Lindsay Marie Morris

Since its groundbreaking in 1999, the Italian American Community Center of Rochester has been a celebration destination. The three-story building offers 27,000 square feet of floor space with ballrooms, bocce courts, an Italian-style bar/cafe, offices, a boardroom/classroom, and an area for dancing. 

Locals have booked the facility for weddings, proms, corporate events, engagement parties, birthday bashes, showers, reunions, fundraisers, and quinceañeras. They can also attend IACC events ranging from St. Joseph's Table and Festa Italiana to the Ferragosto Picnic and Christmas Gala. 

It's a place to gather for food and fellowship while tapping into the traditions and history of immigrants from Italy's boot and islands. And no matter where you come from or your family history, "Everyone is Italian who walks through this door," says IACC Office Manager Cassandra Pettrone. 

I spoke with Cassandra and her colleagues, Event Coordinator Erin Noll and Event Coordinator/Cook Sonia Amadio, about their nonprofit organization's efforts to preserve Italian culture, provide a sense of community, and reach younger generations.

How does the IACC maintain its ties to culture while reaching the community?

Erin: We have a strong membership. They'll have their family events here. We have biweekly luncheons where original members come together and prepare the meal with Sonia. We do the St. Joseph's Table, a picnic in June, Ferragosto in August, and the Gala every December. At this past year's Gala, we were able to donate to a local organization called It's About Caring for Kids.

A past IACC St. Joseph's Table. Learn more about this tradition here.

How is IACC engaging with younger generations?

Sonia: We've had Italian classes in the past. We're actually looking at doing cooking classes—Cooking with Nonna—in the future.

It's hard to pull in the younger generation because they're involved in many different activities and sports. For my generation, it wasn't that way. Our parents had a lot more time to bring back to the community, to be here, and to do so many things for the Italian American Community Center. So, we're looking into activities to bring them back, where they can engage with their grandparents or parents. 

Cassandra: I continue to do this type of work in my adult life because of my background. I have always felt very connected with my heritage and where my family came from in Agrigento, Sicily. I took Italian classes from seventh to eleventh grade in high school. So, part of it is finding people who care about their heritage, culture, and continuing traditions. 

IACC caters and hosts weddings, banquets, corporate functions, and school events.

What experience do you hope to share?

Erin: I did not grow up Italian like Sonia and Cassandra. So for me, it's nice. I love learning about the different traditions and the culture. I try really hard to learn the language. I love hearing the stories of how things happened back when members lived in Italy and stories of coming over here. My absolute favorite thing is just learning their history and how everything came about—and then seeing them come together and how everybody's sauce is made. It's like a big family where we can all get together and share stories and feel welcomed.

Sonia: Most members have been here since the very start, so this is their second home. They take pride in the Italian American Community Center and can carry on their traditions. When I cook for luncheons with the members, we come together to bring home cooking back. It is a great community.

Cassandra: The part of the job I love is touching my family's Italian roots and tying them into my everyday life. I feel like our mission is to emulate that with anyone who walks in our building so that they can feel that Italian-American family atmosphere and feel like they're at home, too.

"Everyone is Italian who walks through this door," says IACC Office Manager Cassandra Pettrone.

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Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian immigrants with farming backgrounds began arriving in Iowa. However, most came without the money to purchase the necessary land. Instead, they found work in the coal mines of southern and central Iowa, or settled in areas such as Oelwein, Council Bluffs, and Des Moines, where they laid track for the state's railroads or worked on streetcars. After the mines closed, many workers moved to Des Moines and formed their own Little Italy.

In 1981, a small group of proud Italian immigrants founded the Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa to build on the legacy of those original settlers. The 501(c) (3) organization aims to promote, preserve, and share Italian heritage and culture with the Des Moines metro area and the state of Iowa through a museum, events, and on-site amenities. Even this year, amid renovation and remodeling, the center remains a hub for everything from bocce and Italian language and genealogy classes to a St. Joseph's celebration and gala.

I spoke with Therese Riordan, the Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa's Secretary of the Board of Governors and Chairperson of the Heritage Advisory Council, whose parents were among the founders. She's been with the organization for more than three decades, honoring her family's largely Calabrian heritage. Her mother, Patricia Civitate, the Center's former Director, remains an active member at 95.

Therese shared more about Des Moines' Italian ties and the organization's offerings, challenges, and goals.

Patricia Civitate speaks to a women's group about the significance of the St. Joseph's Altar and breads.

What most memorable events or initiatives has the Center hosted over the decades?

We hosted RAGBRAI from Veneto when they came over from Italy to ride on the Iowa bike tour. The Center also hosted receptions for visiting Italian sports teams and sometimes gave tours of the city. We also provided meals for people who toured our museum.

Our organization pursued a partnership between the Greater Des Moines Sister Cities and Provinci di Catanzaro in Southern Italy. We've hosted Italian chefs from various regions on three occasions. Folk dancers affiliated with us (although it's a separate organization) have hosted the Italian Folk Art Federation of America Conference in Des Moines twice. And we've sponsored numerous trips to tour Italy.

At our museum, we've had some nice, one-of-a-kind things come in. We have a large display of regional hats donated by a lady in New York. We also received puppets. Someone recently donated a hand-carved Italian Jesus made from Italian wood, and a story goes with that. Somebody even gave us a grand piano, and for me, that was exciting.

Day camp members learn about Venice.

Tell us about your children's day camp.

Children from ages six to 12 are invited to spend the week with us, and it's a themed week. This past year, we set an Italian table. They made a centerpiece and an appetizer, and they learned the Italian language around those things, watched videos, sang songs, and did some crafts.

Every day, they do a craft, learn the Italian language, cook, make music, and play a game. They have five days to put together an Italian meal, which they can take home.

We've done some fun stuff. I don't think we'll do volcanoes again. That year, we had 21 kids, which is an unusually large number. They made their own volcanoes after we studied the Italian volcanoes. We let them have them erupt, and it was very exciting, but it was very messy. That was a good time.

The children meet La Befana, Italy's beloved Epiphany witch.

Tell us about your other offerings.

The Iowa Genealogical Society of Iowa has generously allowed us space for our language classes. They have been approximately twice a year for the last three or four years. They have been fairly well attended, and people on their way to Italy are always anxious to take them. We're hoping to continue doing those.

We offer translation services for people who need them and have provided dual citizenship classes. We also have a lady who's extremely good with genealogy, so she's very welcoming and helpful whenever there's a question. 

We hosted our St. Joseph altar celebration and Italian Father's Day in March, an activity we haven't been able to do recently because of COVID. It involves putting together a large center altar and then six or more side altars, and they all have to be decorated and laid out with memorabilia from the organization that sponsors it, plus fruits and vegetables. It used to be with a dinner, but we couldn't do that this year. But they did a beautiful job of decorating.

Members prepared veggie frittatas to donate to the Catholic Worker House as part of their annual St. Joseph Altar celebration.

Are there any upcoming events you're particularly excited about?

We will have our October heritage month—whatever we can do without being in the building. We will have a large fundraising dinner in November, which should be extremely nice. We haven't done this for a few years, but there's a new committee working on it, and it should be beautiful. It will feature a chef from Italy.

What are your challenges and goals?

The challenge in the capital campaign is always money. And everybody wants the same pot of money, so that's one of the things we're working for. Our plan is not just to be a place for Italians. Our plan is to be a place where we can share what being Italian means with everybody else. It's not a clubhouse. It's a place to learn about our background, our customs, and how they fit into the fabric of the United States and Iowa.

The Italian American Cultural Center of Iowa's mitten tree, a collection of donated hats, scarves, and mittens, is distributed to neighborhood centers.

What do you hope to share?

We hope that we'll be a place where people can come and share their stories and learn about Italy, the background of some of the people who came here, and their contributions to the state of Iowa and the United States. Unfortunately, one of the things that, if you say Italian, is the first thing people think of is the mafia. There is so much more than that. There are so many contributions that Italians have made to the world and the state of Iowa that we would like to highlight, and we'd like to give this an opening for people to come in and talk about themselves and their backgrounds.

Boasting one of the most authentic Sicilian food festivals in the region of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley and Western New Jersey, Holy Cross Society members are proud to pass on the traditions of their ancestors, who migrated from Santo Stefano di Camastra in the Province of Messina. The organization has evolved since its 1911 founding while staying true to its deep Sicilian roots. Each September, they host their annual Holy Cross Celebration & Sicilian Food Festival, which began as a reenactment of Santo Stefano di Camastra's own La Festa del Letto Santo in which classic Sicilian foods are served, a queen is crowned, and music and fellowship are shared.

I spoke with Jim Palmeri, a member of Holy Cross Society's Board of Trustees and webmaster of holycrosssociety.com, whose grandparents were founding members, about the organization's history, how it promotes Sicilian heritage, the challenges it faces, and its goals as members embrace the future.

What is the history of the Holy Cross Society?

It started with my grandparents and that generation, who came from the same town in Sicily, Santo Stefano di Camastra. Like many organizations at that time, it was what we call today a mutual aid society, providing assistance with reading and writing English, immigration law, financial assistance, and job placement.

We are into the third and fourth generations of people from that same town in Easton, Pennsylvania, with about 65 families still with connections to the homeland. 

2011 Queen Gina Palmeri holds court between former Auxiliary President Sandy Callery and former President Tony Tumminello.

How does the society continue to promote Sicilian heritage in the community?

We have a meeting once a month. There's a Men's Society and a Ladies Auxiliary. Every September, we hold a festival at the same time as one held in our town in Sicily at the church called Letto Santo. About 114 years ago, our grandparents reenacted the same celebration here as their relatives did in Sicily. We focus much of our work around that festival because it's a bit of a homecoming time. 

So families come back to town. Usually, there are two days of festival time, Friday and Saturday. Then, on Sunday, we have a Mass of the Holy Cross at our local Catholic church, where we all process in. The priest talks about the Holy Cross. (It's the Feast of the Holy Cross on the second Sunday of September.)

We also crown the queen. Usually, she's the granddaughter or daughter of one of our members. And she has a court. She has to write an essay about why she should be part of the celebration. We're promoting our Sicilian heritage to the next generation.

Much of the learning is stories we tell about our parents or grandparents; many of us travel back and forth to our Sicilian town and still have cousins there. So we talk with them about what they're doing and what's going on in that town, and share what's happening in this town.

Every year, one of our members, Sal Panto, who is also the mayor of Easton, does a trip there and invites people to go. He has opened it up to the public to get enough for a group, but there are always several members of our society. It's really kind of a cultural exchange and immersion.

Those trips started on the hundredth anniversary of the Holy Cross Society when we did a bit of a pilgrimage. Maybe 30 of us went to Santo Stefano and spent almost a week connecting with our relatives. It was a really good way to reinvigorate the relationships. Then, a group from Santo Stefano came to Easton to celebrate our hundredth. We went over in the summer, and they came over in September.

Tell us about your members.

Right now, we'll get 35 to 40 members to attend a monthly meeting of the 80 members, which is pretty good. Our charter is closed. You must be a relative of someone from Santo Stefano or married to someone from Santo Stefano.

Holy Cross Society members march together in procession.

What are the highlights of your annual celebration?

Years and years ago, the organization used to actually march through the streets of Easton, and people would come out and donate money, and they would go from house to house when many of the Italian people lived in the inner city. Now, with suburbia, that doesn't happen so much anymore. So we still do a procession, but we do it around our chapel grounds just outside of the city instead of through the city streets. It's kind of a neat thing. 

The Lehigh Valley Italian American Band comes back every year on Saturday night, and they play. There was a song called "#9" that was composed by the leader of what was the predecessor of the Italian American band led by a guy named Charlie Perello. That song has persevered so much that we still play it today at our festival. When it goes on, people start to clap and sort of sway along with the song, and they know it. It's almost like the Notre Dame fight song; it's recognizable. But that's part of the tradition of the festival. It's part of connecting our roots. 

Lehigh Valley Italian American Band performs for Holy Cross Celebration attendees.

How are you reaching the next generation?

Every organization—whether it be our organization, Rotary, or Kiwanis clubs—is wondering what will happen with the next generation. And we have been extremely fortunate. Our children, who are now in their thirties, forties, and fifties, are getting involved. Their kids are now in the queen's court and learning about their heritage.

We give out higher educational grants to children who are from our lineage. And if we have money left over from that fund, we then extend it to students who are attending Catholic schools. 

