On Friday, Laura Sacco and her mom, Anna Maria De Zolt, came to Middletown Town Hall from Italy to meet with Mayor Tony Perry and to help trace their family's connection to Middletown. At 83 years old, De Zolt made her first trip to the United States to check out a sculpture her long-lost relative, Geremia Grandelis, made for his son’s tombstone in Metuchen and to visit his final resting place in Middletown.

The mother-daughter duo was also joined by their cousin, Cassie Corbett, who lives nearby and Alissa Rothstein, who helped them research their family's history. Grandelis was a very well-known sculptor who was born in the small village of Campolongo in 1869, trained as a sculptor in Venice, and lived in different places throughout his life, including Middletown.