A life of willing hands, hard work and service among the Alpini, the Civil Protection and the community of Salce
When the Salce football pitch needed levelling, Toni started up the tractor. When something in the changing rooms needed welding, he switched on the welder. That is how he is remembered by the friend who, in March 2009, wrote him a long farewell in the Col Maòr without signing it: “ready to start up the tractor to keep the pitch level or fire up the welder to do jobs in the changing rooms”.
Antonio Fratta, Toni to everyone, left behind no speeches and no writings. He left finished jobs. In the pages of the Col Maòr his name nearly always turns up inside a list – the councillors elected, the volunteers at an exercise, the men holding the banner or setting off early to get the ground ready for an Adunata – and it is right there, among the others, that you have to go looking for him.
On either side of the boundary
Toni was born in 1948. No documents survive from his youth, but there is the memory of that friend, who was also the same age and worked the neighbouring field. He recalls the days when, helping their parents, they would meet on the “Pascol” to dry the hay or pick beans and maize cobs, “me on this side and you on that side of the boundary we shared”. He recalls football matches on that meadow, with natural stands formed by the slope by the Fratta house, which in winter turned into a ski run. “And then national service, work, the Alpini Group, the Salce football team, bocce, the outings in spring and September.”
In which unit he did his national service, the sources consulted do not say.
Twenty years on the Council
His name enters the minutes of the Salce Alpini Group on 22 November 1987, when the annual meeting elects the Council for the three years 1988-1990. Toni is given a job that suits him: in charge of equipment and transport, together with Giuseppe Savaris. He is also an auditor, with Bruno Boito. From then on the Col Maòr finds him again at every renewal it records – 1990, 1993, 1999 – and in 2004 he appears, crouching in the front row, in the official photograph of the Executive Council led by Ezio Caldart. On 30 November 2008 the meeting re-elects him once more, together with his brother Luciano. It would be the last time.
The reports always show him on the move. At the 2000 Adunata in Brescia he holds the Group’s banner. In April 2001 he is at Portomaggiore, in the delegation accompanying Mario Dell’Eva to the unveiling of Colonel Molinari’s bust. In 2003, a year ahead, he is already thinking of Trieste: “Thanks to the ever-active ‘Toni’ Fratta,” writes the Col Maòr, “we already have our little spot booked for tents, vehicles and assorted equipment.” In 2005, at the national Adunata in Parma, he marches alongside “nonno Ernesto” Barattin and Bepi Savaris.
And then there is the headquarters. “How many times you lent your skilled hands to building our 4-Star headquarters,” his friend writes to him, “how many national Adunate, how many celebrations, how many ceremonies, how many jobs, and you were always in the front line, setting the example.”
The team leader
If there is one word the Col Maòr links to Toni more than any other, it is “caposquadra”, team leader. It uses it twice in 2009, and the second time it adds: “for years team leader of the Civil Protection”. In 1999 he also stood for the board of the Civil Protection Unit of the Belluno Section: he came first among those not elected, on equal votes.
On 15 June 2003 he is one of the Group’s five volunteers at the Triveneto exercise “Pasubio 2003”, with Ernesto Barattin, Cesare Colbertaldo, Mario De Luca and Giuseppe Savaris. With the team, in orange overalls, he is at the 2nd Rally of the “Cadore” Alpine Brigade in Belluno: it is the photograph the Col Maòr would later choose to say goodbye to him. His friend remembers him at the exercises and in the relief work for the people of the Asti area and the Aosta Valley struck by floods – operations in which the Group’s volunteers took part, in Piedmont and, in December 2000, in the Aosta Valley. “You were always available, and you managed to reconcile volunteering with your family and work commitments.”
Bocce, cards and friends
Service was not everything. Toni played bocce and went on the Group’s outings in spring and September. And he played cards: the 60th-anniversary book shows him absorbed in a game of “gnagno” with Stefano Brancher while waiting to march at an Adunata, and in 2012 the Group would remember him as a “devoted connoisseur of the game of briscola”. His friend of 2009 sums him up in a single sentence: he had a good heart, “which never let you say ‘no’ to anyone who asked you for help, a favour, a sacrifice”.
The farewell of 2009
At the end of November 2008 Toni was still among the newly elected councillors. A few months later, at the start of 2009, an illness he had fought with great tenacity – “it seemed you had beaten it,” his friend writes – took him away. In his last days he was cared for at the Casa Tua Due facility, among others by volunteers from the Associazione Cucchini.
The March Col Maòr gave him its third page: “Grazie Toni – ‘Toni’ Fratta has left us: an Alpino, a friend, a true man”. At the funeral, the tribute recounts, were all those who had known and respected him; the Alpini gathered round the coffin and the family with the Alpino’s Prayer and the notes of the Silenzio. The Group and the editorial team sent their condolences to his wife Paola, his children Silvia and Andrea, his mother Regina and his siblings Anna, Gabriella and Luciano.
