Rocky, My Friend

About the Book

Books:
Coronets, Butterflies & Roses
Rocky, My Friend
Swiss Aristocrats and the Second World War

About the Author

The author of this fast-paced voyage through history, Bigna A. Francis-von Wyttenbach, was born in Berne, Switzerland, the daughter of Baron and Baroness Thomas A. von Wyttenbach. Bigna grew up in the vicinity of Como, Italy, where her parents had purchased a beautiful “gentleman’s farm” called “La Benedetta.” The main buildings were built in the fifteenth century as a Benedictine monastery. Bigna has two brothers, Peter and Xandi, and later, after her father’s premature death and her mother’s remarriage, Danilo was born. Bigna is a graduate of the Private Swiss School of Milan. She also obtained a diploma for “Commercial English for Foreigners” at the Pitman’s College in London, England. Bigna is fluent in Italian, German, French, English, and of course Swiss-German. She was always an avid reader and by the age of seventeen she could read in four languages and three dialects. In 1959 Bigna arrived at the Idlewild International Airport in New York (now it’s called Kennedy) to visit her cousins for a year. Well, it did not work out quite that way: in March she met Dr. John E. Francis and in July they were married. The author has traveled extensively in Europe, and later, with her husband, in USA and Canada. She also visited the Bahamas Islands a couple of times. From 1967 to 1973, she taught languages at home. She was also a substitute French teacher at the Pleasantville, New York, high school and taught French, Italian, German, English for foreigners, as well as adult education at the Pleasantville high school from 1968 to 1973. In 1973 she was licensed as a real estate agent. She kept teaching for a while but two jobs, three children, and a large house were too much. (She had about twenty-five student every week.) It was going to be a difficult task to let her students go. One elderly couple was quite unsettled and told Bigna: “You will never be as good a real estate agent as you are a teacher.” In 1977 she obtained the New York state real estate broker’s license and opened her own office in Pleasantville, Westchester County, New York She has been the owner and president of three real estate corporations, one of which one was international. Bigna was a member of the FIABCI or the International Real Estate Federation, in Paris, France, for over eight years. When in 1985 her husband, John, was transferred to New Jersey by Ciba-Geigy, Bigna had to give up her businesses: one was sold while the others were dissolved. She had to start all over again. While she was studying for the New Jersey real estate broker’s exam, she bought a gift shop in Basking Ridge and had the opportunity to learn the retail business. The gift shop had a very negative cash flow, but in fifteen months, against everybody’s forecast, Bigna managed to turn it into a profitable business. She sold the store and returned to work full time in the real estate business. Bigna felt that by now she had acquired a good deal of knowledge of the areas she was going to serve as a realtor and do a professional job. Bigna has worked successfully as a real estate broker-associate in New Jersey with several companies. The one she liked best was Re/max. Every time she went to see her family in Italy, Switzerland, and friends in the principality of Monaco, she paid a visit to some real estate offices to make a connection. The director of the Italian Re/max main office near Milan invited her to speak in Milan at the Ramada Inn, and in 2001 she was an invited speaker in Florence, Italy, at the Re/max International Convention at the Sheraton Hotel. Bigna and John have two sons and a daughter, six granddaughters and a grandson, and reside in Chester, New Jersey. In 1993 John retired and now teaches chemistry at Rutgers University and Morris County College. After over thirty years in the real estate business, Bigna is now a real estate counselor and a referral agent. She has returned to teaching languages from her home and is delighted with the quality of her students. She loves teaching and sometimes feels that she should have gone back to tutoring years ago. Bigna has a cheerful, exuberant personality and says, “I am happy 90 percent of the time, the remaining 10 percent I get cranky like everybody else.” Her glass is always half full, not half empty. Many times Bigna has been asked: “What made you decide to write a book?” Her answer: “My main reason is that, having lived through the horrors of the Second World War and having been liberated by the Allies, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for all the soldiers, past, present, and future, and their families, who have sacrificed so much for us. This is my way of saying thank you.” One other reason, of course, is that she wanted her children and grandchildren to know more about Europe and her background. Bigna also strongly feels that it is important never to forget how terribly destructive wars are, particularly for the people who have to live in war zones. Bigna is also the author of "Rocky, my Friend," a short children's story and "Coronets, Butterflies and Roses" also a children's book with four short stories, that will be published by the end of 2004.