In 1904, Mary (Maria) Lucia Nicolavo Juliano was born in San Giovanni in Fiore, the mountainous region of Calabria, Italy. She was raised, she said, in her grandmother's loving arms, while her father, Giovanni Nicola, journeyed to the United States in search of economic opportunity.

From the 1890s to the 1920s, numbers of Italian immigrants answered the call for unskilled labor in America's mining and railroad industries. They came west, historian Philip Notarianni notes, because they were "attracted to organized labor and saw it as a way to improve their lot."

During the 1903-1904 Carbon County coal miners' strike, they were among those who struck the Utah Fuel Co.

Giovanni, known as John Nick, worked in eastern coal mines before heading to Carbon County. After five years, he saved enough money to send for Mary and his wife, Maria Teresa.

"We came by ship," his daughter said in 1987 interviews archived at the University of Utah's Marriott Library. "I remember going on deck to the edge of the ship and watching the fish jump up and splash in my face. We went straight to Price and then Mohrland, where my sister was born."

The family grew to 14, "although Mama lost two," Mary said. Leaving her grandmother behind was heartbreaking. "She was the love of my life. And I never got to see her again."

Mary's father worked the Mohrland, Spring Glen and Hiawatha mines. He worked the coke ovens of Sunnyside.

"When a fine young man got killed in Mohrland, Papa almost went crazy because he had to wrap him up and bring him out dead," Mary said.

Nick walked out of that mine, but worked in others to support his family. And he took up farming. He bought a house near Wellington, but "it was too small" said Mary, "so the three of us built another."

The 11-year-old nailed narrow laths, chiseled door jambs for locks, and hung doors with her father while keeping up with her chores. After school, she'd often beat the bus home and be working in the fields as it rumbled by.

Her father was strict and, shotgun in hand, didn't take kindly to boys calling.

"I think he was afraid I would leave him," Mary said. "Then who would he have to rely on?"

The family grew vegetables and fields of corn and wheat. They cured meats and made tasty cheeses. In summers, they'd load their wagon -- later, their Dodge truck -- with produce to sell in Standard, Rains, Castle Gate, Carbonville and Kenilworth.

"People would know who was passing," Mary explained. "If they needed something, they'd stand by the road and wait for us."

As a Carbon High School student, Mary rose early to milk the cow and get her brothers and sisters ready for school. She would sew their shirts, cobble their shoes, cut their hair and their dad's, take care of the gardening and handle the household accounts.

"If something had to be bought or needed doing, Papa would come to me," she said. "Don't get me wrong. Mama wanted it that way. She was smart but couldn't speak English well."

Mary wanted to be a linguist. She wanted to travel. Besotted with suitors -- "Tony had a beautiful accordion" -- she didn't want to marry. But the moment she saw coal miner and emergency rescue worker John Juliano walking towards her "with such pride on his face," she wanted to know "what made him tick."

Fifty-seven years, five babies -- four born at home -- and several mining towns later, she figured she knew.

John Juliano died in 1984. "A good husband, strong in body and strong in mind, he wasn't afraid of anything. Try as I can I can't forget that special man."

Mary died in 1993 and was interred in Price City cemetery, not far from home.

Eileen Hallet Stone, at ehswriter@aol.com, is co-author with Leslie Kelen of Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah.

Correction: In photo accompanying a June 6 column, Sid Fox's wife, Eva, was misidentified.