One of our members, our former president, Nick Alfero, is very big on making certain that it's fun for the kids to be there, so they understand that it is not just a carnival. That's part of their heritage. And we serve all kinds of Sicilian food. We still have the tripe; we still serve the octopus salad.  

In addition, we have Christmas parties for the kids now. We'll do an Easter egg hunt, and for the first time, we're going to have a picnic just for the families. During the celebration, we're all working. So it's part of a homecoming, and we interact with people from the public, but now we're going to have a picnic just for us.

What do you hope to share with your members and community?

I think we share with the members that people came here as immigrants for a better life, hoping that most of them are living a better life (which I believe those who belong really kind of do), and reminding them of the hardships that their grandparents experienced to come to America and why they came to America.

My grandparents came over pre-World War I. And Sicily wasn't a great place to live then. My cousin, Pippo Torcivia, lives in Santo Stefano. He's a very successful ceramic artist. The town is known for its ceramics. So if you go there, there's a bunch of ceramic factories. 

Pippo and I are second cousins because his mother, my grandmother, and their brother, Uncle Santo, were siblings. Our great uncle and my grandmother came to America. Pippo's grandmother was left in Sicily because she was married. The other two were still single when they came here.

One night, when we were talking, Pippo told me that my Uncle Santo would come back to Sicily. He was a bachelor. He worked on the railroads. So, he did well for himself. And he didn't have a family. He would go back and forth and buy people shoes. He would give his sister money to live on.

As Pippo is telling me this story, he's crying. He pulled me aside and very seriously said, "Can I ask you where Uncle Santo was buried?" I said, "Yeah, I know what the cemetery is."

He says, "Would you take me there?" And I said, "Sure." And on the way, he turned to me and said, "Can we buy flowers somewhere?" So, I took him to a greenhouse that was not far from the cemetery. 

I took him to the cemetery and showed him the grave. He went with these flowers, sat there, and sobbed like a baby.

To me, that brought it all together, how we're two cultures that are really bound. So you have to tell those stories to the kids about where they came from. And we have some pretty darn good young adults who are coming in and joining the organization.  

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With 19th-century roots as a fishing village of immigrants from Genoa and Sicily, San Diego's Little Italy came into its own in the 1920s as a vibrant neighborhood and tuna capital of America.

Fishing was plentiful, but so were opportunities for seafood processing and marketing. Other Italians chose to open restaurants where they served the fish that locals caught.

But World War II brought change.

Italian residents without U.S. citizenship were labeled "enemy aliens." And in San Diego, fishermen (like their peers on the East Coast) were restricted from their livelihood. In some cases, boats were requisitioned for military use.

The city's tuna clipper fleet would shrink nearly 30% by 1959, and when Interstate 5 opened, it sliced through Little Italy. But while families were displaced, many held onto their businesses and places of worship, like Our Lady of Rosary Church.

Today, Little Italy stands as downtown San Diego's oldest continuous neighborhood business district, supported by civic and heritage organizations, including Convivio, founded in 2003.

Executive Director Tom Cesarini grew up immersed in Italian culture and language, with parents who emigrated to the United States from Aspra, Sicily, in the 1960s. He launched Convivio with a focus on preserving and promoting his heritage and its contributions to San Diego.

We discussed the factors that informed that decision, the key challenges he and his team have faced, the most impactful programs they have developed, and their plans for the future, including the establishment of a new Italian-American cultural center and museum.

Men stand in the racks along the edge of the boat, three-pole fishing for tuna in rough seas.  The larger tuna often ranged between 100 and 200 pounds, requiring two to three men to pull the fish on board. (Courtesy of the Portuguese Historical Center)

What led you to launch Convivio?

Our Little Italy in San Diego was getting redeveloped at the time, after having almost disappeared altogether through the 1980s. The Merchant Association brought that back, but culture and history were disappearing rapidly.

I had volunteered in San Diego for several arts and cultural groups, all promoting Italian culture. But there was a lot of infighting. And so as a volunteer, I was left in the cold, wondering, "What just happened?"

I decided to give it a go myself. I had enough knowledge as a volunteer and was self-educated on nonprofits in general, but I looked at the gaps in knowledge that I had to fill to do it properly. I applied to a nonprofit leadership program at the University of San Diego, got accepted, and that opened up the doors.

Between 2003, when I founded Convivio, and 2005, when I started the program, I was just putting it together—events and programs—and looking for support slowly but surely.

Two years of the Master's program really helped a lot, and for 22 years, we've done a lot. We have a great track record. I'm really proud of it.

We have a good volunteer team, and it's still growing. We're always trying to get to the next level in the nonprofit world.  

Washington Elementary School was architecturally modeled after the White House. When this photograph was taken in 1940, the interior was made predominantly of marble, and lion heads originally marked the front entrance but were later removed. The school served the entire Italian community. Sadly, the original building was torn down in 1980. The school, however, was rebuilt for another generation of young San Diegans. (Courtesy of Fran Marline Stephenson)

Describe Convivio's focus.

One of our core components is our heritage preservation program. We establish digital archives to save those stories through photographs and oral histories. It's one of the things we do, but it's a very important one.

We do a lot. There's something for everybody. Films, author presentations, a book club, a film club, concerts, Italian classes… You name it, we are open to it. The goal is to provide a space for people just to come together, congregate, and build relationships.

Why is creating a community space so important?

Other ethnic communities have cultural centers and shared spaces. We had Little Italy, we had the neighborhood, and we had the church that served as an anchor for a hundred years. But I wanted to do something a little bit different, expand our vision for the community.

I asked people, "What are your ambitions as an Italian-American, as a leader, as a community member? What are your aspirations? What are you looking for?" And across the board, they all said the same thing: we need a home.

It aligned with what I already knew, but I needed that data. It's not just me saying it, it's the entire community saying it, and this is what we have to try to deliver. So we try to fill in those gaps in programming.

Processions were of vital importance to the parishioners, and remain so to this day. In this image, circa 1945, the San Diego County Administration building is prominent in the background. The procession is heading toward the wharf, as was customary, culminating in the return to the church. (Courtesy of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish)

How does collaboration play a role?

We're all about collaboration. Who can we work with? How do we leverage each other's strengths, and how do we better our community and work more efficiently?

Instead of saying all the time, "I'm Sicilian" or "I'm Tuscan," let's also unite and not be so competitive. We saw many San Diego clubs competing for resources. I said, "We're not going to get anywhere this way. We've got to really focus our efforts on coming together."

We've partnered with San Diego Opera, San Diego Symphony, and non-Italian arts and cultural groups. With those, it's about "How do we leverage their power? How can they best work with us to benefit both us and them?"

That component of what's in it for us often has a negative connotation, but it's important. We have to look at ourselves if we want to keep going. It's almost like that self-care notion of if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else.

So, how does it benefit both our organizations? If we can look at that and come up with something, it's win-win literally for both parties involved in the project.

What have been your challenges to date?

The biggest lament is funding for all nonprofits, especially in the arts. We're constantly struggling to deal with either budget cuts or grant cuts.

We have private donors who support us. On the grant side, we have fee-for-service programs to raise money. We have retail that we try to raise funds for, so we're always exploring new funding streams.

As far as heritage goes, a big challenge has been overcoming stigmas with the community, and overcoming the fact that Italians can be very private. For example, we published a couple of books.

There were pictorial history books on the community. One was on San Diego's Little Italy, and a couple of years later, we did one on the fishing industry, which was huge in San Diego.

I was out knocking on doors, trying to collect photographs. That was a challenge. Some people donated photos, but others were concerned about what we would do with their photos.

We're trying to educate the community at large about the importance of our organization, mission, and vision. Our vision is to create a museum and a cultural center on a large scale. And so now we're introducing that in many ways and trying to gather everybody together.

It's getting better now. New generations have come into the existing organizations. We're seeing a lot of partnering with events with different organizations that you wouldn't have seen before. If the Italian community is going to prosper and move forward, we have to come together eventually.

The fishing canneries employed many of San Diego's residents, especially women, during the 1920s and 1930s. This group of young women worked for the Westgate Cannery and is pictured outside the company in 1936. Sarah Gangitano Bono is seen kneeling in the front row, on the left; others in the photo are unidentified. (Courtesy of Marie Bono Sohl)

Which program has had the most significant impact?

The Heritage Preservation Program. We've amassed thousands of images, done oral histories, and now, we're putting together a repository, moving toward an actual physical museum for San Diego and an arts and cultural center space.

I think that's the most important one, because that was severely lacking. We have other groups doing spaghetti dinners and fish fries, and similar events. We do a lot of those things, too. But as far as a more academic bent to organizations, that was lacking. 

Is there a success story that stands out from your initiatives?

We had a donor buy property in Little Italy and donate the use of it to us. So we will be establishing a larger cultural center and finally a museum.

We have a small space we work out of now. It's a little cottage, a little fishing home that's been preserved, and it serves its purpose well for us now, but we want to expand and create a larger museum and cultural center.

We're in the planning stages right now. So after 22 years of knocking on doors and saying, "This is important," it's coming to fruition, and people are starting to buy into it.

My philosophy is essentially the Lao Tzu mantra: a leader is best when people barely know he exists; the people will say they did it themselves. When all is said and done, the goal is to get the people to do what they need to do. It's a huge deal for San Diego's Italian American community.

AMICIBAR in Little Italy, Convivio's current space

What do you ultimately hope to share?

It goes back to why I started the organization, which was to create and sustain a space where people can come together, put their phones down, sit at a table with strangers, start a conversation, and just learn from each other. That's what our space is meant to be.

There's this notion of a third space or place. The first place is your home. Second place is your work. Where's your third place? Where do you go for community?

That's really what Convivio is about in a nutshell: where you go for community. That's what we try to cultivate.

I ultimately hope to share a place where people can do that and learn about Italian culture, but also learn about each other.

When I chose the name Convivio, I was looking for a name that represented that, and hopefully it does. I can't find a better one. Uniting and coming together. That's what I hope to share with purpose. 

Discover Convivio in person and meet me for this special book event.

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Post-World War II, Italy was a nation in recovery, rebuilding its economy, infrastructure, and identity under new democratic leadership. In June 1947, the United States drafted the Marshall Plan, a program designed to provide financial assistance to Western European countries devastated by the war. As the third-largest recipient, Italy received 10% of that aid. In turn, U.S. government agencies, organizations, and business groups expanded their efforts to build strategic partnerships with their Italian counterparts. That collaboration led to the formation of civic organizations committed to cross-cultural and educational exchange among Italians and Italian Americans. And it paved the way for the 1956 launch of the America-Italy Society of Philadelphia (AIS-Phila).

Since its inception, AIS-Phila has embraced arts and education while continuing its commitment to the Italy-U.S. friendship. Meanwhile, in Italy, AIS-Phila has participated in restoration projects, such as the Committee to Rescue Italian Art in the aftermath of the 1966 Arno River flood, and built a center in 1980 for survivors of an earthquake east of Naples.

As the collaboration continues, AIS-Phila remains focused on deepening the understanding of contemporary Italian culture as it exists in Italy and moving beyond stereotypes. Chief among its offerings is a language school, offering 45 courses to around 350 students in person and online. The community can also participate in AIS-Phila lectures, films, concerts, and art exhibitions. 

AIS-Phila Executive Director Elisa Schwab Clewis grew up in Brazil and Italy before moving to the U.S. She's lived in Philadelphia since 2006, working in the non-profit sector and gaining over 16 years of experience teaching Italian culture and language in higher education. 

Elisa shared more about AIS-Phila, its unique offerings and mission, upcoming collaborations, and her leadership goals.

What new initiatives have you taken on as the organization's third director?

My mindset is that I will consider everything we get in. I never say no to anyone until I first talk with them.

It was maybe my fifth day here when we received this email from the Philadelphia Museum of Art inviting us to get tickets for the craft show in November, where Italy would be the guest country. I said, "This is interesting. We need to get deeper on this."

I found out who the artists were and decided to write a letter inviting them to a party here. They told me, "We cannot really talk to you directly. You need to talk with our curator. But he's actually amazing." So, I talked to him and began collaborating with him, and they came here. Some did not have enough money to stay in a hotel, so we arranged for them to stay with host families. And we had a welcoming dinner.

It was totally made up on the spot, but it went well. It was great.

AIS-Phila teacher Cristina Vea holds up a peace sign while posing with her language class.

Share more about your school.

