8 things you did not know about Bruno Sammartino

#7 His mother was a great woman

Bruno Sammartino recalls his mother with great fondness

While Bruno Sammartino didn’t know his father (who’d moved to the United States) until much later, his own mother Emilia was a great woman. A simple peasant woman, she would sneak down from the mountain they were holed up in to gather food and supplies from the Nazi-infested town they once used to live in.

This journey would take as long as 24 hours at times. She was even captured once. She eventually managed to escape. She was the only one of the escapees to survive the German onslaught. If not for Emilia, Sammartino wouldn’t have made it so far.