Rosa D'Angelo

Class teacher, retired.

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Rosa D’Angelo Valentini, born in Milan, Italy on July 13, 1945 is a retired class teacher for children, best known for being the grandmother of Liam Matteo (Running Back of the New England Patriots), Ethan Kwon (YouTuber and makeup artist), ᑎᗩYᗩ (singer and dancer) and Alexa Valentini (stylist).

She married Giuseppe Valentini in 1967 and became a widow in 2016. Mother of three sons, she has an excellent mother-daughter relationship with her daughter-in-law Moon Kwon. She frequently appears on her grandchildren’s social media and Ethan made an Instagram account for her. Although she doesn’t get along with electronics, she keeps sharing family pictures and messages wishing good days.

PERSONAL DATA

EARLY LIFE

Born after the end of World War II, Rosa’s the only daughter of Alexander and Alma D’Angelo, a linotype operator and a florist. Her mother gave her this name because her favorite flowers were white roses, representing purity, honor and innocence, things that she wished for her girl and for the post-war world.

Her father was of a German family, living in Italy since the age of fourteen. He knew that his family supported Adolf Hitler, but he was a supporter of the Widerstand minority, even in another country. Moving from Germany to Italy wasn’t an easy thing at that time, of course, but his father was a Nazi German who had a contact or two. He didn’t know his son’s opinion about fascism until the day he went to Milan and didn’t meet his boy with the Italian Nazis. Alexander D’Angelo died in 1976.

All of these facts were revealed in excerpts from her granddaughter Naya Kwon’s autobiography, “Thank U, Next” and in the book she wrote, launched in 2020, “Memories of Milan”.

MARRIAGE & KIDS

According to both books, Rosa was thirteen when she met Giuseppe. She waited for six years before he was released from military service. The two went to the Sanremo Festival and he proposed to her on the same day.

With her father’s blessing, the two got married in 1967, in a small and beautiful ceremony. Her firstborn Matteo was named in honor of her husband’s father and her second son, Alexander, in honor of her own father. Seven years later, Pietro was born in Florida.

UNITED STATES

The family moved to the Lakeland region and Rosa found a job as a class teacher at the neighborhood school. In 1991, they bought a farm in Atlanta until they moved there permanently, shortly after Alexander’s wedding.

BOOK

MEMORIES OF MILAN
(2020)
Born in 1945, Rosa D’Angelo tells her own life story, taking us back to post-World War II Italy, the Anni di Piombo, until her arrival in the United States.