Lindsay Marie Morris

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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