I noticed with interest during my personal journalistic activity that at rallies, oaths or events of various kinds, the weapon associations are present en masse. What fascinates most is the concept of "group identity" that they manage to convey. Even if the partners have not seen each other for decades, once back in contact, after the first pleasantries, they suddenly clear the gap and everything takes place with absolute normality. This is obviously an indication of shared common values.
What then represents an association of this type, what is its purpose for its members and how does it interact with its FFAAs? These are all questions I cannot answer directly, because I am not a member of any association of this type. For answers, I turned to Dr. Francesco Businaro, president of the National Association of Military Naval School Francesco Morosini.
Dr. Businaro, when and why was the Association born?
The Association was founded in the 1981 by the will of some former students who had recognized, after twenty years from the birth of the then Naval College, the need to give a plot and a warp to the long blue thread that links all the former students.
What can you say about the members of yesterday and today of the Association?
They are otherwise the same if an oxymoron is allowed. Each former student is a "child" of a three-year period that can never be the same as another, just as each of us is a "child" of our time, but at the same time is part of a common sharing, that of a unique experience made of hard work, joy, commitment, leisure, rigor and student spirit, but above all of strong values. "Patria e Onore" is the writing that stands out on the central building and, by osmosis, ends up marking each of us.
How do you keep in touch with each other?
Nowadays it is perhaps more difficult to isolate oneself than to have tools capable of networking. In addition to the inevitable website of the Association, there are pages on the most widespread Social Groups dedicated to it and, in some cases, according to need: there are sections aimed at tutoring or entrepreneurship, for example. Furthermore, the figure of the regional trustee plays a fundamental role in the organization of events transversal to all courses; an example for all the "tables of the five decades" during the convivial ones in which there is a representative of every decade from the Sixties to the present just to create moments of meeting and comparison between the ex of every age, order and grade. Finally, each course has its own strategies for maintaining contacts, often delegated to one or more individuals who are responsible for keeping the database constantly updated with the references of their classmates.
What binds you so much? Is it true that even those who have not embarked on a military career are registered and very active?
It is difficult to explain what binds each former student if it is not clear that the three-year course spent at Naval is, after all, a rite of passage between the adolescent age and the adult age. Emancipation from one's family to enter a community of peers, the demolition of every social difference, living side by side for three years, sharing extraordinary experiences such as cruises on Vespucci or Palinuro, unequivocally cast the seed of indelible friendships.
How does the association interact with the Armed Forces?
The Association is intrinsically close to the Navy but above all to the School. The former students interact with the same providing orientation days for the young students, teaching for the attainment of the nautical license inserted in the PTOF (Triennial Plan of Formative Offer), consultations of various kind making use of the various professions, often of the highest level, present among former students.
How do most members see the Navy today? And how would they like to see it?
This question can only have one answer. The Navy is the institution that formed us, we owe a lot to it and we are proud of it. We would like to be held in greater consideration because it often operates in contexts "beyond the horizon", silently but with that concept of Homeland and Honor that is carved in each of us.
Based on the experience gathered during your presidency, what advice would you give to those in doubt whether to try the Morosini admission test?
Morosini is, first of all, a first class educational experience. Motivation and sacrifice are the basis of the satisfactions of each one of us, whether he has chosen to pursue his professional career in civil life or in military life. If even one of these two things is missing, the Military School "Francesco Morosini" is not for them. But if instead they intend to compete with themselves, if they believe in values such as honor and friendship, if they feel ready to become men and women of value, then it is worth trying, to grit their teeth and be, one tomorrow, proud and proud.
