher at E.C. Stevens School in Cromwell, and three of the couple's five children.

The trip was something Tina Loomis, the fourth child of Sebastian and his late wife, Carmelina, has dreamed about for many years, she said on a recent afternoon, recalling highlights from the trip. More than the scenery and the beauty of Italy, Tina Loomis wanted to pass on to her children the pride in her parents' Italian heritage, and the importance and power of staying connected with their relatives in Melilli, Italy. Both of her parents' families had come from Melilli, Sicily, as have thousands of Middletown's residents. "My kids have now made the connection with their cousins," Loomis said. "I think they can understand now what this means to me, and to our family." Tony, the Loomis's youngest child, who will turn 16 later this month, was more interested in the 12-day journey focusing on visits with family than with visiting sights around the country, his mother said.

When the Loomis's took a trip to Italy nine years ago, they were unable to bring Tony, but he was influenced deeply by the stories, pictures and mementos brought back, Tina Loomis said. For a time after coming back from Italy, he insisted his parents call him "Antonio," they said. And Tony favors eating fruit after a meal instead of dessert, because "It's the Italian way," his mother said. "He's very proud of his Italian heritage." Tony was his grandfather's roommate they call him "Nonno," Italian for grandfather and they enjoyed the special time together, from June 20 to July 2, as did the rest of the family. five children, who are, from left, Lisa (far right).

This snapshot was three-generation visit to Italy was planned. The Loomis' daughters, Jodi, 27 and Lisa, 18, rounded out the group of six traveling together. This October will mark the 100th anniversary of Sebastian Marino's parents arriving in Middletown from the old country, he said. His father worked in construction, and his mother ran an Italian grocery store on Court Street, which she began out of a room in their apartment, later buying a building and having a larger market on its first floor. Marino was one of eight children.

At his mother's store, where she worked 14-hour days, she also sold tickets for the ships that would bring other immigrant relatives to America. People would save and then buy tickets and send them home to bring other family members, Marino said. Marino went on to become one of the founding members of the St. Se- LOCAL DEATHS Mary Barron Johnson of Ames Hollow Road, Portland, died July 12. She was 66.

1 Nebo Salvatore Milardo Jr. of Vermont, formerly of Portland, died July 13. He was 52. Gala M. Gardiner Ehrhard of Edgewood Road, Portland, died July 14.

She was 100. Gedeon A. "Frenchy" LaMontagne of Cynthia Lane, Middletown, died July 13. He was 68. Salvatore D'Alfonso of Timber Hill Road, Cromwell, died July 13.

He was 95. a Virginia "Gina" Lyman Fredell of Spruce Terrace, Portland, died July 15. She was 66. Caroline Winter Ellis of Middle town died July 15. She was 92.

Sylvia H. Johnson Francis of Chestnut Street, Middletown, died July 14. E. Turner of Thomas Street, Middletown, died July 13. She was 79.

Jacob Zibulsky, formerly of Middletown, died in Florida on May 27. He was 93. 1 Jacqueline W. Butler of Main Street, Cromwell, did July 17. She was 79..