Anna Yona, at 98; hosted 'Italian Hour' radio show

When Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini ordered Italian women to donate their wedding rings to support his war in Africa in the 1930s, Anna (Foa) Yona took a stand that was daring and dangerous.

``Anna refused, and continued to wear hers openly," Alexander Stille wrote in his 1991 book, "Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism."

``Her friends were scandalized; some avoided her, after telling her she was crazy and would be arrested," he wrote.

Mrs. Yona died of dementia Monday at Heathwood Nursing Home in Newton. She was 98.

Mrs. Yona never lost her fearless approach to life. When Italy's Fascist regime passed laws in 1938 ``banning Jews from all public employment," Stille wrote, Mrs. Yona and her husband, David, who lost his job as an architect for the city of Turin, prepared to immigrate to the United States with their two small children.

The Yonas arrived here in 1940. The ship first docked in Boston before heading to New York where family awaited them, according to a daughter, Eva Deykin of Brookline.

``Without knowing any English and lacking steady employment," she said, times were difficult for the family. In 1942, when David Yona, a trained civil engineer, found engineering work in Boston, the family moved to Cambridge, where they have lived since.

Mrs. Yona became well known in the Boston area as host of the ``Italian Hour" daily radio show for about a decade in the 1940s and 1950s and later as a teacher of Italian at the New England Conservatory of Music.

She taught at the conservatory for more than four decades and continued to teach there three days a week until she was 87, Deykin said. A number of her students were studying opera, although not exclusively, said her colleague and friend, Barbara Reutlinger of Gloucester, a professor of German at the conservatory.

``Anna absolutely loved teaching and was a highly-valued teacher who was particularly caring of her students," Reutlinger said. ``Her students loved her."

Mrs. Yona also taught Italian language and literature at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and at the Harvard Institute for Lifelong Learning.

Students she taught privately were equally devoted to her. Sanford Gifford of Cambridge, a physician, recalled first hearing Mrs. Yona's voice on the air in 1946 while he was driving to and from Boston State Hospital.

``Let me confess that I had fallen in love with Anna even before I had met her or knew a single word of Italian," he said in his eulogy. ``In a program sponsored by a North End bank, she commented in Italian on current events and literature with resonant quotes from Dante and other poets. Her eloquent diction and warm, musical tone inspired me that I must someday study Italian."

She was ``a superb teacher," Gifford said. ``She was encouraging but forceful, demanding but supremely tactful. When I made mistakes, she often suggested that I was merely `stanco,' meaning tired, not `stupido,' as, in fact, I was."

Mrs. Yona appeared first on the ``Italian Hour" when it was aired on Boston radio station WCOP-AM and later on WMEX-AM, her daughter said. It was a daily hourlong program on which Mrs. Yona provided a combination of news analysis, lively commentaries, book reviews, and interviews with artists and writers.

She offered another service as well. In collaboration with the International Red Cross, Deykin said, her mother broadcast the names of Italian citizens who were trying to contact relatives in the United States and was responsible for reuniting many families.

Mrs. Yona had taken on the show at the request of its former host, who had been drafted into the Army. That, alone was an indication of her willingness to ``take risks," Deykin said.

``Mother was an extremely vibrant, creative, and inventive person with very strong opinions and very adventuresome," Deykin said.

Services have been held.