Italian heritage celebrated in Renovo: live video recording available of remembrances and stories

By Christopher Miller

RENOVO – The Greater Renovo Area Heritage Park held their annual Heritage Days Celebration on Saturday, July 27 at “The Maxwell Building” in Renovo. This year’s theme was the culture and heritage of the Italians in the greater Renovo area.

The event featured a 5K “Heritage Walk” around Renovo where participants could “hike it or bike it” on a self-guided tour of Renovo with stops at various points of interest, descriptions, and photos.

The “main session” of the morning was a panel discussion about Renovo’s Italian heritage that was live-streamed on the Heritage Park Facebook Page and YouTube channel. It was moderated by John Tarantella and included guest speaker Charlie Rosamilia, audience participation, questions, and reminiscences.

During the discussion, John and Charlie talked about their heritage, tradition, “the old ways,” and the stereotypes they all overcame.

“The cultural heritage and the influence…the Italian people came to this area to work, and work they did,” John said. “There were certain jobs Italians could have but there were other jobs that were taboo, you couldn’t be an engineer on the railroad if you had an “a” or a vowel at the end of your name. True, myself having experienced that in the 70s and to 1985, my grandfather, when I was hired as an engineer on the railroad, told me, “you can’t be an engineer” and I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time, so the older fella’s that I worked with went on to tell me that certain times they would talk, and certain times they would be hush hush about things.”

Charlie spoke on his family heritage and where his grandfather came from near Salerno.

“At the time, the land he lived on was owned by rich landowners from the north and it was a poor area with droughts and not much money in that area, and stories of America were floating around of opportunity and that the streets were paved with gold…my grandfather was 16 when he came to America, coming with one of his brothers and a cousin,” he said. “He came through Ellis Island and some of the conditions in New York City were worse than where they came from, but the people that ended up in Renovo were connected to people who came over before, in my grandfathers case the Grieco’s and Caprio’s sponsored him and his passage, then he worked in West Virginia for 30 months in a lumber camp, everything he made went to pay back the passage and luckily he got a job with the railroad which was a great job for an Italian immigrant, and my grandparents had 10 children total, so they needed a few bucks to raise them.”

“They had their ways and my grandfather’s rule was you do not speak Italian, you speak English, so the language didn’t get passed down, but his goal in life was to have a house in a nice part of town and it took 31 years from when he got here, but he eventually but 220 5th Street, the house is still there but our family doesn’t own it anymore, but it was the homestead,” Charlie proudly stated.

“Remember growing up, everybody had a backyard but no play area, but everybody had a garden…the lower end of town was so well maintained that people would literally trim their sidewalks with scissors, and had fruit trees that would be whitewashed a few feet so the ants wouldn’t go up the trees and take the fruit, because the people were going to use them – nothing went to waste or rotted, it was either used right now or canned, and our neighbors did the same thing,” John recalled. “And a lot of the tradition, we would go to my mother’s house every Sunday, my mom would go to church, dad would stay home and stir the sauce in a pan holding 10 gallons, and that was his excuse to not see the priest on Sunday and he never let the sauce burn, and they had a table that only sat six people but somehow, 14-20 people all sat and ate every Sunday at my mother’s house. No one was allowed to do dishes or clean up until everybody had finished eating, and that is one of the things I miss today: the regular, weekly basis family gatherings.”

“The men would be in the living room, men in the kitchen, but somebody said to one of my aunt’s, Louise makes bigger raviolis than you do, so the two of them being what they were, the raviolios ended up being the size of a plate by the time they were done because no one was going to outdo the other,” Charlie remembered.

During the talk, John displayed what he regretted the most.

“I remember some words of my mother and father who could speak fluent Italian, and the only time they would was when they were arguing, I really wish I had learned to speak some of the Italian language,” John recalled. “How did we miss out on that?”

John and Charlie entertained questions and comments from the audience, including the remembrances of the neighborhoods.

“There were eleven children and we still own the homestead on Erie Avenue, we rent it out now, I went in and I said “are you kidding me” they raised 11 kids in a 3-bedroom home, 1 bathroom, and I think it’s because the older kids were out of school and the younger were coming up, but everybody had a job to do in the home,” an audience member recalled.

These excerpts were taken from the full video, which was recorded on Saturday, July 27 and is available for viewing on the Renovo Heritage Park Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/renovoheritage

Charlie Barnum also presented a slideshow of images that he collected over the years about Renovo’s past. He had been sharing his stories and images as a 6th grade teacher at Renovo Elementary.

Lunch was available for purchase and consisted of Italian pulled pork. Homemade frozen ravioli was available for sale made by Margaret Cozzi Riggle to be cooked at home later.

April Kelley presented a research project that mapped the locations of where the Italian ethnic group lived in Renovo, including a color-coded map of “old Renovo.”