When Elena Bianchelli was a six-year-old girl in Italy, Pope John XXIII announced to the world that he would give first communion to just a few six and seven year olds. In this story, Elena tells her friend Dr. Anne Marie Vencill about her parents’ excited reactions to this news and how her first communion turned out to be memorable in more ways than one. StoryCorps Athens stories were recorded locally at the StoryCorps mobile booth at the Athens-Clarke County Library in the Fall of 2018. StoryCorps is part of a national initiative to record and preserve the stories of everyday people.
