Dear Tonio, here we are again talking about you on these pages, and tomorrow in your Reggio, among many friends. Ten years have passed since you played that atrocious joke on us: to leave quickly, you who had always lived quickly but were also the most shamelessly vital person imaginable. «Pedaling, pedaling» was truly your motto, as an indomitable cyclist and as a man, reporter, sports and music journalist in constant fibrillation behind passions, ideas, things to discover, listen to and talk about.
The «Tonio Licordari» journalistic award was born in your name, ten years after your death – which still dismays us, still seems inconceivable to us: entirely dedicated to you, in a scenario that you knew well, the Rocco Polimeni tennis club in Reggio. There will be all those who loved you, and who don’t stop thinking about you: “Tonio would have said this, who knows what Tonio would have written…”, we still say to each other, whether it’s your Milan or Sanremo, some song or some goal.
Tomorrow evening (starting at 9pm) a doyen of sports journalism will be rewarded, a great name, a point of reference in terms of profession and style for generations of readers and journalists: Italo Cucci. The evening will be hosted by Maurizio Insardà, and there will be lifelong friends and admirers. After the greeting from Ezio Privitera, president of “Polimeni”, Lino Morgante, Giuseppe Malara, Tonino Raffa, Gerardo Sacco will talk to us about you. Your son Natalino, who is also a journalist and writes on the pages that were your pages, will talk to us about you as a son. That little boy that you sometimes took with you when you played football, and you showed him your passion by immersing yourself in those sports that you loved with all your being. Even if the first passion, the one that founded them all, was for your family, Natalino and your beloved Alba.
The institutions will also be there tomorrow evening: Cucci will receive the award, that award named after you, from the hands of the mayor of Reggio, Francesco Cannizzaro, and the president of the Order of Journalists of Calabria, Giuseppe Soluri. You, on the other hand, were friends with everyone, majorities and oppositions, old and new, you entered all the buildings, you wanted to tell all the stories. You were also a political reporter, and even the author of crime investigations: «Ah, but I go where they send me», you said. And it was a humble pride of someone who had built the “job” – that’s what you called it, that’s what it should be called – with stubbornness, coming from other worlds. We will talk about the extraordinary career of Italo Cucci, but in the light there will be your career, climbing and pedaling, starting from scratch, from something else, and until you become everyone’s friend, getting on first terms with the coaches and star footballers, writing songs for Mino Reitano, joking with the owner of Miss Italia, remembering Mimmo Modugno’s songs so well that you get an amused: “Oh, but you know them better than me!”.
We will talk about many things, to talk about you, who were many things at once, and who never stopped – even when you retired – doing, inventing, following. Until that damned day in 2016.
Tomorrow we will remind you, how much you are still there, for many, many of us.