"I was 25 years old at the time and was on my way back to Naples with my father. Our route by car took us through Florence but we found the road impassable. The Arno had flooded only a few hours earlier. The river was making such a terrible noise that it sounded just like a waterfall. We could see the water was right up to the parapets along the banks, as well as some of the cars all heaped up one on top of another after being carried away by the floodwaters.
A few days later I decided, with a couple of friends of mine, to drive to Florence and offer my help. When we got to Florence it looked like a lunar city.
We went to the National Library where we were sent to work in the basements to remove the books. Everybody was working as hard as possible, especially the students, who had come from all over Italy. We formed human chains to take away all the damaged books. Ted Kennedy, who was still ayoung man at the time, also arrived while we were working there. We no time to spare on anything else but work and went to bed exhausted at night in the railway coaches at the station. I have a son of 25 and a daughter of 24 and I am quite sure they would do exactly the same thing as I did because young people are, as a rule, extremely generous".
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