The school seriously started about 11 years ago. The former director did an amazing job of building the basis of the school from one that had just a couple of courses. The board decided to bring in an executive director and a director of the school, and we are working together to take it to the next level. We are offering cultural courses, accelerated courses, and pronunciation courses. Our teachers are the heart of it. Several have PhDs in literature, one is a sociologist, and we have a film studies person. We have such expertise among our teachers.

Study abroad with AIS-Phila in Todi, Italy. 

Tell us about your study abroad program.

We've been doing this for about 15 years, every June for one week in Todi, which is in Umbria. It is a very nice medieval town. Our students would take classes from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and then in the afternoon, we do sightseeing. The cool thing is that they can pick between homestays—a family home, a hotel, or an apartment. I will say that 70% of them want to stay in a home with a host family, which is great because you really get the best.

Anna Kraczyna spoke to AIS-Phila members about translating Pinocchio for Penguin Classics.

What events and activities do you offer, and what is their role in the mission?

The mission is to really bring Italian culture to the U.S. We are not a heritage organization, so we are a little bit different. Our events are getting deeper into aspects of Italian culture through history, art, music, and lectures.

We have been historically involved with the restoration of art in Venice. We do a series of conferences on Venice. It can be any aspect, like literature in Venice or the environmental situation of Venice, with the water rising. We just hosted Anna Kraczyna, the translator of Pinocchio into English for Penguin Classics. She presented the real meaning of the book, and it was absolutely wonderful. The event could also be seen on Zoom because some people are not in Philadelphia or have mobility problems. If you offer the event on Zoom, you open up to the entire U.S., so we will be looking into doing that more.

AIS-Phila's Amerita Chamber Players Concert Series

Can you share any memorable moments or success stories?

The November show with the artists was quite amazing. We ended up receiving art from three of them who decided to leave their art behind and donated it to us so that we can do an auction and a joint fundraiser. So I will try to sell it and pay them a fair amount. But then I can also do some fundraising with "100% Made in Italy" art pieces.

Success stories? There are a lot. We've been doing a lot of backstage work with the financial part of the organization. I was with an official at City Hall, welcoming high school students from the sister cities, one of them being Florence. The reception was wonderful.

It's such a rich job, yet so natural to me because that's what I am. I've always been between the two countries.

What upcoming projects or collaborations are you particularly excited about?

We are going to collaborate with Robert Campana, who has built Stop Italian Sounding. What is that? It's when someone approaches the supermarket in the United States and wants to buy a product. Often, products use Italian-sounding language, the colors of the flag, or the Tower of Pisa to show that the product is actually authentic, but it's not.

He wants to educate the public about this. He's been doing a terrific job to the point that when I was teaching at Arcadia University, I offered a course titled "Made in Italy," and part of my course focused on stopping Italian sounding. We went to his website and looked at his videos, and then my students had to build an advertisement to educate the public on that. So, Robert and I want to start offering master classes at AIS-Phila. Then, we'll have a tasting so you can also taste the product. We are looking into collaboration with restaurants or places where you buy Italian products.

We haven't really done much with food because I didn't want to fall into the "Let's cook together!" This Robert Campana collaboration is so perfectly in line with us; it's our way of, "Let's talk about food, but let's talk about it in an educational way. Let's give you some options so you can decide." For me, it's a great accomplishment that we will collaborate. 

Philadelphia has the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, the oldest nonprofit that deals with the international environment in Philadelphia, and we are officially collaborating. We are already organizing the welcoming event for the new general consul from Italy, who is coming this summer. We want to do an official welcome between us and them.

We are also collaborating with an organization that helps people get Italian citizenship. Especially now, we get a lot of requests. We absolutely do not give any legal advice. So, I decided to collaborate with an organization called Italiza. They're based in New Jersey, but they work with the entire U.S., and their legal office is in Rome, so they can really help people with that. We help people with translations. 

AIS-Phila presents Vittorini awards to University of Pennsylvania students who study abroad and encounter sights such as Ravenna's Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo.

How do you hope to impact the community?

Sometimes, the understanding of Italy is very romantic. It's very, "Wonderful wine!" and "Bella Vita!" My underlying mission is to really bring Italy and the understanding of the complexity of a country with a huge culture, history, and diversity. So, I am just really going beyond what people might superficially think and trying to really educate the public. And sometimes, Italian Americans are the ones who need to move away from their stereotypical idea of Italy and move to "This is a country that lives today. Things didn't stop 60 years ago."

We have 20 teachers, including the director of the school. We are from Italy, so that's what we are, right? That's what I like to promote.

I hope to share the complexity of Italy and the reality of today. I'm happy some of our students want to travel to Italy. The fact is that most tourist places don't really represent the country, so really, it's all about this authenticity.

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The history of Vermont's Italian American community was shaped in stone and later bulldozed in the name of progress. But in the end, those were only structures, for its spirit lives on, thanks in part to the efforts of the Vermont Italian Cultural Association (VICA). 

Starting in the 1880s, skilled stone cutters and carvers from Northern Italian cities, including Carrara, emigrated to the state, pursuing high-paying jobs in a place with hills and lakes reminiscent of their home. Many found work carving headstones at the Vermont Marble Company, which had operations in Proctor and Rutland. Later, more Italian immigrants settled in Washington County's Barre, the self-proclaimed "Granite Center of the World," where they worked the quarries and carving sheds.  

As the Italian immigrant population grew, families gravitated toward Vermont's largest city, Burlington, and formed what would later become known as its Little Italy. However, starting in the 1960s, the city embraced a philosophy of urban renewal and razed over 140 homes, businesses, community centers, schools, and gardens in favor of new commercial developments.

While the Greater Burlington Italian American community lacked a physical heart, its love and devotion to its heritage inspired VICA's launch in 1983. The group's passionate push to preserve connection and identity has evolved into a statewide network that partners with cultural organizations, such as opera companies, film festivals, music groups, and authors, to deliver Italian-themed events and programming.

VICA President Lisa DeNatale moved to the Green Mountain State 25 years ago. For her first 15 years, she was largely unaware of its Italian presence. Once she discovered the rich heritage and history, the descendant of Sicilians from the Enna Province town of Pietraperzia felt called to preserve it.

Lisa shared more about Vermont's connection to Italy, the organization's history and current offerings, and her leadership goals.
 

VICA President Lisa DeNatale in Venice, Italy

Tell us more about Vermont's Italian immigrant history.

To tell that story, I have to say a little bit about my own background because I'm half Sicilian; my grandparents came from Sicily. My father, Giuseppe Salvatore DeNatale, was born in the U.S. I grew up outside Boston, where there's a very large, prominent, and active Italian and Italian American community. It was common for us to get together with my grandparents for Pasqua, name days—you name it. And it was always a very important part of my life.

I met my husband and moved to Portland, Oregon, where we stayed for 10 years. We moved to Vermont 25 years ago, totally unaware that there was really an Italian community here, and stumbled upon it after being here for 15 years or so.

I guess it just never occurred to me that there would be an Italian community in Vermont. It was not the place you heard about Italian immigrants coming to. But as I've learned, it was an important destination for Italians, primarily those from the north initially.

In the late 19th century, Vermont had granite and marble quarries. When these were discovered and/or developed, they needed skilled carvers. A large population of Italian immigrants, mainly men, came here from Carrara and many northern towns, and then more came from the Naples area. They came to Barre (not to be confused with Bari, Italy) and the Rutland area, where the quarries were.

They had a very strong Italian immigrant presence in Barre, where they built the Socialist Party Labor Hall. One testament to the work of these men is Hope Cemetery, where many Italian immigrants are buried. It's also where many stone cutters cut their monuments and mausoleums, so it's really an outdoor museum.

From the late 19th to the early 20th century, there was a great Exodus from Italy; more and more people came here to support Italian families and businesses. Some came to Burlington and formed a tight-knit Italian neighborhood. They might have started as fruit peddlers and then opened markets and businesses.

There was a very strong Italian community here in Burlington, where Italian was heard on the streets. What has remained is this very strong Italian culture, Italian tradition, and an appreciation for what Italian immigrants brought to Vermont.

The Vermont Italian Cultural Association is the primary organization whose mission is to preserve and promote Italian culture so that we don't forget that Italian immigrants made many important, lasting contributions to Vermont and the country.

I was doing some research and discovered that Stanley Tucci's paternal grandparents first came to Vermont. They settled in Northfield. His grandfather learned how to cut and worked in the slate sheds. He came when he was 14 years old, which was when many came to this country, met his wife, married, and lived in Northfield, Vermont, until they moved to New York, where they opened a monument company.

I'm sure there are many stories like that of others who came here and since moved on to other parts of the country and became prominent carvers and stone cutters for many of the monuments you see throughout the United States. 

VICA members make pizzelle.

How and why was the VICA founded?

Some Italian Americans and Italians came to Vermont, some to teach at the university, and they were leaving places like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. When they came here, there was no organization. They believed they were drawn to one another and felt it was really important to form a community and begin to recognize the contributions, culture, and heritage that preceded them.

We just celebrated 42 years since the organization was created. It didn't start as a nonprofit. It started with people getting together in someone's living room or a local community center. It's been about 23 years since we officially became a 501 (c) 3.

We're an all-volunteer organization. We don't have any paid staff. We don't have a building or a hall where you can have events. The organization was really founded by families and individuals in the Greater Burlington area. It's the largest city in the state and home to many colleges and universities. So it was started here, but our membership is statewide. We have members living outside the state because we offer virtual programming. We also have a number of business partners who are spread throughout the state. Those partners are a combination of Italians and Italian Americans who opened businesses producing or selling Italian products. Several native Italians here in Vermont make salumi and pasta, bringing all the Italian traditions and methods to Vermont. Because we don't have a physical space, these partnerships allow us to really have a large footprint in the state.

VICA Carnevale

What events and activities do you host?

Vermont is not a large state—we have fewer than a million people. It's easy to network, so we have been creating business partnerships and relationships with cultural organizations. We have several opera companies here, the International Film Festival, and Upper Valley Baroque. There are just so many cultural organizations that we partner with to bring Italian music, film, opera, food, wine, or history to our members and the greater community.

The music director of the Opera Company of Middlebury, Filippo Ciabatti, is also the director of Orchestral and Choral Programs at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College. A native Italian, Filippo has presented several online lectures. We just did one on Puccini because the Opera Company of Middlebury will be performing La bohème this summer.

Our events really run the gamut. We host writers and have wine-tasting events, cooking classes, and Italian language conversation groups. We also have a very strong relationship with the Italian Consulate in Boston, which has jurisdiction over Vermont, so we've done events in partnership with them. In March, we celebrated Carnevale with a fundraiser for our scholarships and grants program.

The events can be completely tied to an Italian feast or a celebration, such as Liberation Day, or they could just be because we have something interesting to share with our community. There's really something for everybody. 

VICA members play a game of bocce.

What do you hope to share with your members and the community?

What we really want to do, first and foremost, is just remind people of the depth and the richness of Italian heritage here in Vermont. Maybe we don't necessarily appreciate or understand things about particular aspects of Italian culture—even if it's just wine tasting and hearing about the different regions of Italy and the wine.

More than anything, it connects to those things that are deeply a part of who we are. Whenever we get together, I always have a story, or someone shares a story with me, that we just immediately connect on. Maybe it's the way we had dinner at our nonna's house.

The most important thing is to connect as a community through those things that we share that maybe we've lost sight of because we are a little farther away generationally. Younger people, and we have quite a few younger members, are also seeking that kind of understanding and connection because they're farther away generationally from their ancestry. That's really what we want to accomplish. 

VICA members enjoy an Italian dinner together.

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Omaha might not be the first place that comes to mind when considering a community with a rich Italian heritage. However, Italians are, in fact, the Gateway to the West's fourth-largest ethnic group. Two-thirds of that population claims roots in the small Syracuse Province town of Carlentini, Sicily. Their ancestors first arrived in the late 19th century, pursuing opportunities with the railroad and in construction, smelting, and meatpacking. The Carlentini families brought their devotion to Santa Lucia, their town's patron saint, leading to the 1925 founding of Omaha's annual Santa Lucia Festival.

Within the waves of immigrants from Carlentini, a widow named Lucia Ciculla arrived in 1913 with her daughters in search of a better life. Her family has lived in Omaha's Little Italy for generations. Today, her great-great-granddaughter Sheri Kanger, director and co-founder of the Sicula Italia Association and co-founder of the Carlentini Omaha Association, is working on strengthening the connection to her ancestral home. After much coordination and trips back and forth to Sicily, Sheri hopes to see the two locales linked as sister cities later this year.

