The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart, a posthumous wartime memoir set against the rich, colorful landscape of historic Florence and Northern Italy, tenderly recalls one soldier’s heartfelt love story through the viewfinder of his still and Bell and Howell 35 mm Eyemo motion picture camera during the Italian campaign of the Second World War.

A wartime love

An unlikely luncheon date during a lull in the summer 1944 liberation of Florence leads Edmund Burke O’Connell, an Army motion picture photographer with the U.S. Army's 196^th Signal Photo Company to meet an attractive English-speaking Florentine, Tina Calamai. Their friendship steadily blossoms into love as her family’s 15^th century Medici villa, the Villa Calamai, becomes his wartime base of operations.

The end of the war in Europe soon draws near and Burke and his unit prepare for redeployment to the United States where they will film the remaining months of the Pacific War. Burke faces immediate separation from his beloved Tina, and is challenged to determine how he can return to the woman he now truly loves.

O’Connell does return to Italy at war’s end to resume his relationship with Tina, marry her, and remain at their Villa Calamai home until her death in 1972.

A new love story begins

Burke’s return to the U.S. in 1972 for the first time in 25 years to Santa Monica, California, soon leads to a whirlwind romance, a new second marriage, and introduces co-author Julie Whitman Jones, then 15,  to a her “Irish pop” a stepfather who would leave her with a lifetime of cherished memories.

The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart balances bittersweet recollections of close calls in combat, Divine intervention, and the grim realities of combat against the unique opportunities of American military photographers to capture and experience the rich cultural history of Italy during wartime.

WHAT'S NEW - Sept. 2011

• Rare Color Film - Florence, Italy 1944 - Italian documentary clip on YouTube sets the scene for The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart.

• See additional color photos taken by Army photographer Don Wiedenmayer who show the ruins of a liberated city.