Non ha senso vivere senza condividere…
Journalists have written about Sergio – sometimes brilliantly.
It will be enough to rewind the film of his life and stop to choose some nuggets of wisdom, irony and zest for life, thought and written by Sergio.
These are his own statements, autographed, collected over the years and remembered by Giacomo Sado.
The review opens with his declaration on the values of conviviality, sharing and belonging to a community.
Sergio used to say:
«There is no point in living without sharing. I would even lose the pleasure of eating and drinking if I didn’t do it with others. If I have to have even just a coffee alone, I immediately become sad and nervous. One lives with others, likeable or not, close to our ideas or far from them; otherwise what kind of life would it be?»
Other quotes dedicated to his work:
«VITA was born in Hone in 1961. That that was the year of the first centenary of the Unification of Italy everyone knows; I also have a few other memories. Kennedy had just been elected President of the United States and there had already been the failed American landing at the Bay of Pigs. Juventus had won yet another league title with Charles and Sivori…»
Opening a coach company in those years was certainly a major entrepreneurial gamble. And Sergio knew it:
«It was truly a gamble, at the time, for me. By opening the company I was betting everything on the coach as the privileged means of popular locomotion. And this in the years when it seemed that the economic miracle was going to put us all and only in the car. And indeed more and more cars were being seen every day. One woke up in the morning and discovered that even the neighbour’s son had got himself a car. An unstoppable development…»
Then, development not without difficulties; listen to this declaration of his keeping politics in the background:
«In the early 1970s at a certain point people began to talk even in Valle d’Aosta about the regionalisation of transport, in the sense that some party and even more some trade union wanted to create a regional body to directly manage all public road transport. I remember that one day I attended a packed meeting in Aosta at the events hall of the Regional Palace and at a certain point I too took the floor. I said: ‘Do you want my coaches? Fine I’ll sell them all to you and then I’ll put myself forward to be the President of your outfit. Or have you already given the post to a former trade unionist?’ Everyone burst out laughing! And nothing more came of it. Sometimes, it’s true, a laugh can bury everything…»
His gift of irony, accompanied by disenchantment:
«When our first designed coaches appeared, more than one friend called me crazy. And goodness knows what the competitors were thinking… So I decided to also make a poster, a giant print to hang on the wall. In front of the coach with the boats and the sea painted on one side, there was a photograph of a beautiful blonde girl, blue eyes, with a pink backpack, hitchhiking. She was wearing a pair of short shorts, at the time a knockout. Well, from that moment everyone told me I had had a brilliant idea…»
One of his maxims on community, which for him was, in the end, the human community.
«It makes no sense if with our work we don’t contribute to making the Valley a place where things are always getting better. Territories ever more beautiful and without poverty. But also to improve the world. How can one think of living well without respecting others and if one doesn’t lend a hand to those who truly need it?»
One cannot close this review forgetting the value he attributed to responsibility. Especially if we think of the growing number of the irresponsible today.
Sergio believed so strongly in the duty to be responsible (in work and in life) that when something happened he instinctively asked himself: why? He didn’t immediately say: who did it? And before questioning others he questioned himself: where might I have gone wrong?
It would be a serious oversight if we did not recall the values of modesty, honesty and pragmatism. Concrete things, rather than appearances.
Sergio always displayed a very original business card of his. Even in important circumstances, when introducing himself at an important negotiation.
What was written on that card? Simply this: Sergio Calliera, not a doctor.
