CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A Little Italy woman has shared a piece of her own personal World War II history with the rest of the world, lending her wedding dress - made from a parachute - to a museum at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
In less than a week, Aida Bonsonto will be 97. The parachute was her husband's, Gerald "Jerry" Bonsonto, a WWII private who was in the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army.
"And I think he made four or five jumps. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. And that's when he was shot down by a sniper,” Bonsonto said of her late husband, who died in 1980.
She said they weren't sure he would survive.
"He says, 'I want you to make a dress out of it.' And that's what I did," she remembered.
Bonsonto's wedding dress, which she's kept for 73 years - and is now lending to the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum.
Lending, she said, because someone else in her family might want to wear it.