Sheri shared the inspiration for the Carlentini Omaha Association, its path to sister city status, their accomplishments, and what the organization hopes to deliver.

What led you down this path toward connecting Carlentini with Omaha?

My whole journey started in 2011 when I started asking my grandfather questions about his grandmother. He told me she was buried right down the street, a few blocks from my grandfather's house, up on a hill.

My grandfather told me how close he was to his grandmother, and that's the part that got me because I was so close to my grandparents. When he passed away in 2014, I told my husband, Ken, "Nobody's buying Grandpa's house. Let's buy it." 

So, we sold our 3,400-square-foot home and bought a 950-square-foot home. Shortly after that, I went to the cemetery and archdiocese offices and said, "I don't quite know where my grandmother's buried. Can you give me some information?"

The gal asks, "Well, when was she buried?" And I'd seen a photo from my sister, so I said, "On her headstone, it just said her first and last name, the year she was born, and the year she died." I showed the photo, and they said, "Well, we need to know what month."

It dawned on me that in 2011, when I was asking my grandpa questions about his grandmother, he said she was really sick and dying of cancer when it was close to the festival time. He remembered looking out the window with his grandmother on the edge of her bed. The saints were coming down the street, the band was playing, and the whole procession was going by. So I knew it was late August since it's been celebrated at the same time for years and years.

I said, "Let's start with August." So, the lady went and got these big books because they weren't in the computer system. She went down the list, through all of August and all of September, and found my great-grandmother's name and that she died September 29, 1939.

She got me the plot map, and it dawned on me: I remembered my grandfather saying he didn't like that her cameo was missing, that it must have fallen off and broken, and that it bothered him that her picture was not on the headstone anymore. So, I just blurted out, "Do you have a lost and found?"

The lady turned around and pulled a cookie tin from a file cabinet. She opened the lid and pulled out three cameos. One was a young soldier, the second was an old woman who didn't look Italian, and the third was someone who looked like she could be related.

She looked like my sister, and I remembered my grandpa saying my sister always reminded him of her. She's got these blue eyes—bright, light blue. My mom had those eyes, and it's a very rare recessive trait. In this black-and-white photo, you could tell that the eyes were light, so I took a picture of them. I sent the picture to my sister, and she said, "Where'd you find her?" And I said, "Is that her?" And she said, "Yes."

I said, "Well, I just left the archdiocese." She said, "Go back." I went back, and all three cameos were still lying out on the shelf on the counter. I grabbed my great-great-grandmother's and I left.

I had it remade because I knew retelling that story would be hard if I put that same cameo back on. I told my great aunt, who would be my grandfather's sister, and she insisted on paying for a new cameo.

We had a little ceremony with my great aunt and one of my cousins. My son, my niece, and my sister were there. We all went and put this thing back on with glue, and to this day, it's still on there. It's been there for almost 10 years.

I brought the original cameo back to my house. I have my grandparents' remains, so I put the cameo on the box of remains.

Sheri Kanger's great-great-grandmother's cameo

Tell us how and why the Carlentini Omaha Association formed.

I went to Carlentini with Ken in 2017, and our marriage was blessed in the mother church there. There was this instantaneous connection—just being in that city, feeling like these are my roots. I am half Italian and a quarter Carlentinese, but those are some strong roots!

It was so inspiring to me. I had been a member of the Sons and Daughters of Italy. But when I returned, I became part of the Santa Lucia Festival organization and the American Italian Heritage Society.

In 2018, Santa Lucia Festival's members wanted to take a trip to Carlentini for the 400th anniversary of the celebration of Santa Lucia in 2021. I stood up at a meeting before I even talked to my husband, and I volunteered to put the whole trip together. People were excited, and at that point, 100 people wanted to go. But when I told them, "There's a $500 deposit, and this is what the actual amount is," it changed. So, roughly 50 of us planned to go to Italy in 2021.

As I was putting this trip together, our mayor in Omaha was also working on a sister city relationship with France because Omaha Beach has that connection with Omaha, Nebraska. I thought, "There's got to be something we can do with all the Italians I've grown up with."

So, I contacted the Omaha Sister City Association (OSCA). When I finally got a response and met with them, they told me certain requirements were involved. They didn't think people in Omaha would be interested in having a sister city with Carlentini.

I said, "I think you're wrong about that. I just came back from there in 2017, and there are people here and there who would both be interested in formalizing this relationship because we've always had this sister bond." I mean, even symbolically, in my own family, the three sisters who were separated from each other, cousins who have been separated across the world for generations.

I met with a lady named Carmelita De LaGuardia, who has a similar background to mine. Once she found out I was putting this trip together for 2021, she said, "My family's out there in Carlentini; they want to know who you are." I told her my family history and that I was a Ciculla. She said, "I'm Ciculla, too. We're related!"

She and I decided to contact OSCA and set up a meeting. We met with them and shared information about the enclaves, the Italian population, and all of the things those people did to create the city as it is today.

The person from OSCA looked at both of us and said, "Why haven't Omaha and Carlentini already been sister cities? This is amazing information." They wanted to know more, so I wrote and submitted the application in 2020.

My husband was the deputy chief of police then and had cabinet meetings with the mayor of Omaha. Mayor Jean Stothert just happened to come across this application from OSCA, saying they wanted to establish a relationship between Omaha and Carlentini. And she said, "Why is Catania applying for a sister city when France is not solidified, yet?"

My husband responded, "It's Carlentini." 

The mayor asked, "How do you know?" And Ken responded, "My wife submitted the application for Carlentini to pursue the sister city connection."

She then said, "I'd like to go to Italy. This would be kind of a neat thing. Tell me more."

Our 2021 trip actually derailed because of COVID. The mayor then went up with my husband, me, and an OSCA representative in 2022. It was shortly after that that we formalized the "friendship agreement." It's like your engagement before your wedding ceremony, so to speak. In August, the formalization of Carlentini as a sister city will occur.

Mayor Jean Stothert signs the Carlentini-Omaha sister city "friendship agreement," while Carlentini Mayor Giuseppe Stefio simultaneously does the same.
 

In 2020, when we were all in shutdown mode, we needed somebody on the other side in Carlentini who could also speak English and help us facilitate and get this moving. It just so happened that my travel guides had to pivot while in shutdown and were doing these live feeds from different cities and places. They ended up introducing the world to a travel guide named Eleanora Formica, who would be my travel guide.

I contacted her on Messenger and said, "My family's from Carlentini; this is their name." She said, "I went to school with your younger cousin, Laura."

We started an instant friendship, teamed up with Carmelita, and started the Carlentini Omaha Association. We signed documents in Carlentini in October 2020. From there, our relationship was like a sisterhood, the three of us girls. We thought of all kinds of programs, projects, and events that could better strengthen that bond between our two cities moving forward. We've since had six different grade schools involved in pen pal programs. We've had three galas and have done all kinds of different things.

On this end, Carmelita, three others, and I started the Sicula Italia Foundation to help fund programs we would do with Carlentini. Then, it took a different route. Some of us found that it would be easier to do individual projects.

In November 2023, I got a call from an elementary school teacher and Eleanora in Carlentini. They wanted to do a physical exchange and bring elementary school children to Omaha for a week. I set up an itinerary and a place for them to stay.

I did not have any funds. Since the Carlentini Omaha Association was actually in Carlentini, this was going to be a challenge to do on my own. I contacted Omaha Public Schools with the signage at the bottom saying Carlentini Omaha Association. They sent me a contract back with Carlentini Omaha Association at the top.

I said, "I can't do this with just my name, so I went ahead and formed Carlentini Omaha Association U.S.A. Incorporated. That's how we were able to reach an agreement with the Omaha Public School system and have the kids from Carlentini come over.

The kids loved being in Omaha for the week. They met kids of Carlentini descent, which was a big plus for them. They started new relationships and friendships.

Two community events took place at the Sons and Daughters of Italy Hall, where they worked with me and hosted a potluck dinner one night and then a genealogy meeting another night with the kids. My husband helped me put together a big program with the Police Athletics for Community Engagement program (PACE). We had kids from Omaha who were of Carlentini descent playing with kids from Carlentini on a team called Carlentini Omaha Association, fully outfitted with soccer gear, playing against kids who were of primarily Hispanic descent with PACE, playing the game that's universal to the world: soccer.

Over 150 people attended this event. It's just something that's near and dear to my heart, and I want to continue strengthening that relationship.

Omaha kids welcome exchange students arriving from Carlentini.

What do you hope to share with your community?

I taught for 26 years and had a project in one of my classes where the kids had to show pictures of their families. I called it the "All About Me" project. Knowing who you are and where you come from is important, and diversity makes us understand and appreciate each other more. Those differences make us understand each other and not hide that we're not all the same.

Understanding different cultures and respecting, honoring, and continuing traditions is important. It's also important for the people in Carlentini and for us to be able to help fund projects and continue to work with them.

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When Sarah Campise Hallier's father unexpectedly passed away in 2012, she realized she didn't have much information about his side of the family or her Sicilian roots. It awakened a passion for genealogy, and in 2019, her research led her to a distant Texas cousin, Ross Todaro, Jr., who had recently co-founded a group called Poggioreale in America (PIA).

Ross invited Sarah to a reunion in College Station, Texas, organized for people like her, descendants of Poggioreale, Sicily. There, she encountered 300 people who shared her connection to the Trapani Province town.

Later that year, she traveled to Sicily on a Poggioreale in America-sponsored trip. Fifteen people stayed for nine nights in the 500-person town. Each day, the group was bused to a different Sicilian locale, allowing Sarah to see the island's western side. She also saw the remains of her great-great-grandfather's house at Poggioreale's original site, now a ghost town.

More than 200 people died in a 1968 Belice Valley earthquake. It decimated Poggioreale and forced the evacuation of about 4,000 residents. Some moved to a newly erected village just over two miles south. Others relocated elsewhere in Sicily. But many left Italy completely, heading to the United States and Australia.

Thus began a second major wave of Poggiorealesi emigration, seven decades after the first. About 4 million Italians—most from the south and Sicily—arrived in the U.S. between 1890 and 1920. Many fled rural poverty after Italy's Risorgimento; others followed family and job opportunities. The Poggioreale diaspora settled in New Orleans, Texas's Brazos Valley, and, in the case of Sarah's family, Fresno, California. 

After that first reunion and Sicily visit, Ross and co-founder Tina Anderson asked Sarah to join the PIA team. She's served on the board for five years and is currently the managing editor. It's a natural fit for the writer and Appetito magazine associate editor. But Sarah wears many hats.

In addition to managing the quarterly newsletter and helping oversee website and social media communications, she's helped with reunions and the college scholarship fund. The group raised $15,000 in 2022 and 2023 for college students who are also descendants of Poggioreale.

"The sense of community is important to me, especially with my dad not here anymore," Sarah says.

She continues to help grow the organization, hoping to strengthen the Poggiorealesi community across generations.

Sarah Campise Hallier with PIA co-founders Ross Todaro and the late Tina Anderson.

Tell us more about Poggioreale's history.

The town itself was established in 1642, and we can trace my family back that far. In 1968, a devastating earthquake in Sicily affected Gibellina, Salaparuta, and Poggioreale.

There's a lot of controversy surrounding that earthquake. It was pretty devastating in Poggioreale. When we interviewed the people in the town who never left, they said the government came in and decided that the town was uninhabitable. So, the government established barracks at the foot of the hill.

For the better part of 15 years, the families would sleep in the barracks at night, but during the day, they would travel back up to the town, go into their houses, cook, and just hang out in the piazza. There are still people in the town who lived through this and are still alive.

One Poggioreale resident told me, "The concrete unions came in and built a new town at the base of the hill." Many survivors of the earthquake still live in the new town, but the ghost town up on the hill is a reminder of the sadness from over 50 years ago.

Some say the town probably could have been salvaged had it gotten into the right hands, but the government is now helping the town turn it into a tourist destination. They've started a little museum and renovations in some of the buildings so that tourists can visit safely.

Sarah Campise Hallier and her brother, Dr. John Campise, in Poggioreale Antica in front of the ruins of their great-great-grandfather Mariano Campisi's birthplace. 

What are PIA's future plans?

