MONTICELLO -- Lt. Antonio Bizio fell in love from behind rows of barbed-wire fence, thousands of miles away from his Italian homeland and his future bride, whom he'd never met.
An Italian air force fighter pilot in World War II, Bizio was shot down by the British over the Mediterranean Sea in August 1942 and captured. He was first shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in Scotland before being transported to the U.S.
After being held at a POW camp in Tennessee, Bizio was sent to Camp Monticello, an Italian POW camp southeast of the town that was operational from August 1943 to October 1945.
While there, another prisoner, an Italian navy officer, told Bizio stories about his four younger sisters. One, in particular, stood out to Bizio. After the war ended and he was released, Bizio traveled to Rome to meet the woman he'd heard so many stories about.
In 1949, Bizio and that woman, Giuliana Cillario, were married.
That romance is just one story the couple's daughter, Silvia Bizio, wants to tell in a documentary tentatively titled Camp Monticello: A Forgotten History. It's a film she hopes will raise awareness about the former camp and help preserve what is left of it.
In April, the Arkansas Humanities Council awarded a $5,000 grant to help with the documentary's preproduction.
Silvia Bizio, a longtime entertainment journalist based in Los Angeles and working for Italian newspaper la Repubblica, said "the focus of the documentary is this camp." While her parents' story is important to her, she views the woods where Camp Monticello once stood as a historical and cultural site that should be preserved.
On the first Thursday of October, the 65-year-old found herself back at Camp Monticello, a place she visited in 1971 and again last year. With her was her son, 29-year-old Matteo Borgardt, a documentary filmmaker who is assisting her with the documentary, which is in its preproduction stage.
The mother and son were joined by Michael Pomeroy, a Monticello native and Camp Monticello expert who now lives in Clarksville, Tenn.; and Jodi Barnes, station archaeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey's University of Arkansas at Monticello research station.
The camp was closed in 1946 and dismantled, with pieces of it auctioned off. The 800 acres where Camp Monticello once stood is now mostly university property, a pine forest used for teaching and research.
The barbed wire is gone. The barracks, which held up to 3,800 Italian POWs and their U.S. Army guards, have collapsed into memory, as well.
Recently, part of the land was sold to the Monticello Economic Development Commission and cleared for possible industrial development.
But reminders of the camp are still visible through the pines and hardwoods. A brick chimney, part of the camp's steam plant, reaches through the tree cover into the southern Arkansas sky. A rusted water pump, installed by Layne Arkansas Co. of Stuttgart, rests among the pine needles. Concrete blocks, which once served as guard tower foundations, poke up through the underbrush.
As the four walked through the woods, Borgardt filmed certain sights, imagining how they would appear on screen.
"I like to imagine this place full of people," he said. "It must have been quite an amazing experience. Really harsh, but at the same time, when [my grandfather] was able to get out of it, I can't imagine the joy he had. How it changed his life. I try to imagine it, but it's hard to put into words."
For the 55-year-old Pomeroy, the woods are familiar territory. His grandfather's corporation owned part of the land for the camp when it was first constructed. After the war, an easement through the land to get to other family property allowed Pomeroy and his father to visit the camp when "it still had more a ghost town feel to it," he said.
As a teenager in the 1970s, he rode his Honda trail motorcycle down the camp's dirt paths, which still remain.
Pomeroy read about Silvia Bizio's first visit to the camp in 1971, when she visited with the camp's former U.S. doctor, Cyrus Klein.
About three years ago, when helping an Italian author research a book about Italian POWs in the U.S., Pomeroy got Bizio's contact information. Hearing about the documentary, he immediately volunteered to help.
Pomeroy worries about what remains of the camp. He'd also like the site to be preserved.
"What I would like to see is a mixed-use public park, biking and hiking trails with historical markers," he said. "Since this is a lightly populated area, you need to have a variety of things to have good attendance here."
Bizio and Borgardt spent last week in Arkansas, scouting locations at the camp and interviewing people about it, including a former guard. The plan is for actual filming for the documentary to take place next year.
Antonio Bizio died in 1998. His wife is 92 and splits her time between Los Angeles and Rome.
Silvia Bizio said her father didn't talk much about the camp, but she taped an interview with him before he died.
She also is working to trace the route her father and uncle took to Camp Monticello.
"This was our saving grace that he wound up here," she said. "The idea is to use my own personal history to bring this camp back to life.
"We want to preserve part of history. They may look like blocks of cement, but they are foundations. They are history. There is a lot that can be saved."
Barnes thinks a documentary about the camp can only increase public awareness of what occurred there.
"Up until part of it was cleared, it was one of the most well-preserved camps, because it had just been sitting as a timberland," Barnes said. "It really tells important stories about World War II, Arkansas history and to me, it's one of the most significant sites here in southeast Arkansas."
Limited excavation at the site has turned up a treasure trove of items: tubes of toothpaste and shaving cream, intact cologne bottles and utensils.
"There's still a lot here," she said. "There's so much research potential."
State Desk on 10/04/2015