In the summer of 2022, at the age of ninety, Domenico Bellini wrote nine short stories about the amazing life he lived.
It all started as a child caught between two world wars.
- In 1940, at the age of eight, he spent two years in children war camps,
- In 1943, at eleven, he lived through bombing raids in Lanciano (his native town in central Italy), while helping his mother and younger siblings survive.
- In 1945, at the end of the war, while still in Lanciano, he had his first job as a 'salesman' in a local store. He was not yet fourteen at the time.
- In 1947, at fifteen, he, along with his mother and siblings, rejoined his father in Libya (a former Italian colony) and helped run a local store in Garian, a small mountain town just south of Tripoli.
- In 1952, at twenty, he looked after his younger brother while studying and working in Tripoli.
He continued his accounting education (interrupted by the war) by correspondence and built a career starting at the American military base in Tripoli and continuing over the years in Belgium, Canada, France, and Italy. He saw it all through the ups and downs of fifteen career jobs, the last three of which at senior executive levels. He did so in four countries and in three languages to finally retire in Canada. His life is an example of mental fortitude and uncompromising integrity in the face of major family crises and too many personal misfortunes.