He told the last story to Alfredino. “You know, I have a boat that goes out to sea. When we get out of here, you, me and my three children, we go fishing. ' A dream that could not come true, he knew very well that he had tried in vain to grasp it. The little one was dying, he stroked the muddy little face and went back up into the gut of rock and earth, inside the harness pulled by the firefighters. The image of him, in the arms of two firemen, blood on his side and on his legs, we all remember as a modern Pieta, the sacrifice that did not dispel death.
Angelo Licheri died on October 18 at the age of 77 holding on to the memory of the little boy he could not save, the gratitude of the Rampi family, a plaque from the Municipality of Gavoi, his hometown, and the gold medal for civil valor that it had been conferred on him by the President of the Republic Sandro Pertini. He was the man who on the night of 12 June 1981, dropping upside down for 61 meters and 45 minutes into that artesian well in Vermicino, unmasked the inexistence in Italy of an organized rescue machine and the improvisation that it always followed every alarm. After his desperate sacrifice, the Civil Protection was born and it was begun to understand that following every alarm - from the child who fell in the well to the missing person in the mountains, from the earthquake to the flood, to the fire - the rescue intervention cannot always and only weigh on the fire brigade.
He lived on a meager pension, assisted by the staff of a retirement home in Nettuno. Over ten years ago the Centro Alfredo Rampi Onlus - the association founded by Franca Rampi, mother of little Alfredino, committed to promoting the culture of safety and protecting children - asked the President of the Republic for the assignment of a permanent subsidy. , an annuity "for the man who has risked his life to save someone". Last June, the senators of Italia Viva Giuseppe Luigi Cucca and Davide Faraone presented a motion to be granted the annuity provided for by the Bacchelli law. "It was not possible to bring it to the Commission", explains Senator Cucca today.
«I don't feel like a hero - said Angelo Licheri -, I feel like a person who has done everything to help a child». On 18 October, on the day of his death, a memoir was published on the website of the Alfredo Rampi Onlus Center. "We want to remember the value, the courage, the tenacity and also the sympathy of the little great hero, prototype of the volunteer willing to go" further ", trying to overcome every obstacle to save a life," with only the banner of his heart ". They are not rhetorical phrases, which would hardly marry with Angelo's frankness and humility, but are born from the knowledge of man and from gratitude towards him ».
In May 2011 he returned to Gavoi for a series of meetings with school children and young people on the themes of solidarity and prevention, an initiative of the Pro Angelo Licheri committee which had started a fundraiser to help the fellow villager. He was already in a wheelchair, debilitated by diabetes, one leg amputated.
He was the first media hero, known to all after the cameras immortalized him in the live broadcast on unified networks around the well of Vermicino, but soon forgotten. He had been slaughterhouse flesh for the first case of pain TV, then the spotlight turned on other stories, on other lives to be vivisected. On that spring day of 2011, the children of Gavoi asked him many questions. Do you think about Alfredino? Have you met his parents? Were you afraid? What did you say to Alfredino when you came close to him in the well and realized that you could not save him? "I cleaned his face covered with mud," he replied. Before going back up, I told him a story ».