New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
No parade this year, but culture celebration is on
NORTH HAVEN — There won’t be a Columbus Day parade again this year, but the region’s Italian Americans plan to celebrate their rich heritage in a new way.
“We had to kind of scale back, but we’re praying and hoping” to revive the parade in 2022, said Laura Florio Luzzi, chairwoman of the parade committee. “The town of East Haven is very excited about us coming.”
The pandemic made it impractical and burdensome to put on a large parade in North Haven (last year’s host, when the parade was postponed). So a concert featuring Italian-American song, with food vendors and exhibits, will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday on the town Green.
The committee faced a second challenge with the controversy over the removal of Christopher Columbus’ statue from New Haven’s Wooster Square Park in June 2020. There still will be the traditional wreathlaying ceremony at the pedestal at 11 a.m. Oct. 9.
Traditionally, “30 to 40 wreaths from all the local Italian-American organizations and others” would be laid beneath the statue. Since the statue is gone, “we are having something like that because it’s symbolic for us, but only one wreath,” Luzzi said.
The new way of celebrating Italian-American immigrants’ heritage includes a new name for the committee that plans the
annual parade, which rotates among six cities and towns: The Greater New Haven Italian American Heritage Committee. She said the parade likely will be named for Italian-American heritage next year.
Luzzi said the committee is “trying to keep the traditions” without becoming involved in controversy.
“If the negativity is Christopher Columbus, then we’re just going to have to pull him out of the equation, and that’s what we’re going to do,” she said.
She said because of the expense of putting on a parade, which includes paying all the bands and drum crops, it was decided not to ask businesses, already struggling because of the pandemic, to sponsor the event.
“We didn’t want to impose any additional expenses on the community,” Luzzi said.
First Selectman Mike Freda said he had budgeted for town expenses, such as police, fire and public works.
“We had concluded that as we’re still in the pandemic, and in some cases trying to come out of this pandemic, it was going to be difficult to try to raise money,” he said.
The concert, which will include local singer Rich DiPalma and Echoes of Sinatra & Dino, a tribute band to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, will start at noon.
Freda said this year, “as part of the tradition and ceremony of the event as it goes from town to town,” he has invited East Haven Mayor Joe Carfora to attend for “the passing of the flag from one town to another.”
Luzzi said Marc-Anthony Massaro, a Branford sculptor who designed the statue that will replace Columbus in Wooster Square, will be present to talk about his work, “Indicando la via al futuro” (“Pointing the way to the future”). Luzzi is on the committee that chose Massaro.
Among other exhibitors will be student ambassadors from North Haven High School “giving some information about the different regions of Italy” and the Ethnic Heritage Center from Southern Connecticut State University, Luzzi said.
Vendors include JRoos, Sylvia’s Bakery, Joe’s Ice Cream Truck and The Masons, featuring fried dough, pizza, cannoli, sausage and peppers, ice cream and espresso.