Poggioreale in America, Junior is a subdivision of PIA. They worked with the board to create the college scholarship program, and they're trying to grow that right now. It's been stagnant over the past year, but recent donations have sparked an interest in revamping the program for this coming year.

A PIA 2023 calendar was sold to raise funds for the college scholarship program.

What keeps you involved?

I had my Italian citizenship recognized in 2021 through the San Francisco Consulate via the Italian Jure Sanguinis law. I've been an amateur genealogist for decades, learning it all from my mom. While I was growing up, I watched her traipsing through cemeteries—all of the stuff you did before the internet came around to find out your family history. So, the genealogical perspective is probably what I enjoy the most—being able to find your roots. I do a lot of work with expanding our family tree and helping others within the organization do that, too—just as a fun side project. But I just feel a connection to the part of it that brings us all together.

Reunion organizers Marilyn and Jack Henley, Jack Anderson (husband of late President Tina Anderson), Anna and AJ Tusa (owners of Briquette Restaurant), Cav. Pietro Maniscalco from Australia, Father Rigoli (Pastor Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church), and Sarah Campise Hallier at the 2025 PIA Reunion in New Orleans

It's absolutely amazing that thousands of people all over the United States came from this small town in Sicily. My daughter attends UT Austin. She was born and raised in California, and did a blind roommate pairing during her first year in college. In the first couple of weeks of being in her dorm, she found out that her roommate's great-grandparents also came from Poggioreale. We've been trying to figure out if we are related or not.

Little things like that make you think, "Wow, it's pretty incredible," and to just be able to get together... I've been able to meet first cousins I never knew I had.

Sarah Campise Hallier's Campise cousins at the 2023 PIA Reunion in Bryan, Texas

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Known for its now-defunct sardine canneries that inspired John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Monterey, California, has a rich history as a fishing community. Communities have fished the area for thousands of years, with contributions spanning from indigenous communities to Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian (primarily Sicilian) fishermen. The latter of whom are celebrated by the Italian Heritage Society of the Monterey Peninsula.

Founded in 1975 and currently led by President AnnaMarie Della Sala Stanton, the organization aims to honor and preserve the stories, traditions, and culture of Italian families who immigrated to the Monterey Peninsula and Central Coast of California more than a century ago.

The Italian Heritage Society has published three books celebrating local Italian American history, culture, and community contributions: Italian Fishing Families of Monterey, Italian Fishing Families of Monterey (second edition), and Italian Americans—We Don't Just Fish! 

Since 2002, the organization has recognized notable individuals connected to Monterey's Italian Community at its annual Honoree Dinner fundraiser. In the past four years, the group has awarded $25,000 in scholarships.
 

Recognizing the city's deep connection with the Sicilian community of Isola delle Femmine, from which many early Italian Monterey residents emigrated, Italian Heritage Society members Gasper Cardinale, Peter Coniglio, Peter Davi, and Sal Ferrante were instrumental in establishing a sister-city relationship between the two locales in 2017.

In December 2023, the organization launched a joint effort with the Monterey History and Art Association to present a display titled "Bounty of the Sea" at the city's Stanton Center. The exhibit presents stories, photographs, and fishing paraphernalia gathered from various groups that have fished in Monterey Bay throughout its history. 

I had a chance to speak with Mike Ventimiglia, the organization's vice president and webmaster, who shared more about Monterey's past and Italian contributions.

How and why did the organization start?

The idea behind it was, and still is today, to preserve the local history of the fishing industry in Monterey. We have written three books about the history, capturing the fishing industry and the people who fished in the fishing industry; we went beyond that with the last book we published, We Just Don't Fish! It's taking the people whose parents had ties to the fishing industry that, as the fishing industry became depleted, had ventured off into different professional organizations that still help the Italian community, the largest community in Monterey then.

The Italians realized they had to get involved in the community if they were to make changes. They felt it was very important to get involved with politics and change the course, which they did and changed for the better.

The Italian community's predominance in Monterey went from the early 1900s to probably the 1960s and early 1970s. And then it started changing. Different people got elected to office. The Italians weren't on the city council, so it just started diminishing. We don't want to lose the history behind what the Italian community did for the city of Monterey.

The Italian Heritage Society at the three-day Monterey Fisherman's Festival.

Tell us about Monterey's connection to Isola delle Femmine.

My great-grandfather came from there, and then they left because of the hardships there at that point in time. While doing my genealogy, I realized I had six uncles who came here, and I found out more about them. But I also had two aunts back there who never came. Their father migrated to Martinez, where other Sicilians came at that time. They used to fish the Martinez Straits in the Sacramento River, and many of them came into what they called Black Diamond (Pittsburg, California, today) at New York Landing.

Before the Sicilians, the only people who really fished in Monterey were the Chinese and the Japanese. They mostly did shellfish, and salmon was a big thing then. But salmon gave way to learning about fishing for sardines. 

In about 1905, they started fishing sardines in Monterey. Frank E. Booth was the main cannery owner at the time, and he called on a man named Pietro Ferrante for his expertise in fishing. Pietro realized they were using the wrong fishing nets. They weren't using a lampara net, which is a close-fitted net. And so he recommended and brought forth what was a really small net compared to the gill net they were using. And they started getting more of an abundance of fish. Booth transitioned from doing salmon to canning sardines, which started the escalation of "How do we get more people here?"

So, Pietro Ferrante called his friends in Martinez and Pittsburg and told them they needed fishing in Monterey. People in that area were used to fishing off the coast of Africa.

Word got out that there was an abundance in Monterey, and people started migrating here. They'd send notes back to their family members and friends in Sicily. And they started migrating because they had an opportunity here.
 

They felt quite at home when they came to Monterey because it reminded them of their old country. It just continued to prosper and went through generations of different types of boats they used and canneries.

Reading the history of women working at the canneries in Carol Lynn McKibben's Beyond Cannery Row, Sicilian Women Immigration, and Community in Monterey 1915-1999 was quite an eye-opener for me. Many of my aunts worked on that, and she interviewed many of them, allowing me to see some things that I never knew about.

Women were the backbone of the Italian fishing industry because they were the ones running the households while the men were out fishing. They were the ones that basically, in the future years, were making investments in property as canneries closed and the fish industry started depleting. So they were not only doing the canning but also taking care of the household because the husbands were gone all the time.
 

How can the community get involved?

We're always looking for members and community support. We get a lot of that during our fundraisers and when the community comes out to honor the four individuals we nominate to attend the annual dinner.

The support of the Italian community has fallen to a certain degree. We used to have a lot of community involvement when we were involved with the city and its politics, including the mayors and city council members, as well as many individuals serving on various city boards. That has given way to the modernization and the different needs of people in various sectors living here on the peninsula.

There are people who can't afford to live here, but they want to. So the direction has gone towards other things, like the tourist industry. Monterey's tourism is one of the biggest fundraisers they have. And then the events that have come into play here. A lot of city direction is geared towards that, but we always look for their support. 

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Frank Bruno grew up in Pittsburg, California, hearing his grandmother's memories of Isola delle Femmine, a fishing village outside Palermo, Sicily. But he knew very little about the place and didn't think much about it. That was until 1992, when his friend, Vince DiMaggio, shared that he'd returned from his godparents' wedding vow renewal in the same town. Vince had spoken with Isola delle Femmine's then-Mayor Vincenzo DiMaggio about possibly having a Sister City relationship with Pittsburg.

Frank and Vince weren't alone in their ties to Isola delle Femmine; most of Pittsburg's Italian American population shared that connection. As President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Frank was in a good position to take action. He asked Pittsburg's mayor, who agreed to the proposal, and then he reached out to officials in Sicily.

When Isola delle Femmine's mayor came to Pittsburg, he saw its iconic fisherman statue, sculpted by local artist Frank Vitale, whose grandparents came from Isola delle Femmine. He wanted one for his town, so Pittsburg community members raised funds to make it happen.

The sculptor still had the mold he used to build a replica that the Americans sent to Sicily. Today, you can find that statue at Isola delle Femmine's Piazza di Pittsburg, named for the town's original sister city.

That would have been the end of the story: a lasting connection made in honor of shared heritage. Frank moved to Novato, California, in 1997 and lost track of many of the people who were involved until 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Isola delle Femmine-Pittsburg delegation's first visit.

Frank and Vince returned to the fold, and a group from Isola delle Femmine joined the community for a reception. Two years later, Frank, Vince, and Vice President Mary Coniglio co-founded Friends of Isola delle Femmine with a mission statement to preserve, protect, and promote Sicilian-American heritage within Isola delle Femmine's California sister cities, which today number three after the 2017 and 2019 respective additions of Monterey and Martinez.

Frank, who serves as Friends of Isola delle Femmine's President, shared more about how and why Isolani emigrated to the U.S. and first landed in Pittsburg. We also discussed the organization's events, outreach, and evolution, as well as its challenges for the future.

Friends of Isola delle Femmine 1994 trip - Sal Caccaroni, John Buffo, Vince DiMaggio, Sculptor Frank Vitale, Frank Bruno, Mary Coniglio, Rocco Battaglia, and Vince Coniglio

How and why did Isola delle Femmine residents find their way to Pittsburg?

Back in the 1860s, when Garibaldi unified Italy, it did little to help the people in Sicily. They were still starving, and there was no work. One story was that they were so hungry they resorted to eating wheat plaster from the walls.

In 1862, two brothers from Isola delle Femmine with the last name Aiello came to New Orleans, where a big influx of Sicilians lived in the French Quarter.

They were trying to make a living fishing and cooking. After a Yellow Fever outbreak, they left Louisiana for Oregon, where they fished for salmon before seeing an advertisement from California. The state was looking for fishermen to come and help fish the delta to feed the people who came in for the Gold Rush. So the Aiellos got on a train and ended up in what is now called Pittsburg, California, on the Sacramento River. They started fishing and called for their family, saying, "Here in Pittsburg, the weather is like home. The fishing is abundant, and we're making money."

A lot of people started to come, and many of them worked and stayed here. Then, a lot of them went back home. Pittsburg was the fishing area, but there was seasonal fishing. So when the seasonal fishing went to the wayside, they went to Martinez and Monterey, and many of them stayed there while others went back to Pittsburg. So that was the influx, which is why we have three Sister Cities with Isola in our organization.

Describe your cultural exchange and promotion efforts.

Back in 1994, we started a student exchange program. We only did it twice. We sent high schoolers back there, and they went to school. Isola delle Feminine sent college students here, which became a vacation for them. And I said that's not what we really wanted to do as a student exchange program.

My idea, and we're trying to start this now, is to have something similar to what I'm involved in with the Rotary Club: a group study exchange. There would be dentists or any occupation that is here that wants to go. We would supplement, coordinate their stay over there, and have a little bit of money to help them there. But they would pay for their trip. They would go over to Isola and the Palermo area and vice versa.

We can do it with contractors, dentists, doctors, and many professional business people who would come back and forth. As for the cultural heritage stuff, we're working on doing what I call an ancestral fair, having an area where folk music and heritage stuff are going on, and then having booths. 

How have you connected with younger generations?

We're giving scholarships to our members' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are going to college. We give out six; two years ago, we gave out 10. They would have to qualify normally by having a grade point average acceptable for college and writing a statement about what it was like growing up Italian. Then we have a picnic and give out our scholarships.

One of our roadblocks is passing on our cultural heritage to the younger generations. It's very difficult. They're proud to be Italian American, but that's where it ends. Now, all of us old-timers look at this as memories. Growing up in Pittsburg was one of the greatest childhoods anybody could have. I mean, it was just full of family everywhere.

We have functions, but not many younger people have come. Instead of trying to decide how to capture the younger generation and have them tell us what they're looking for, we're going to have a discussion and invite a number of our younger members who are 40 or 50 years old to ask them.

If we're going to succeed as a cultural heritage organization, we need to replace these people. I can't do this forever.

Scenes from Friends of Isola delle Femmine picnics

Tell us about your events.

We've had some fundraisers to fund administration, scholarships, and anything else we want to do. We've done pretty well. 

We started with a program back in 2019 called That's Italian. We had some opera singers, and we sang show tunes at a place called the Colombo Club in Oakland. About 565 people could sit down for dinner, and then upstairs, there is a banquet hall, bar, and stage. We had 200 people, and they went downstairs and had a nice Italian dinner. And then they came up, and we had this big show and a live auction.

