When you sit down with the Medina siblings, the children of Irma and Constantino, you are in a room with the siblings that could have the highest combined ages in Ontario, Canada, or even North America. Nine of them, a combined 763 years of age and wisdom.
But you’d never know it.
Stay a little while, and you’ll soon see youthful brothers and sisters laughing, joking, and yes, even bickering.
It is an absolute joy to behold.
The Guinness Book of World Records contains more than 40,000 categories of astounding feats, one of which is their prize for Highest Combined Age, with a sub-category that includes the number of siblings still living. There are the Donnelly siblings in Ireland, holding the record for Highest Combined Age (13 siblings) with 1,075 years. Closer to the Medina’s size is the record holder set out in 2014, the nine children of the Melis Family of Sardinia, who have reached 837 years.
The Medina Family may not currently be in the running for Guinness, but they would really love to know if they are record holders in Canada, the country their parents came to in order to make a life for them.
Irma Zuliani, born in Udine, Italy, in 1900, found a husband in 1889-born Constantino Midena (yes, that is a spelling change, and though no one will take credit/guilt for changing it in the phone book, the new spelling “Medina” did help on the party line they shared with the other Midena family, one block away.)
When Constantino returned to his Udine hometown after a stay in Canada, the two were married, and decided to return to Canada. Constantino went first to gain work, sending for his wife and newborn daughter, Mary, when he was able. Mary, born in 1923, and currently 94 years old — though as with all the members of this family, you would never know it — was very young when she made the trip.
“I was a year old and just starting to walk on the boat,” she says.
The rest of the siblings were born here in Canada, all at home except for the youngest, and all the girls decided they would make their entrance first. After Mary is Valda, “Val” (now Taus, 92), born in 1925. Amelia, “Mel’ (now Smania, 89), was born in 1928, and was followed by Rena (now Decet, 86) in 1931. Joining the family next would be Norma, (now Soltendieck, 85) in 1932, and then Olga (Makarinsky, 81) in 1934. In 1937 came, you guessed it, another girl in Deanna (Wagner, 80) born in 1937. But then, in 1938, came Gino (79), the first boy.
Of course, no one believed that he was, given the track record, and the girls happily remember visitors in absolute disbelief, and diapers being removed as evidence. Next in line is Sergio, “Satch”, the baby of the family born in 1940 and currently age 77. It is immediately clear that Sergio absolutely adores his siblings, and it is he who began to pursue the highest combined age record.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the last two or three years,” he says. “I think I should do something. I talk to my curling buddies and I say ‘I’m the youngest of nine and they’re all still alive.’ They’re amazed!”
He searched the internet to find record holders, and though he knows that world may not be up for grabs, he’s still hoping for North American recognition. His continued searching led him to check in with media outlets, hoping to crowd source more information, and share their story.
It is a familiar one to any that grew up in Sudbury from the early to mid-1900s. Constantino worked at Inco for a few years before his extreme dislike for the underground had him finding new work at the Sudbury Brewing and Malting Co., a five-minute walk from the family’s home at 267 Eyre Street, an address they all immediately recall, and do so at exactly the same time.
He would walk home for lunch every day, and most likely took part in the wonder of the company’s fifteen-minute, coffee-replacing, “beer break.”
Yes, you read that right.
In that home on Eyre, a million memories were made. They all lined up to bathe in a large tub in the kitchen next to the stove. They suntanned on the garage roof, and may have used an umbrella as a parachute to jump off it. Sergio was always the prankster, and the girls laugh at the many stories involving him and the dead mice he would place on door knobs for unsuspecting openers. But they laugh harder at the memory of the rooster chasing him off the property – finally free to do so following repeated kicks to his cage by the young Satch.
Norma recalls her father doling out a quarter – or nickels, as the debate between Norma and Olga has not yet been settled – so that they could get ice cream from Palmaro’s or Palace News. Val was considered the clothes stealer – she giggles heartily when she recalls stealing Mary’s clothes. As Sergio says, “The last one to leave the house was always the best dressed,” having pilfered the wardrobes of anyone who left previously.
Of course, as with any family, there are tragedies too. The loss of their father in 1956 shook them at a young age, as did Rena’s battle with Osteomyelitis – a bone infection cured with the now common Penicillin, unavailable in Sudbury until she had been bed-ridden for a year and a half.
Deanna’s pneumonia as a small child had her hearing the last rites before getting well, and Norma’s severe injuries after a car accident in 1996 left her with a long road to recovery. All of the sisters have lost husbands, and sadder still was the loss of children. Olga’s first child was stillborn. Mary lost her five-year-old son to polio in 1956, and Mel lost her 53-year-old daughter, Marisa Certossi, to cancer.
Fortunately though, the Medina’s have the gift of family. The nine siblings have between them 31 children, and now grandchildren – plus great grandchildren. They see each other on an almost daily basis, playing cards or having lunch on Fridays at P&M Kouzzina – owned by Rena’s daughter and her husband.
They have always loved being together, and repair arguments quickly. Mel remembers fondly – as do the others – their Sunday dinners all together after church. With their father allowing them a bit of wine and ginger ale, their mother cooking a feast of gnocchi or risotto, and a table full of loved ones laughing, arguing and deciding who has the best hat at church, there was a bond created at a very young age, one that their parents encouraged.
Mary recalls her father as he lay dying, making a request of their mother.
“He was on his death bed and he said to Mama, ‘Promise me one thing, you’ll keep the kids together.’ And that’s what’s been in my heart ever since, that was very important.”
Irma and Constantino would be very proud of their children, and the devotion they show to one another. They are healthy, happy, all living in their own homes without assistance, and hoping they might soon hit that record of Highest Combined Age – even just locally.
The Medina family would love for their story to be shared across social media, to help them determine if they are record-holders. If you would like to help in their search, or if you know of a group of siblings that might challenge them for the record, you can message them by contacting Jenny Lamothe, the author of this story, on Facebook.
Jenny Lamothe is a freelance writer, proof-reader and editor in Greater Sudbury. Contact her through her website, JennytheWriter.wordpress.com.
