When she was born, on April 25, 1924, she would not have imagined that April 25 would later become a symbolic date for Italy. Mrs. Irma Ortolani turned 100 and celebrated her 100th birthday on April 25th, in the affection of her family and friends, while Mayor Marco Panieri sent her best wishes on behalf of the City and presented her with the centenary medal.
Born in Castel Guelfo, into a large sharecropping family, with ten brothers and sisters, she attended primary school as a child and then began to work in the rice fields of Ferrara as a girl. A hard life, with fields that could be reached by bicycle. “When they got a puncture, solidarity arose among the rice weeders: there were those who loaded it onto the bike and those who carried the punctured bicycle to the rice field” explains her daughter Ivonne Battilani, in reporting the story her mother told her.
Then in 1947 the marriage to Dino Battilani, the move to Casola Canina and the birth of her daughter Ivonne Battilani, always continuing to work in the countryside. In 1960 the move to Imola and her new job as a maid. “Her great passion has always been dancing. She loved dancing and continued for years, even after she got married, to go to the Enal Danze (formerly Circoli). Mazurka, waltz and polka had no secrets for her” says her daughter who adds: “my mother has always been a very religious woman. She always told us that ‘it wasn’t Sunday if you didn’t go to mass’”. Today she continues to keep up to date by watching television.