After the pandemic, when the British Queen passed away, one of our members said, "Why don't we have a High Tea but Italian style?" We had one in Monterey and one in Pittsburg. We're finishing up our third one, which will be the last, and we're going in another direction.

Our summer picnic was designed to be something we used to do as kids and families. Here in Northern California, we have Mount Diablo, where we had Camp Curry and Marsh Creek, and we could swim and play baseball as a family. We wanted to do something similar and said, "Why don't we just give our scholarships out then?"

We are getting about 250 people, and we can showcase what we do and get new members out of that. We have an Italian who lives in Martinez and owns a catering company. He comes and does the pasta and salads, and then we cook sausage. The mayor of Martinez and the city council people come out, and they do the serving. 

What do you ultimately want to share with your community?

There are Italians and Sicilians from Isola here in Pittsburg, California, but not many. They've branched out to the other areas. What I want to accomplish for the community is to bring back our pride and heritage and continue to have that. We all want to remember what our nonnas and nonnos did for us when we were growing up. We're trying to put together a cookbook per se with all these recipes in our newsletter. But we want to do more cultural stuff to remember our grandparents and great-grandparents; hopefully, the next generation will be appreciative.

Frank Bruno with family at the celebration and unveiling of the Fisherman Statue and sister city in 1994

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With up to 500,000 residents of Italian origin, Toronto has one of the largest Italian populations of any city outside of Italy. Most immigrants came in the years following the second World War, adding to the significant sum who had already settled within the city's three Little Italies. 

As this large influx began to age, community members sought a way to address their changing needs. In 1971, a group of Italian-Canadian Torontans formed the Italian Canadian Benevolent Corporation. Five years later, they opened Villa Colombo Toronto, a long-term care facility for seniors.

Today known as Villa Charities, the organization has expanded its mission to fund, develop, administer, and coordinate health, social, cultural, and educational projects. The group honors both Italian and Italian-Canadian culture, recognizing that the two have evolved in parallel over time. In addition to its Columbus Centre amenities, the organization hosts a wide range of events and activities, including classes for toddlers, book launches, art exhibitions, concerts, and dance programs. 

I spoke with Villa Charities Executive Director of Cultural Programming Giulio Recchioni, who shared more about the organization, its offerings, and its aims. 

What inspired the founding of Villa Charities, and how has its mission evolved over the years?

It was founded by a group of community leaders who put together their willingness to leave a mark in town and have a structure where Italians could gather and be at home away from home. The first structure that was born was Villa Colombo, which is currently a nursing home for seniors.

In the beginning, when the bulk of the migrants were here and aging like everybody else, there was this idea: What do you do once you reach an age when you're not independent anymore? Are you going to be dispersed through the English-speaking nursing homes throughout Ontario? 

They decided to create something that was not there before, a structure that could be the reference point for the entire Italian community here in Toronto. And 50 years later, this is still what we do. Today, the Columbus Centre is the largest Italian cultural center in Canada, and we're still quite well respected within the community. We are still the center of what happens to the Italian-Canadian community.

Villa Charities hosts a Summer Sagra event outside of its Columbus Centre.

What makes Villa Charities unique in what it offers?

Several organizations work with Italian culture in Toronto. Some of them are government-owned. But what really makes us different from everybody else is that we deal not only with Italian culture but also Italian-Canadian culture.

We not only recognize Italian culture but also try to bring modern, contemporary Italian culture to the public's attention while also catering to Italian Canadians and representing their culture and values. It's a culture that crystallized in the fifties and then evolved on its own, far away from the culture of Italy.

Progress in technology allows us to be close to Italian culture nowadays, but up to 30 years ago, what we see today to watch Italian television, take a phone, and speak to our people in Italy was kind of unusual, if not unthinkable or very expensive. So, the Italian-Canadian culture grew and became something different—looking at Italy but from far away.

Members roast speducci at a Summer Solstice event.

Tell us more about your events and activities.

We have a wide range of events, as we have to cater to the biggest number of people possible. We truly have an approach from cradle to rocking chair. We have events for toddlers; we have Italian classes for toddlers where the teacher sings so that the toddlers get used to the Italian language. We have book launches, and we manage an art gallery, so we have art exhibitions. We work with musicians to do concerts. We have a dance school.

We offer quite a wide variety of programs. The Columbus Centre has a gym and swimming pool with a variety of activities typical of a community center.

During summertime, we have large events outside. They're inspired by the idea of the sagra in Italy. So we have chosen in the past an aspect of Italian cuisine. For example, in July, we have what in Canada is called speducci [grilled meat skewers], originally in Abruzzo, they're called arrosticini, so we celebrate those in July. Then, in August, we celebrate Ferragosto with a very large outdoor party.

We make tomato sauce with our seniors in September and distribute it to the public. We also offer a plate of pasta to complement the tomato sauce. Then, in October and November, we have events that speak to the art of wine making. So we press grapes in October together with a local Italian-Canadian winery. And then, in April, we have a little taste of the wine we made ourselves.

We echo some of the most popular Italian holidays and make them our own. For example, we have a Sagra della Castagna in November, when in Italy it's a tradition to have vino novello e castagne [new wine and chestnuts], because that's when you bottle the first wine to see how it is and you get to taste it. We can't quite do the same because Canada's alcohol laws differ from Italy's. But we did keep the part of the castagne. So we cook castagne and distribute them for free to the community during the event.

Food really attracts people more than anything else, so we have these events as a community-building exercise. They're quite fun to attend, so it's a pleasure to keep presenting them and offering them to the community.

Members celebrate the preparation of their own wine.

What do you hope to share with members and the community?

Italian culture in Toronto is quite lively. A wealth of Italian activities and organizations are bubbling up. It's wonderful when people see what's happening and attend.

As a person who organizes events, it's nice when you spend so much time and energy creating something and you see a lot of people recognizing the event coming and having a good time. At the end of the day, Italian culture is all about changing life for the better, and that's what I would invite them to do. Just come out and participate in what's happening in the city. There is a lot of Italian stuff going on. 

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When Southern California native Christina Cavallaro landed in Portland, Oregon, one of the first things she did was seek out an Italian American organization. Remaining rooted to her family's heritage with connections to Adelfia in Bari, Italy, and Cesaro, in the province of Messina, Sicily, was important to her. (That history even inspired two cookbooks.)

She found a group, but when it went defunct, she teamed up with another Italian-American Portlander, Tonya Russo Hamilton, a fellow author, who was in the early stages of laying the groundwork for what would become Italian Portland in 2015.

"We try to present the history and culture of Italians because we know from experience as Italians that traditions are falling apart and food and recipes aren't being passed down from generation to generation," Christina says. "And when people come to our social group, they're hungry for that. They say that's what they miss the most. People share, 'Nonna used to cook this,' and 'We want to learn to do that,' or 'Nobody speaks Italian anymore,' and 'We want to learn the Italian language,' or '"We are interested in traveling to Italy. What suggestions or steps do we take to make this trip a reality?'"

Italian Portland strives to provide solutions for Italian American Portlanders with various events and programs, including monthly social meetings, Italian language classes, a book club, and cultural activities like cooking classes and limoncello tastings. They've helped feed the homeless at a nearby church and partnered with experts to help people navigate dual citizenship and research genealogy. Members have shared their experiences of visiting Italy to provide valuable insights for individuals planning their own trips. That firsthand knowledge and tips can help travelers make the most of their time in Italy. The organization also aims to be inclusive, publishing a monthly newsletter with events from all local Italian organizations. 

Christina shared more about Italian Portland's offerings, upcoming initiatives, youth outreach, and goals.

Italian Portland's limoncello-tasting event
 

What activities and events does Italian Portland host?

We have quite a bit to offer the Italian community and the public. So many people love Italians, the culture, and the food. We even have people who aren't Italian at all who join us!

We have a book club and a monthly social club. We also offer an Italian conversation group and two Italian language classes online and in person. 

We enjoy brainstorming innovative topics and speakers that appeal to the group. For example, the Italian consulate from Portland talked to our social group. We've had cooking classes, and a Portland State professor talked about Americans in Italy during the war. Our programs continue to interest people in the social club and the general public.

The biggest event we have coming up, that we've never done before, is a vendemmia. In Italy, it's the big celebration at the end of the harvest, with dinner in the vineyard. We're going to have tables down the rows of the vines, and we're providing an Italian dinner, Italian Opera singers, and an auction.

We are hosting this event in early August instead of the usual September or October timeframe due to the fact that wineries and vineyards in the area will be busy picking and crushing grapes for wine during those months.

This event is a fundraiser. Its goal is to raise funds through donations and an auction to support the Italian community, including the Portland State Opera and Scuola Italiana di Portland. The talented students from Portland State Opera will perform at the Vendemmia event.

We're excited about this event and hope it all comes together well. 

Tell us more about your book club.

Our book club meetings are held via Zoom to ensure that everyone located close by or far away can participate. The member who recommends the book leads the discussion. After the discussion, we rate the book on a scale of one to five cannoli. The last book received a rating of three and a half cannoli. Our meetings are enjoyable and provide an hour of cultural enrichment.

Guests enjoy "My Big Fat Italian Wedding."

How are you reaching younger generations?

A couple of years ago, we had an event called "My Big Fat Italian Wedding." We put it on just like the movie. We hired a hall and had a lasagna dinner, music, and dancing. At every table, we had little confetti.

We were fortunate to have two generations in attendance at that event. We featured two couples: a young pair embarking on the journey of marriage and a couple celebrating their impressive 45th wedding anniversary.

We taught the young people traditions like the tarantella, dancing all around the parking lot. And they loved it.

Many young individuals are attending our social club to explore various activities and interests. We frequently engage in tombola games, offering opportunities for participants to play Italian bingo and win prizes. Our club strives to incorporate programs that cater to the interests of young and old. By aligning our offerings with their preferences, we aim to attract a larger audience of young individuals.

What are your goals?

When we first embarked on this journey, we faced significant obstacles. We lacked the necessary resources—both financial and human capital. 

Establishing a board of directors and forming a nonprofit organization proved challenging, particularly given our lack of legal expertise. As a result, we enlisted the help of an attorney to guide us through the process.

Despite these challenges, our perseverance paid off. We successfully obtained nonprofit status, allowing us to further our mission and attract support from donors and sponsors. As a result of our efforts, our organization has grown, necessitating a move to a larger meeting space to accommodate our expanding audience.

Through dedication and strategic planning, we have transformed our initial struggles into triumphs, positioning our organization for continued success and impact in the community.

Italian Portland Social Club 

What do you hope to share?

We want to share our love and passion for bringing Italians and people who enjoy Italian culture together while enriching, cultivating, and educating. If someone wanted to start an organization like this somewhere, we would tell them to appeal to the interests of the community. Number one: Don't give up and ask for help. Number two: If you build it, they will come. 

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Chris R. Vaccaro sits in front of a wall of plaques and a display case, where you'll find his nine Murrow awards, two Emmy statues, his high school letter, and a collection of bobbleheads. The Long Island, New York-based media executive, professor, and author is just as proud of his Italian heritage, which includes ties to Palermo and Giuliana, Sicily, and Turin in Northern Italy.

He's found a way to combine his passions for storytelling, sports, and promoting Italian culture in his daily work and community leadership. He founded the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island and serves as the Executive Trustee of the Italian American Baseball Foundation and U.S. Press Officer for the Federation of Italian Baseball and Softball. He's also the Director of Graduate Journalism at Hofstra University's Lawrence Herbert School of Communication and Vice President/President-Elect of the Society of Professional Journalists. He's doing all that and more as he pursues a doctorate in leadership studies at Louisiana State University. 

Chris took time to share more about his involvement, journey, and what he hopes to contribute to his community.

How and why did you found the Italian Heritage Society of Long Island?

There were these kinds of come-to-Jesus, lightbulb moments, like, "There are a lot of Italian organizations out there. Not all of them are working together."

Many of them are not focused on regional advocacy. Long Island is big—118 miles long and 26 miles wide, with millions of people. If it were a state, it would be the 12th biggest state in terms of population. So a lot is going on here, including one of the most heavily dense populations of Italian-Americans. I never felt that any single organization was rallying from a regional perspective.

I'm already very involved with the Italian-American Baseball Foundation and write for the National Italian American Foundation as their sports columnist. I felt inspired to create a regionally focused organization while respecting the Sons of Italy, the Knights of Columbus, and the lodges and smaller chapters that exist through other organizations.

