Natalia Settembrini Casillas

1941 - 2025

Natalia Settembrini Casillas
12/02/1941 - 11/13/2025
My wife Natalia Settembrini Casillas passed away on November 13, 2025, at the age of 83, after a courageous battle with heart disease. She died peacefully, at home in Tiburon, surrounded by loved ones. She was the love of my life, my sun, my moon, my stars. She was my rock. She was my best friend. Natalia made me the happiest man on earth during our 41 years of marriage. Beautiful and brilliant in every way, inside and out. Natalia leaves a legacy of love, passion, courage, generosity, and cherished memories that will live on in the hearts of all who knew and loved her.
Natalia was born on December 2, 1941, in Latiano, a small town in Southern Italy in the Region of Puglia which is the "heel of the boot" on the Italian map. Puglia is a beautiful peninsula surrounded on all sides by turquoise blue waters and white sandy beaches. Its interior is blessed by warm climate and rich fertile soil ideal for agriculture. Puglia is known as the "breadbasket of Italy."
Natalia was the daughter of Pompeiana Ione and Giuseppe Settembrini, a Protestant minister. Natalia grew up in Latiano surrounded by her loving parents, family, and friends. She was the youngest of nine children: sisters Giovanna, Maria, Daniela, Evangelina, and Vittoria, and brothers Elia, Gioele, and Gabriele.
Natalia was a devoted wife and mother. She was the materfamilias of an extended family which included, two sons and their wives, five grandchildren, one great-grandson, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and in-laws. She found joy in her family and many friends. She loved to cook and entertain. She often hosted large lunch and dinner parties at "Villa Natalia", her beautiful hilltop home in Tiburon, California, with its panoramic views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the City of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Bay, as well as its terraces, tiles, and gardens that reminded her of the Amalfi Coast, one of her favorite parts of Italy.
When she was 20, Natalia married Navy pilot Albert Porter Blake and moved to the United States. They had two sons: Albert Porter Blake Jr., born in Milton, Florida, and Mark Timothy Blake born in Pozzuoli (Naples), Italy.
Natalia lived in Naples several times. When she was a teenager, Natalia often visited her two older sisters, Daniela and Vittoria, in Naples. During those visits they showered Natalia with love and spoiled her with new clothes - the latest fashions from Rome and Naples. Natalia had fashionista genes in her DNA from an early age in Latiano, and her many teenage trips to Naples to visit Daniela and Vittoria undoubtedly strengthened that fashionista DNA. The Navy stationed the family in Naples, Italy twice for a total of about 7 years. The Navy also stationed the family in Sicily (at Sigonella), in Kansas, and in Michigan.
During the 1970s, Natalia visited Los Angeles, California. While there, she attended the taping of Hollywood Squares - one of the most popular TV game shows in history. The great Peter Marshall hosted the show for more than 5,000 episodes. Of all the audience members, the show picked Natalia to tape an episode THAT DAY. As everyone who knew Natalia understands, Natalia stuck out - not merely because of her beauty (there were undoubtedly other beautiful women in that audience) but because of her personality, intelligence, effervescence, and charm. She lost the game that day, but they underestimated Natalia. She later wrote a letter challenging the result, pointing out an error in the phrasing of the question and how she had responded correctly. As if they needed any other excuse, the show admitted they made a mistake and invited her back! On her return to Hollywood Squares, she won everything, including two new cars. The TV show's producer told Natalia that she "really put a sparkle in the show," and if she wanted a job as a writer on the show, it was hers.
Natalia and Peter Marshall became good friends. Whenever Natalia and I travelled to New York, we got together with Peter (after the end of Hollywood Squares in 1981, Peter became a highly successful singer, dancer, and actor on Broadway). This was not Natalia's only adventure with Hollywood and Broadway. Years later, she and I met Clint Eastwood in San Francisco, but that is a story for another time.
After many exciting adventures with the Navy, Natalia and her family moved to the San Francisco area and settled in the pretty town of Clayton. Natalia and her first husband eventually separated and divorced.
Natalia worked at Bank of America's world headquarters in downtown San Francisco for several years. She would get up at 5 am each day to prepare meals for herself and her two sons and to make the long commute from Clayton to San Francisco. Natalia, a proud graduate of the University of San Francisco, attended USF while working at Bank of America. The Bank thought so highly of Natalia that it paid her tuition at USF.
In the Fall of 1982, I was working at an old Wall Street law firm in New York. I accepted an offer from Bank of America, which was then the largest bank in the world, to move to San Francisco to work on international financing transactions at the Bank's world headquarters. That skyscraper was 52 stories tall. Of all those floors at the Bank, Natalia and I were stationed on the SAME floor. A year and a half later, Natalia and I married in June 1984. I left the Bank and joined a large international law firm based in San Francisco.
During the 1980s, I spent much of my time advising banks headquartered in Europe, Asia, and Latin America on their financings in the USA. Natalia was by my side at every international bank conference, luncheon, dinner, symposium, and other events where I often lectured on international banking. Natalia became the unofficial queen of the international banking community in California. Natalia's beauty opened many doors, but it was her intelligence and personality that kept her in the room, conversing enjoyably and at length with the most sophisticated financiers in the world. These professional relationships blossomed into lifelong personal friendships, especially with leaders of the Italian, Swiss, French, and British banks.
