A Death in the Family

The insistence of Aldo Moro's wife and children on a private funeral was understandable: the more the Christian Democrats refused to bargain for Moro's life, the deeper became Eleonora Moro's bitterness. But the privacy request would have been typical of the Moros under any circumstances "Their main characteristic," said a family friend, "is a reserve that is almost pathological."

Throughout his 32-year political career and his longer (33 years) marriage. Moro's private life was carefully separated from his work. "In public life, you can consider my husband a bachelor or a widower." Signora Moro once answered a request for an interview. "My children belong to me and not to the party."

The children, three girls and a younger boy. shared the agonizing 54-day vigil with their white-haired 62-year-old mother, the daughter of an M.D. Son Giovanni, 20. a law student at the University of Rome, and the youngest daughter. Agnese. 26. a university student, lived with their parents in a comfortable duplex on Rome's suburban Via del Forte Trionfale. The second daughter, Anna Giordano, 29. a pediatrician reputedly as meditative and complex as her father, came home again to await word. Anna, although seven months pregnant, at one point evaded reporters, walked a quarter of a mile to a bus stop, then rode for three miles to retrieve from a telephone booth Moro's final letter to his family. The oldest daughter, Maria Fida Bonini, 32. a newspaper reporter (against her father's wishes), came often from her apartment near by. The family answered Moro's notes with a published "Caro Pap`a " letter that said poignantly:

"In this tragedy, we have discovered, each one in his way. that you have given us unsuspected resources of moral strength and love."

That was a particular tribute, considering the children's largely matriarchal upbringing. Strong-willed "Noretta" Moro not only kept her household carefully separated from politics, she also handled its finances, paid the bills, made the decisions, even picked the guests -- there were not many -- invited to dine at Via del Forte Trionfale.

The same forcefulness set the tone of the vigil. Signora Moro turned over the cleaning and cooking on which she prided herself to Emma Amicone. Giovanni's fiancee, and concentrated on working for her husband's freedom. Nearly nightly she telephoned party leaders, demanding that they agree to a negotiated release. When the Red Brigades in a communique criticized Moro's political career and personal life, she reacted by furiously smashing a vase of flowers.

At few other times did Mrs. Moro's reserve desert her. On the morning of her husband's kidnaping, she rushed to the ambush spot, knelt by the bodies of his murdered guards and prayed. "They were such good boys," she sobbed, calling each by name. But last week, alongside the wooden table at Rome's Institute of Forensic Medicine on which her husband's body lay, thoughtfully showered with fresh carnations, she was composed. She stood dry-eyed, clutching Agnese's hand, while tears streamed down her daughter's cheeks.

Twenty-five years ago, the Moros built a modest villa in the hill town of Torrita Tiberina, 30 miles north of Rome, and called it Tre Ochette (the Three Little Geese), for their children at that point. Moro was named an honorary citizen of the town (pop. 750 winter. 1,400 summer) and hailed for drawing its Communist mayor and Christian Democratic town council minority into a harmonious collaboration that Mayor Corrado Urbani proudly called "our own historic compromise." It was in Torrita Tiberina that Moro was interred in a temporary vault because work had not begun on the family tomb that he and Noretta had planned. They had not expected that it would be needed so soon.

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