I don't want to be some outsider coming in and working my way up the ladder. I don't need to do that at this point in my life and career. I'm already established. I am a leader. I have a vision. I know how to form nonprofits. I know how to advocate, educate, and build community. So I said, "Let me do it with my own organization."

That process started in 2023 and came to fruition in 2024 with some partnership agreements and the first inaugural Italian celebration. Now, we have so much more planned for this year and beyond. So it's been a lot of fun and a privilege to do it on behalf of our ancestors and millions of Italian Americans on Long Island.

Share some of the Italian Heritage Society of Long Island activities with us.

The biggest thing we've done is build the organization through partnerships—partnering with the Long Island Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Italian and the Center for Italian Studies at Stony Brook University. Those are very important strategic steps to let people know we exist, do it with people in education and advocacy, and promote their language, heritage, and culture. That was a big part of 2024.

I immensely respect teachers. I have been a professor for many years at Hofstra. I've worked very closely with many school districts and school systems from a communications perspective. I felt that if I could connect with the teachers who teach about culture, heritage, and language, that would be a really important step. So, we did that from both the public school and higher education perspectives.

We hosted our first big Long Island Italian Celebration, where hundreds of people came out and had some incredible honorees. We celebrated who we are as a heritage group. We did it in October for Italian Heritage Month. We also hosted a bocce get-together last year from a fun social perspective. And I organized Italian Heritage Night with the New York Islanders.

This year, we're looking at specific social outings to bring together different businesses and partnerships. We're looking at doing the second annual Italian Celebration again in October.

We're looking at having events at a local vineyard, specifically with the American Association of Teachers of Italian. I hope to launch or form a bocce tournament for a Long Island championship this year.

Regionally speaking, we want to be the connective tissue of all Long Island groups here. I want people to come to us to see what else is going on everywhere. This year, we will launch a directory and database where you can find all of that. We're in the process of putting it all together. And believe it or not, a lot of stuff goes on, including data mining, calendar mining, and relationship management, to help make that happen.

You also co-host the Renaissance Minds podcast. Tell us about that.

The idea came from Silvia Davi, an Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island executive board member and somebody I admire greatly. She is a woman who cares deeply about her heritage and her family. We have so many ideals and values that align.

She reached out on LinkedIn about 18 months ago with similar thoughts and wanted to get involved. And I said, first of all, "We'd love to have you on board." Shortly after, she told me about the Renaissance Minds blog she has kept for many years and uses as a cross-pollinator of content. I said, "Hey, we should turn that into something with a podcast." She had the idea as well.

And I said, "I am a professor at Hofstra. I think I can get us on 88.7 FM, and we can probably film it and record it in a studio there."

It didn't take long for that to come to life. So now we have half a dozen episodes out there and another half a dozen or so in the can that will be published over the coming weeks and months.

It's a wonderful platform to educate people about Italian heritage and culture, but through complex thinkers and doers who have done things differently than others in the world—business people, doctors, lawyers, professors, writers, media folks, and entrepreneurs. We don't have one specific type of person. The person we speak to is Italian or Italian American. They're passionate. They're doing something unique and something that, again, we could educate our audience on.

It's been a lot of fun. Every time we have one of these conversations, we learn something, and then we know they're good people we'd like to tie to our brand. And Renaissance Minds is sponsored and underwritten by the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island.

IABF at Fenway Italian Night

Share more about the Italian American Baseball Foundation, for which you serve as Executive Trustee.

IABF was founded by Joseph Quagliano and Carmine Gangone, friends of mine who have worked hard to make their vision come true. Five years ago, they brought me into that vision. Since then, I've helped them grow it, telling the story, managing the marketing and communications, creating many relationships, building Italian Heritage games across the country, and amplifying what we do with our annual gala.

It's a lot of fun because we love being Italian, obviously, but we also love baseball. Many people in Italy feel the same way, and we're trying to amplify their message and their need for resources. The ability to bring those Italians to America to play is really special. We partnered with Francisco Cervelli and the folks in Grosseto, Italy, to launch the Francisco Cervelli-Italian American Baseball Foundation Academy. We do camps and clinics, ensuring the youth hear from incredible coaches and have a beautiful experience. We're getting just as much out of it as they are because it's a profound moment for us to be able to stand on a baseball field in Italy. The history is such that American servicemen brought the game to Italy during World War II. They played it there when they had time, and after the war, the game has stayed, and the memory of those servicemen lives on because baseball is America's pastime.

So there's a really fun full circle. Every time we're there, we see the history and how we're building for a brighter future that impacts Italian kids, which is what it's all about. Could our ancestors have ever imagined we would be traveling back to their native land to teach and coach and build relationships? They could have never imagined that. I can't even put into words how special it is when we're there on that soil. And we do that because of all the work we put in for fundraising, the events we host, and the relationships we've created here in America. 

Describe your role as the U.S. press officer for the Federation of Italian Baseball and Softball.

That came about because of my work and dedication to the Italian American Baseball Foundation. We've formed these relationships over the last several years, and based on my knowledge of the game, my connections in media and sports in America, and my pure love and devotion to all things Italian baseball, they tapped me to work with their press office.

A lot of work involves translating their Italian stories into English versions and posting them on social media, primarily through IABF. We're all connected in many ways, informing America about what's going on in Italy, whether I'm writing about it or posting about it on social media.

The role will be amplified, especially during 2026, when the World Baseball Classic happens and Team Italy comes to America to play their first-round games in Houston. I'll be a very valuable asset on the ground before, during, and after that really big international tournament, helping with media, content strategy, and total promotion of the Italian team.

Incredible players, coaches, and front-office executives are helping build that roster and will eventually facilitate playing and coaching. I will be a storyteller with them. I will be some of the glue that could help bring people together and understand what they're doing, whether working with Major League Baseball, other partners in the United States, or sponsorships and development—however I can help. 

We have a really fun stretch ahead of us. After 2026, we set our sights on the 2028 Olympics, which will be in Los Angeles. It's going to be a unique few years, for sure.

Chris R. Vaccaro throws the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game in 2023.

You threw the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game. Tell us about that experience.

That was a product of my coordinating the Italian Heritage games across Major League Baseball. Through the Italian American Baseball Foundation, one of the key endeavors I have built and executed is reaching out to every Major League club and many Minor League clubs to facilitate the Italian Heritage Games.

Those games could include several marketing and promotional activations, whether it's a giveaway item that somebody gets when they walk into the stadium, like a jersey with some sort of Italian rhetoric, markings, or logos, music played in the stadium, members of our board bringing out the lineup card, or, in my case, throwing out the first pitch.

It will forever be one of the coolest moments of my life, especially from a sporting perspective. And I've done a lot of unique things in sports. I threw a strike right down the plate; no pressure at all! I was practicing the week before with my son and my brother in my backyard. And the really special aspect of it was after I threw the strike, after everyone's cheering, I walked off the mound doing the Italian hand gesture and smiling. It was a really, really fun moment. 

The bigger connection there for us is that the general manager of the Washington Nationals is Mike Rizzo, a proud Italian American whom we have honored as our executive of the year with IABF at our annual gala. He has helped roll out the red carpet, but we've also sold thousands of tickets to those games. A percentage of the sales for the Italian Heritage Games goes towards the IABF Scholarship Fund, which helps get Italian Americans to play college baseball or softball.

It's a full circle, a cycle of doing good, making an impact, enhancing the cultural experience for people who want to come here, and educating Americans about what is going on in Italy through baseball and softball. It always revolves back to the bigger picture. 

Chris R. Vaccaro was married on the Sachem High School football field.

Sports play a large role in your personal life and relationships. You were married on the Sachem High football field. Share that experience.

We were married on the football field. My wife, Theresa, and I are very involved in our community on Long Island. Sachem is the second-largest school district in New York State. It's also not just a town. Several towns were centralized from an educational perspective in 1955 to form Sachem. It is a massive school district—2000-plus employees, 13,000-plus students, two high schools, 10 other buildings, and many elementary schools.

I'm a product of it. I grew up there, and I went there. We live here, and we raise our children here. They attend the same schools I attended. I am the district historian. I am the president and founder of our alumni association and our education foundation. I run our Hall of Fame. I founded and run our Hall of Honor. I provide speakers. I speak on certain topics; we bring alumni back.

We're talking 11 years ago (12 years ago in October). My wife said, "Hey, wouldn't it be unique if we got married on the field?"

She brought it up. I always like to make that very clear. It wasn't my idea, but, of course, I jumped at it, and we made it happen. And we are the first and only people to marry at Fred Fusaro Alumni Stadium.

It was tremendous. We had seats on the turf at the 50-yard line (it's a turf field), and we walked out of the Native American headdress that the team ran out of. We ran out with smoke machines and AC-DC's "Thunderstruck" playing as I walked down the aisle.

We had mini football giveaway items for attendees. We created a game day program modeled after the same design as when they dedicated the field's name to our legendary head coach. There is a lot of connectivity between our history, community culture, and what we did that day. It was a special moment for my wife and me and the community. 

Which recognition has been the most meaningful to you personally among your many honors and awards, and why?

The Emmy Awards are very special because there's tremendous significance in winning those in broadcast and the Murrow Awards, which I've also won. They're all team awards based on my leadership and the teams I oversaw at News 12, a New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut broadcast outlet. Those are really important. The awards I've gotten from the Italian American community, the Dante Award from the Italian American Teachers Association, and the Leadership Award from the Italian Language Foundation are special because they are about way more than just me. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my ancestors who came here not knowing what they were getting into when they got on those ships and came to America. I always talk about how I am a product of what they sought. I am living the American dream. 

While those are really important, the Beacon Award I received from the Ellis Island Honors Society is tremendously important and meaningful. It speaks to the foundation that was set up in honor of the place where my ancestors went. They went to Ellis Island, got off the ships there, and were registered there. To have received recognition for my work in culture and heritage is profound.

I'm in the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame, and IABF was inducted into the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame as an organization. I'm also in the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame for contributing to our community. All of those things are so important.

It's almost difficult to put into words, but the ones related to my heritage define my blood, my existence, and my overall being.

I'm lucky. I put in the work and am happy to get honored, but when I'm honored, it's really about the people I do the work for. It's really about my children, leaving them a legacy that they should look up to, aspire toward themselves, and be proud of our name. That's what it's all about. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito with Chris R. Vaccaro

How do you hope to influence future generations in media, education, and cultural preservation?

The most important thing is ensuring we don't forget who we were or are as a heritage group, a community, or an industry. In everything I do and all the hats I wear, I'm huge on honoring the past and inspiring the future. I mean that. I try so hard to make sure we paint a vivid picture of our history and ensure that the current generation and future generations concurrently understand where they came from.

There's a story to be told. They need to understand it. It's not just what's happening to them right now. We got here for a reason. Let's understand that, learn from it, embrace it in almost all cases, and grow from there. I firmly believe we can't get to where we're going until we understand where we were. 

That's my personal thesis. That's how I build my organizations and run nonprofits. There's a connective tissue there. It's also being very clear about what we're trying to do. It's having a story and making sure everyone understands it. That's where my background in media comes into play. We can tell stories differently, have a strategy, and educate on social media with video, words, long-form storytelling, long-form features, and audio.

My background in media—both in production and leadership—allows me to tell the stories of the people and places I'm associated with. And I do that. I put all those pieces together, and I am constantly promoting what I'm doing, not to promote myself but to promote the stories and the reason why we're doing it.

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Founded in 1998 in Stone Park, Illinois, Casa Italia aims to be the home for all Italian-American organizations in the Chicago area. Through cultural enrichment activities, presentations, and exhibitions, the organization pursues a mission of preserving the past, celebrating Italian heritage, and ensuring the passage of values to future generations. 

The 501(c)3 nonprofit has embarked on a new chapter as it undergoes facility renovations. Once the upgrades are complete, its Italian Cultural Center will fully reopen to showcase museums and exhibits, including the Sicilian Heritage Museum, Italian-American Veterans Museum, and an impressive 1:100 scale hand-carved model of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Meanwhile, the community is invited to attend author events and film screenings, make Carnevale masks, dig into genealogy, play in the bocce league, and dance at Ballo Sotto le Stelle. The organization also offers language classes for adults and children. Casa Italia's Kids Camp, also known as La lingua e cultura d'Italia, is a two-week Italian culture and language immersion program where youth can engage in games, songs, sports, skits, cooking, and formal and informal language lessons.