Natalia loved opera. From the time she was a young girl growing up in Italy, her two older brothers, Gioele (a tenor) and Gabriele (a baritone), obliged her to rehearse with them for their many operatic endeavors. As a result, young Natalia could sing every soprano role in every Italian opera. From her youth all the way through the end of her life, Natalia loved and supported local and international opera singers and opera companies. She could discuss the history, nuance, and artistic elements of opera with anyone and everyone. She met and socialized with many of the greatest opera singers of our time, including Luciano Pavarotti, Juan Pons, Piero Cappuccilli, Samuel Ramey, Silvano Carroli, Juan Diego Flórez, Franco Bonisolli, Alfredo Kraus, Jess Thomas, Richard Alexandre Rittelmann, Ruggero Raimondi, and many other great opera singers, conductors and artists. Natalia served as President of the Golden Gate Opera Company.
In 2007, the iPhone burst onto the scene and changed the world. Natalia was an avid participant in the social media revolution. She joined many different groups on Facebook, including The Italian Mothers group, which had thousands of members around the world. When Natalia passed away in November, these members posted hundreds of beautiful messages and tributes to Natalia on Facebook and other social media with observations about Natalia that included words such as stunning, shining, sparkling, elegant, fashionista, radiant, dazzling, blazing, vivid, vivacious, gifted, talented, luminous, grand, intelligence, wisdom, courage, generosity, kindness, passion.
Natalia would occasionally share stories about her family and her life with her social media friends. One of the members of The Italian Mothers group is a publisher in Milan. One day the publisher asked Natalia, "Can you turn these stories into a book?" Natalia did not hesitate: "Of course I can." And she did.
Natalia turned her stories into two books that total nearly 700 pages and tell an epic story: The first book was The Chiaravalle Family, based on her father's life, his courage during battles in World War I, his survival of a WWI prisoner of war camp, and his historic achievements as one of the few Protestant ministers in Southern Italy. The second book was A Girl Named Natalia, based on her own amazing story, her journey from a small town in Italy to the United States of America and her many travels around the world. She wrote both books in Italian for the publisher in Milan. They were so popular that Natalia translated the books into English, which were also published by the company in Milan (altogether nearly 1,400 pages of her words in print). All four books are available on Amazon. In addition to these four books, Natalia translated an Italian book about Shakespeare into English (Shakespeare: I am Italian, by Professor Vito Costantini), which was published and is available on Amazon.
Natalia was an avid reader and one of the best "customers" of our wonderful local library in Tiburon. She visited the Tiburon library at least once or twice a week to check out and return books. She typically read several books a week.
Natalia was a devoted "Nonna" to her five grandchildren and her great-grandson. Her grandchildren often said how supportive she was, both in her actions and in her words. Her grandchildren could do no wrong in Natalia's eyes. The grandchildren knew they could rely on Nonna to show up smiling and impeccably dressed to every soccer match, softball game, theatrical performance, party, graduation, or other event - and then brag about her grandchildren to anyone who would listen. Natalia was so proud of her grandchildren and great-grandson. She thoroughly enjoyed sharing her love of opera, fashion, food, history, and family with her grandchildren. As the grandchildren have said, "there is no better confidence-booster than a Nonna who sees you as extraordinary."
Natalia loved to travel. We travelled overseas often, for work and for pleasure. Wherever we went it seemed we had friends from the international banking and opera communities to visit in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Natalia and I went to virtually all the major opera houses in the world, with especially fond memories of La Scala in Milan, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Regio in Turin, Covent Garden in London, Palais Garnier in Paris, the Sydney Opera House, the Staatsoper in Vienna, the Met in New York, and of course the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, where Natalia's name is carved into the wall along with other major donors to the San Francisco Opera.
Natalia's most recent trip to Italy was in September 2025. We were joined by Natalia's two sons, Albertino and Marco (as she affectionately called them her entire life), and their wives Julia and Marienella, respectively. Our party of nine also included our granddaughter Jordan Blake, her boyfriend Conor, and our grandson Matthew Blake. Rome and Florence were on that itinerary, but the highlight was the wonderful week we spent in Natalia's birthplace, Puglia, with its sun-kissed land, white sandy beaches, and turquoise blue seas: the land that infused Natalia's DNA.
Natalia is survived by her husband of 41 years Mark Casillas of Tiburon, her son Albert Porter Blake Jr., and his wife Julia of Walnut Creek, her son Mark Timothy Blake and his wife Marienella of Walnut Creek, her five grandchildren (from oldest to youngest): twins Francesca and Gabriel, Jordan, Sophia, and Matthew. Natalia is also survived by the newest member of the family, our great-grandson Luca who was born in April 2025 to Francesca and her husband Nik. Natalia's surviving siblings are Vittoria Gillman of Virginia Beach, VA, and Evangelina Lisi of Walnut Creek, CA.
Natalia's funeral was held on November 21, 2025, at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, 1965 Reliez Valley Road, Lafayette, CA 94549, which is where Natalia's remains reside. Natalia would no doubt be delighted by your visit, where she would greet you warmly with her beautiful smiling photo and memorial. In lieu of flowers, she would want you to make a donation to the American Heart Association.
Though Natalia may be gone from our sight, she will never be gone from our hearts and our enduring love. May she rest in eternal peace. Yours truly. Her husband, Mark Casillas.