Remembering the dead by helping the living
A few months later the Group held a dinner at its headquarters to buy a chainsaw for the Civil Protection team, which until then had made do with the volunteers’ own. More than ninety people came. The evening also became a moment to remember “our friend Toni Fratta, for years team leader of the Civil Protection”: Lino De Prà, head of the ANA Civil Protection Unit of Belluno, handed his wife Paola the receipt for the sum the Unit had raised and donated to Casa Tua Due in his memory, and Gino Tramontin, “the storyteller”, dedicated the poem “Sona na canpana” to him. The paper closed its report with the Alpini motto: “Remember the dead by helping the living.”
The “Toni” Fratta Trophy
Three years later, in 2012, the Group named a pairs briscola tournament after him, the “1° Campionato Provinciale A.N.A. – Trofeo ‘Toni’ Fratta” (1st ANA Provincial Championship – “Toni” Fratta Trophy), open to members of the Belluno, Feltre and Cadore Sections. The idea was Michele Sacchet’s; the finals were set for Saturday 26 May at the headquarters by the Salce sports ground, and the takings were to go to the Associazione Cucchini, the same association that had looked after Toni in his last days.
The tournament was never played: only three Groups signed up. But the money arrived all the same. “With the support of the sponsors and of the family of ‘Toni’ Fratta (after whom the tournament was named),” the Col Maòr reports, “we donated 1,000 euros anyway.” In the years that followed the Group went on playing briscola among members and friends; the trophy’s name, in the papers consulted, never appears again.
In 2024, fifteen years after his death, the Group’s sixtieth-anniversary book gives him a small box of his own. It is unsigned, but its author says he joined the Alpini thanks to him, and calls him a “small great” man. It may be the fairest description of someone who, when there was work to be done, was there: with the tractor, with the welder, in orange overalls, with a hand of cards while waiting to march.
Key dates
| 1948 | Antonio “Toni” Fratta is born |
| 22 November 1987 | Elected to the Group Council for 1988-1990: in charge of equipment and transport, auditor |
| 1990, 1993, 1999 | Re-elected councillor |
| 1999 | First among those not elected, on equal votes, to the Civil Protection Unit of the Belluno Section |
| 2000 | Holds the Group’s banner at the national Adunata in Brescia |
| April 2001 | With the delegation at Portomaggiore for Colonel Molinari’s bust |
| 15 June 2003 | Volunteer at the Triveneto Civil Protection exercise “Pasubio 2003” |
| 2003 | Books the Group’s pitch for the 2004 Adunata in Trieste |
| 2004 | On the Executive Council led by Ezio Caldart |
| 2005 | Marches at the national Adunata in Parma |
| 30 November 2008 | Re-elected councillor, with his brother Luciano |
| Early 2009 | Dies; the March Col Maòr says goodbye with “Grazie Toni” |
| 2009 | Civil Protection evening in his memory; the Belluno Unit’s donation to Casa Tua Due |
| May 2012 | The Group names its pairs briscola Trophy after him; 1,000 euros to the Associazione Cucchini |
| 2024 | The 60th-anniversary book remembers him as a “small great” man |
In the MEMORIA network
- The Salce Alpini Group, on whose Council he served for more than twenty years
- Ernesto Barattin, “Nòno Ernesto”, fellow councillor and companion at “Pasubio 2003” and the Parma Adunata
- Antonio “Toni” Tamburlin, the standard-bearer, with him on the Council and on the 1971 Visentin march
- Mario Dell’Eva, with whom he went to Portomaggiore in the 2001 delegation
- The Col Maòr special issue on the 2005 Parma Adunata
- The Col Maòr, the Group’s newsletter, which has kept his memory
- Luciano “Ciano” Fratta, his brother, also a councillor and a Civil Protection volunteer
Sources for this story
- Col Maòr no. 6/1987, p. 2; no. 6/1990, p. 2; no. 6/1993, p. 6; no. 6/1999, pp. 4 and 7; no. 3/2001, p. 2
- Col Maòr December 2003, pp. 10-11; no. 4/2008, p. 13
- Col Maòr no. 1/2009, p. 3 (“Grazie Toni”, signed “Un amico” – a friend) and no. 2/2009, p. 9 (“Serata per la Protezione Civile”)
- Poster and rules of the “Toni” Fratta Trophy (2012); Col Maòr no. 2/2012, p. 10 and no. 4/2012; group leader’s annual report of 25 November 2012
- 60th-anniversary book of the Salce Alpini Group (2024), pp. 121, 154, 159, 174 and 181
- The year of birth is given by the Group’s editorial team; the exact date of death does not appear in the documents consulted
