Syracuse Florence, Inaugural Class of 1959
This is the last of the love stories we are sharing to celebrate this romantic month. See the other two here and here.
Some love stories begin with a glance across a crowded room. This one began with a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.
In the fall of 1959, two young students — Marilyn Kaufman from the Philadelphia suburbs and Yale Lazris from North Bergen, New Jersey — boarded the Irpinia in Montreal along with roughly thirty fellow Syracuse University students, bound for Florence, Italy. They were part of something entirely new: the very first class of what would become one of the most beloved study abroad programs in the U.S. Studying in Europe was a rare and daring thing in the 1950s, and for Marilyn, even getting there required a small act of faith from her family. “As a girl, I was surprised — stunned, really — that my parents even allowed me to go,” she recalls. “It was truly unusual at that time.”
Eleven days at sea gave the group time to study Italian, absorb the culture, and begin to find each other. It was on that ship that Marilyn first noticed Yale. “He was always engaging and entertaining to all,” she says warmly. By the time the Irpinia docked and Florence revealed itself, something between them had quietly begun to take shape.
Together they took in everything the city offered — the food, the music, the art, the light. They ventured beyond Florence too, darting off to Pompeii, Sorrento, and Capri, catching operas and chasing Italy’s endless treasures. Yale threw himself into speaking Italian with characteristic fearlessness, ordering with great confidence and receiving, on at least one memorable occasion, a plate full of grapes when he had asked for eggs. He didn’t miss a beat.
Florence in 1959 had its own rules of propriety. It was not considered acceptable for a young man and woman to be alone together, which made one particular moment all the more memorable: Yale was escorting Marilyn to her floor in the pension’s open elevator when it lurched to a stop — stuck between floors. It took quite a while for anyone to come to their rescue. One imagines they managed to pass the time.
When the semester ended, they sailed home aboard the Queen Elizabeth — rougher seas this time, but that hardly mattered. Florence had already done its work. Back at Syracuse for their senior year, Marilyn and Yale began dating in earnest. They graduated, became engaged, and within a year were married. Their wedding was filled with friends from Florence, friends who would remain part of their lives for decades to come.
Yale went on to study law at the University of Pennsylvania and built a career as an attorney. Marilyn pursued her passion for Art Education and became a teacher. Together they built a home, a family, and a life in which Florence was always present — literally so, with prints of the city on their walls that Yale made a point of showing their children and grandchildren, telling the stories again and again.
“Everything or anything to do with travels in Italy and around the world made my parents exuberant, energized, and simply happy,” their daughter Kim recalls. That love was contagious. All three of their children — Andy, Mitch, and Kim — traveled to Italy between high school and college, Florence a non-negotiable stop. All three, in turn, brought their own children — seven grandchildren in total — to Italy as well, almost like a pilgrimage. Kim’s family visited Villa Rossa just last summer, in 2025. “Our kids loved walking in their grandparents’ footsteps,” she says.
Kim herself studied abroad through Syracuse — in Madrid — and her father, remarkably, knew the very professor who led her program. Marilyn and Yale came to visit her there and went on to adventure through Spain together. “In the spirit of travel,” as Kim put it. That spirit, she says, is one of the greatest gifts her parents ever gave their family.
Marilyn and Yale returned to Florence and Italy many times over the years, falling in love with it again on every visit. In 2009, fifty years after their grand adventure began, they walked back through the doors of Villa Rossa together.
Yale Lazris passed away in December 2024. At his Celebration of Life, two of his Florence friends from that inaugural 1959 class — Joe Rosenberg and Mel Ronick — rose to speak. That the friendships forged during eleven days on the Irpinia and one semester at Villa Rossa lasted a lifetime says everything.
“Our time in Florence at Villa Rossa was a highlight in our lives and in our relationship,” Marilyn says. “Florence was always with us.”
It still is.
Do you have a Villa Rossa love story to share? We’d love to hear from you: flralumni@syr.edu.