Italian brothers to reunite on Rome TV

A reunion between Calogero “Todd” Iannelli of Kalispell and his older brother Antonino will play out next month on a television station in Rome, Italy.

Todd Iannelli recently reconnected with his brother on Facebook. The Sicilian siblings were separated 52 years ago when the younger Iannelli was sent at age 3 to live with an uncle in Chicago while the older brother stayed in Sicily.

The brothers’ mother hemorrhaged to death several hours after Todd was born. He was sent to an orphanage for three years and the remaining three siblings were split up in the face of the family’s tragedy in the poverty-stricken ancient village of Caccamo, Sicily.

That’s all behind them now as Ianelli and his 22-year-old son Justino leave April 12 for Italy. RAI-TV in Rome is paying for their flights, and the two brothers will reunite on live television.

“I’m excited, but nervous, too,” Ianelli said. “It will be a big change.

Antonino Ianelli, who is retired from a top executive job at the Fiat automobile plant, is paying for the rest of Ianelli’s family to join them in Sicily a few days later. That includes Ianelli’s wife, Tessa, and their other children, Vincent, 26, Nicholas, 19, and Tenessa, 14.

The family has open-ended round-trip tickets and plan to stay a couple of months getting to know their long-lost extended family.

“My family and I are very fortunate,” Ianelli said. “We’ve wanted this to happen for so many years.”

The two families have been spending time on the webcam program Skype getting to know one another.

Iannelli’s family in Italy had tried to keep in touch and made several serious attempts to find him, even going so far as to travel to the Chicago area at one point. But Iannelli’s abusive stepmother, for whatever reason, he said, didn’t want his family to reconnect with him and went to great lengths to keep him hidden.

After a hardscrabble childhood in Chicago, Ianelli eventually found his way to Montana and worked a decade at the Plum Creek sawmill in Evergreen.

The brothers reconnected on Facebook in early January.