Franco Zampedri he was 33 years old when he stopped thinking about the future, playing the trumpet in the band of his town, Viarago, in the mountains of Trentino, imagining life together with his girlfriend Cristina. He even stopped supporting Juventus, his great passion, since he was a child. That July 4, 2004, Zampedri went off the road on a curve that everyone knew was dangerous, near Portolo, and never regained consciousness. Yet his story, his passions, his sympathy with his colleagues at the University of Trento, has continued to live on in all these years, so much so that the news of his death, after twenty years in a vegetative state, yesterday made the tour of information sites.
Two photos remain of him, that of a thirty-year-old boy, black hair, kind eyes and the one that kept him company all these years in the room of the «Santo Spirito» nursing home in Pergine, with his captain Alessandro Del Piero . It is a photo from 2007, he is in a wheelchair, hospitalized for three years now in a semi-vegetative state, and next to him is Alex Del Piero, slightly younger. Everyone remembers it, that summer of 2007: Juve was, like many other times, in retreat in Pinzolo, in the Adamello park. The number Ten that Franco idolized left the retreat alone in Pergine, an hour’s drive away, to go and visit this fan who could no longer go to follow him to the stadium.
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ALEX’S VISIT
Goffredo, Franco’s father, loves to remember it, and he told it again yesterday too, after saying goodbye to his son who he has always been close to in all these years. “Football, Juventus, was his great passion, together with music,” he told reporters. “He followed the team, went to Turin, and then also on away games, to Milan, to Cesena.” His terrible story, the accident, the hospitalization, had also reached the locker room of the Juventus players. «Alex came to visit him in Pergine after leaving retirement – says his father – proving himself to be a great champion. I had spoken to him a bit, he hoped that Franco could make it, could recover.” But it never happened.
The rescuers managed to resuscitate him after the crash and a flight of about two meters, he was transported by helicopter, but they were no longer able to tear him from the autonomic limbo. “They were very hard years: I wouldn’t wish on any father to have to look after his own child” the father, always close to Franco in all these years, told Corriere del Trentino. “I lost my wife thirty years ago, but this was a doubly hard blow,” he added. “The attention of the staff at the Santo Spirito house has been a great comfort in recent years.” Yesterday the mayor of Pergine, Roberto Oss Emer, also reacted to Franco’s death: «I didn’t know him, he said, but I know for a fact that at the Santo Spirito they treated and looked after him very well. I join in the family’s pain, losing someone like that always hurts.”
On the evening of the accident Franco was returning from Sant’Orsola, where his girlfriend Cristina Bertoldi lived, and where they were supposed to go and live together in an apartment we had just purchased. Despite these twenty years spent in silence, many colleagues from the University of Trento came to give him a final farewell. His condition had worsened in recent days, “his body was now rejecting any nourishment”. «There were many people who came to visit Franco – the father continued – In Viarago they remembered him with affection. I stayed with him all day because I knew he was sick.”
Goffredo had never stopped hoping for an awakening. «Unfortunately the situation never improved. I made him listen to the music of the Viarago band for which he played the trumpet, sometimes it seemed to me that he reacted to the stimuli, but there was never any awakening. Before the accident, he loved that music, he always listened to it at home.”
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