RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – At The Maples, a senior housing facility in Rutland, Mary-Anne Liguori and her partner, Bob Williams, are burning up the dance floor. They’ve been dance partners for 20 years.
“We have a good time together. I love to dance, he loves to dance,” Liguori said.
And the music continues around the corner, where Liguori also teaches dance classes to fellow seniors. On this day, it’s chair dancing for those who have trouble standing. “Everyone smile, you’re having a good time!” she instructs. “Hands Up.”
Liguori is rarely without a smile, unlike the darker period when she was a young girl. When she was five, her mom brought her and her brother to visit family overseas. It turned out to be a harrowing adventure. “This is when we left America to go to Norway,” she said, pointing to a photo. “While we were there, the Second World War broke out and we couldn’t come back to America.”
Norway declared itself neutral, but in the spring of 1940, the Germans marched into the Nordic country. “One day, Adolph Hitler was coming through town, so they lined us around the street and made us ‘Heil Hitler,’ and his car past us, and I saw him through a car window,” Liguori said. “You were always afraid. The Nazis walked into our house anytime they want, take what they wanted.”
She says it was a matter of survival. “I was skin and bones, we had no food, no food. My brother and I would run in the fields at night and steal potatoes,” Liguori said. “One day, my friend and I were playing on her front porch and some of the soldiers came over and started taking pictures of us and… and it was unpleasant.”
In the summer of 1942, there was hope. A program was established where German prisoners of war were exchanged with American citizens who were stuck in Europe. “We went by train through Norway, Sweden, Germany, Spain and Portugal,” she said.
Liguori, now nine years old, boarded the Freedom Ship with her family back to America. They landed in New York on the 4th of July when family told them the bad news. “We went to see them and they told us, that my father had died,” she said.
Her father, an architect, was murdered outside a bar. The crime was never solved. “It makes me sad, ” she said. “I never saw my dad again.”
The Norwegian community in the States helped the family out and Liguori eventually did move on with her life, marrying Mario and raising three kids in Long Island. Her passion for dancing started at 40. “Dancing has kept me alive,” she said. “I love life, I really do.”