I spoke with Casa Italia Chairman Peter Volpe about the organization. Peter grew up on the northwest side of Chicago with family from Sicily and Bari. His Sicilian family hails from Porticello, which happens to be where my family and Gaetano and Concetta of The Last Letter from Sicily are from.  

Peter shared more about Casa Italia's cultural center, the organization's offerings, and what he hopes to give back to the community. 

How and why was Casa Italia founded?

Twenty-five years ago, the Scalabrini Order was going to abandon the property. A small group of Italian business people, headed by the Turano family, said, "Don't let that happen. There's just too much history here. Rent it to us. We'll take care of the property. We're going to perpetuate our culture. We're going to bring museums, and we are going to be the home for all Italian American organizations."

That's how it all started. The Turanos, Gambinos, Stramaglias, Brunos, and others got involved in bringing Casa Italia together.

If you look at the Chicago environment for Italian Americans, we have a million organizations, but we don't work as a single power. And that's our vision: We're trying to get everybody together so we can have a unified voice and represent our community with the true power that we possess. The Italian American population is one of the largest in Chicago as far as immigration goes, and we are just too independent of each other. All our organizations have different purposes; if we just keep inside our lanes and follow our direction on what we want to accomplish, we could do so many good things together.

Casa Italia has hosted art shows in its gallery.

Where do things stand with your facility upgrades?

We had 19 acres of land and six big buildings that needed renovation. But our grounds are phenomenal, and we can hold festivals and host events.

The problem is that the buildings became so deteriorated that they were no longer up to code. We didn't have the resources to fix them. So, the village of Stone Park ended up purchasing the property, and now they're our new landlord.

While we no longer control the 19 acres, we have our two most important buildings. One is our cultural center, which houses all our museums, our library, and a nice meeting room. The other is our community center, which has a banquet hall, a kitchen, several offices on the second floor, and a gymnasium.

We got both of those properties from the village under a long-term lease, and they will do the exterior renovations of the cultural center. There will be a new roof, windows, fire escapes, and brickwork. We are charged with bringing the interior and exterior of the other property, the community center, up to code.

We are in the middle of a fundraiser, for which we've raised over $600,000 already. They've taken the sledgehammers and air hammers and are going to work on it.

There's an incredible amount of work that's going to be done. In how we envision that property, we hope to  bring the gym floor up to the main floor level. If we can accomplish this we're going to expand our banquet facilities to hold 400 people. We'll have a full-sized kitchen. And on the second floor, there will be a conference room and storage space for our clubs where they have mini offices.

We're attacking one building at a time. The community center is our focus right now because it brings in the revenue we need to sustain ourselves. We expect that to be done in late summer of this year. Once we can get that done and raise additional capital, we will switch our efforts to the cultural center.

We're looking for donors; they don't have to just be from the Chicagoland area. We invite anybody who wants to see our culture continue and propagate to look us up. 

Casa Italia Kids Camp provides language and culture immersion.

Tell us about your language offerings.

We're offering language classes at five different sites all over the city area to make it convenient. The classes range from conversational Italian (if you're going to travel) to beginner level and up. We have some great instructors who are professors of the Italian language.

With COVID, we expanded that a little bit and did a lot virtually, and that stayed with us. We're still doing both in-person and virtual.

Our summer Kids Camp is coming up. It's two weeks before the 4th of July, and it's a 10-day immersion for the children to learn everything from language to traditions to cooking to gardening and everything about who we are as Italian Americans.

Enjoy a game with Casa Italia's bocce league.

What do you hope to share with members of your community?

We want to support individual clubs and organizations by being their home. We don't charge a membership fee. Just come and be part of Casa Italia and host your meetings and events with us. We welcome you and want you there. We are not there to compete with you; we're here to work with you.

As far as the neighbors and the people in the area are concerned, "Hey, get to know us." Our facility is off the beaten path. It's not on the main street. It's in a neighborhood. It's one square block—that's how huge it is. Come on in and see it.

Everybody who comes can't believe what we have there. The richness of our library, the artifacts in all our museums, the information we share, the events we do… it blows their minds when they see what's going on, and they never knew it was there.  

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It's the quintessentially Sicilian image: A brightly colored wooden cart pulled by a donkey. While the Sicilian cart is largely a thing of the past, the plight of donkeys throughout Europe remains a pressing issue. Once vital to agriculture and transportation, these animals face hardships ranging from overwork in tourism to neglect due to misunderstandings about their needs.

Enter Il Rifugio degli Asinelli. With a mission of educating the public, improving donkey welfare, and healing physical and emotional scars, this Italian subsidiary of UK-based The Donkey Sanctuary serves as a lifeline for donkeys from across Europe facing neglect, abuse, and misunderstanding.

I recently caught up with Il Rifugio degli Asinelli Communications & FR Officer Ilaria Ruzza, who shared more about this important organization and the threats donkeys face. She additionally shed light on surprising donkey facts and how the public can get involved in caring and advocating for this equine species. 

What inspired the establishment of Il Rifugio degli Asinelli?

Il Rifugio is the Italian subsidiary of the international animal welfare charity The Donkey Sanctuary, founded in 1969 in the UK by Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen MBE. Our location in Italy puts us in a good position geographically to welcome donkeys from different countries across Europe. Over the years, we have welcomed animals from Greece, Romania, France, Switzerland, and, of course, Italy.

What are some of the key threats donkeys face?

While some donkeys suffer from neglect and abuse, poor welfare is often because of misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge about how to care for them. Sometimes, they are considered "small horses," but donkeys are very different in their behavior and physical needs. In places popular with tourists, donkeys are still used to generate income, and this means they can be overworked or kept in poor conditions, as is also the case for animals involved in the milk and breeding industry.

Can you share some success stories of donkeys rehabilitated at the refuge?

Ardito was born in 2003 and comes from the Oropa Valley, a few kilometers from Il Rifugio. He lived for over a year, locked in a stable, without ever seeing the light of day because his elderly owner was no longer able to properly care for him. When we went to retrieve him in 2016, he was underweight, with long hooves and covered in parasites, but he already had a wonderful character: the only thing that hasn't changed, so much so that he was renamed the "Gentle Giant." He constantly seeks the attention of humans and loves to be scratched on the withers. Living inside a closed environment and without the necessary air circulation for a prolonged period of time led him to develop a respiratory condition comparable to human asthma. Animals affected by this pathology require greater precautions (stable beds made of dust-free wood chips and not straw, administration of specific high-quality feed). He has created strong bonds of friendship with Lucio and Galileo, his stablemates, but he still has a good balance with all the other animals in the group in which he lives.

Ardito was rescued from a state of neglect.

In 2013, we rescued 34 animals coming from Italy's biggest-ever equine seizure in Colleferro, near Rome. This included 14 mules and hinnies and 12 pregnant jennies, leading to another 12 foals over the following year. It was February, and we had heavy snow. All our staff worked very hard to enlarge our quarantine area, as we were not used to welcoming so many animals at a time. Before arriving at Il Rifugio, they were completely abandoned. Sadly, many animals were already dead or died during the seizure because of starvation or severe, untreated wounds—with no trust at all towards humans. We've been rebuilding that bond every single day since they arrived, healing both physical and emotional wounds. There's still a long way to go, but when they approach to receive a scratch, we know we're going in the right direction.

What are your main challenges in caring for over 100 animals from various countries?

We currently have 106 resident animals (93 donkeys, 12 mules and hinnies, and one pony). They all come from different backgrounds. They can't tell us about what they have been through, so we have to get to know and understand every single animal in his or her behavior and character, besides their specific physical needs (diet, conditions, etc.).

How do you ensure well-being and health at the refuge?

Our qualified, experienced and trained staff care for our animals every single day, while our veterinarian is on site three days a week and in case of emergency as well. Our farm schedule includes periodic visits, dental checks, vaccines, hooves trimming and grooming, and weighing on a monthly basis. Individual diets are reviewed each month to ensure welfare and avoid possible conditions stemming from a wrong alimentation. Animals with behavioral problems are followed through specific sessions by trained personnel so that they can be more comfortable during health checks.

What might people be surprised to learn about donkeys?

Donkeys are incredibly smart and intelligent animals and, like other equines, have a keen fight-or-flight nervous system response. However, compared with horses, the donkey's fight-defense mechanism is more easily engaged and can be seen in donkeys displaying behavior in the range of standing their ground when faced with a threat. Donkeys may also freeze when faced with a threat, which can be mistaken for them being stubborn when, in fact, they may just be reacting to a novel situation. Their varied behavioral responses demonstrate how donkeys need to be treated differently from horses and not just seen as a smaller, longer-eared version of a horse. They create strong and long-lasting (even lifelong) bonds with other donkeys, usually in a pair but sometimes in groups of three or four. When we move a donkey from one stable to another for a vet visit, we always keep them with their bonded friend(s); otherwise, they can be scared, deeply stressed, or even become aggressive. Bonded friends stay close to each other during any activity: grazing, eating, running, scratching, etc.

What kind of training and education programs do you offer?

On occasion, we offer public courses, both online and on-site, facilitated by our Training and Educational department, completely free of charge, focusing on the basic information and knowledge for donkeys' welfare. We also offer courses on a wide range of subjects through The Donkey Academy, which is a collaborative online learning platform and knowledge exchange developed and run by our own experts at The Donkey Sanctuary. The self-paced courses are designed to teach new skills or enhance existing ones. They cover basic welfare and wellbeing, behavior and nutrition for donkey owners and guardians, right through to specialist courses that include donkey behavior for veterinary professionals, clinical examination, and dental and farriery care.

The Donkey Academy is also free of charge and offers courses in English and Spanish, both to professionals (e.g., veterinarians, dental technicians, vet nurses, paraveterinarians, and farriers) and to laypeople (i.e., donkey owners, guardians, people interested in donkey care and welfare). The virtual learning environment also hosts training pathways for The Donkey Sanctuary employees, designed to ensure that all of our donkeys will benefit from a consistent and predictable approach to their care. The Donkey Sanctuary is also involved in collaboration with different Universities, Colleges, and professional associations in several countries, offering tailored education programs to students and professionals.

Recently, two courses in Italian have been launched: one is dedicated to our Il Rifugio employees, while the other is open to the public, offering owners, perspective owners, guardians, and other interested people all the information needed to properly care for donkeys and enhance their welfare and well-being.

What key activities and facilities are available at the refuge?

Upon appointment, we welcome groups, both children and adults, for guided tours, which last approximately a couple of hours: we explain our mission, the needs of a healthy donkey, and what he looks like so that people may be able to recognize a donkey in distress and report it to authorities if they ever see one. Three different groups of vulnerable and disabled people come once a week to benefit from our free DAA (Donkey Assisted Activities) program. They spend some time in our paddocks with our animals (who are never tied and always free to move around), shadowed by our qualified staff. We have an Info Point where visitors can ask questions, make a donation, and adopt a donkey.

Can you explain the process of adopting or fostering a donkey or mule?

Distance adoption is a symbolic way to help all donkeys. With a yearly donation of 36,00 EUR, you will contribute to the well-being of all animals living at Il Rifugio. Our program includes seven donkeys (Alin, Ardito, Agostino, Clementina, Filippo, Galileo, and Ombra) and one mule (Marco). Adopters will receive a special certificate with a picture of the adopted donkey, a welcome letter, and the donkey's ID with all their information. We then send three newsletters a year (Spring, Summer, and Christmas) where we provide updates on the adoption scheme animals, which can be seen during our open days to the public.

We currently have 43 donkeys living in Guardian Homes. People interested in joining our Guardian Scheme are invited to read the terms and conditions first. Donkeys are very sociable creatures who make fantastic companion animals. However, they do require a great deal of time, space, resources, and, of course, attention. Our Guardian donkeys are selected carefully so we can maximize the chances of our donkeys and their foster owners. Guardians have a happy and long-lasting life together. They are always fostered in pairs, given how important it is for them to have a bonded companion. Our Welfare Department commits to a visit once a year to check everything is running smoothly and that all welfare standards are respected.

What do you hope people take away from your work?

To better understand and deeply respect this animal, who enormously contributed for centuries to human needs and activities while being so often neglected and mistreated. We want a world where every donkey has a good quality of life, a path that starts with education, knowledge, advocacy, and sensibility. We're trying to achieve it each day, to build awareness, to let people see and experience how wonderful donkeys are in every respect.

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