Festival

Giuliano, who is a distant cousin of former mayor and current Common Councilman Sebastian N. Giuliano.

The family lived on Green Street and then High Street in the North End and the Giuliano children went to St. Sebastian School and then Middletown High School.

Because he came from modest beginnings in Italy, Domenic Giuliano is grateful for all he has, he said.

“It’s an emotional feeling. He feels the love for God and St. Sebastian and where he’s been taken to this day,” his daughter translated. “I think a lot of it has to do with being an immigrant and not speaking well, not driving. He’s been able to live somewhat of a decent life here,” she said.

Her father had scarlet fever as a child and in Melilli, the community didn’t have doctors or medicines that could properly treat the illness, Santina Giuliano said. It turned into meningitis. “He could have died from that. He survived but from that, he now experiences stuttering and not perfect motor skills,” she said.

“The doctor ended up giving me bad medicine,” Domenic Giuliano said.

“If he wasn’t strong, he probably would have ended up passing away,” his daughter said.

“God and St. Sebastian saved me!” Domenic Giuliano said.

He explained that he always had several jobs to make ends meet — at points, he was employed at Pierson’s Floral Nursery in Cromwell (the precursor to Cromwell Growers), as a custodian at the Garibaldi Society and Sons of Italy, and at an iron shop in Rocky Hill. The latter was something Domenic Giuliano did on the sly because his mother told him he could only work at the greenhouse, his daughter said.

“I remember as a little kid going with him to work,” Santina Giuliano said. “And I would play on the foosball table, the PacMan machine while he was shining the floors.

“I grew up on the (Middletown Area Transit) bus, pretty much. For us to get around, we used the bus or rides from aunts and uncles,” Santina Giuliano said.

When Santina and her little brother were babies, their father would carry one on his shoulders as their mother held the other sibling during the procession.

This year’s festival had considerably less I Nuri and smaller crowds, something father and daughter said is a sign of the times.

“The older generation, sadly, has passed on,” Santina Giuliano said.

Another contributing factor is that the Norwich Diocese is closing and merging churches due to declining parishioners and fewer men entering the priesthood.

“Little by little, people fade away,” she translated for her father.

“He, of course, is saddened to see the crowds get smaller,” said Santina Giuliano

“My generation needs to carry this on or else this is going to die,” Santina Giuliano said her father told her during the weekend. She saw only two buses of people who traveled from other states this year to attend the festival. In the past, she said, as many as 10 busloads would converge on the church.

Years ago, the Garibaldi Society on lower Washington Street was used all the time by the Sicilians for stags, weddings, fundraisers and other events, as well as the I Nuri station before the run. “We would all fill that whole thing,” Santina Giuliano said.

Meanwhile, Domenic Giuliano will continue to run.

“As long as I have the will and the strength, as long as I can do it, I’ll do it.”