Highlights

To edit Fra Noi is to live in a time warp in which months fold in upon each other, and the present and future blur. As I write this column for the January issue, Thanksgiving is two days away, Christmas decorations are about to emerge from their boxes in the basement and the New Year seems like a distant dream. In the midst of this befuddling cocktail of holiday spirits, it’s hard to know which tone to strike. Should I be thankful? Joyful? Resolute? One thing is certain, though: When I think of our advertisers, it’s easy to feel all …

This year’s Columbus Day celebration in Chicago might not have been the biggest ever, but it certainly was the most remarkable. Absolutely everything conspired against it, from the slow pace of city approval to forecasts of rain and fears of protests that kept some on the sidelines. But permits were finally issued; a promotional blitz ensued; and floats, cars, bands and other marching units were rallied in weeks instead of months. On Oct. 11, a lone bus arrived at Casa Italia along with a gray dawn to shepherd the intrepid to morning Mass at Our Lady of Pompeii Shrine. Fr. …

The Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations has launched a major initiative on behalf of Christopher Columbus. The four-pronged campaign reached the readerships of two of the nation’s premier dailies, nearly 10,000 media outlets, the halls of Congress and the memberships of hundreds of Italian-American organizations. Dubbed “The Columbus Project,” the campaign was kicked off with a full-page ad placed in the Sept. 27 editions of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The ad highlights the importance of Columbus to the Italian-American community, touts his accomplishments, counters contentions he was a genocidal slave trader and calls …

A standout basketball and baseball player in high school and college, Jerry Colangelo became a multisport luminary thanks to inspiration drawn from his humble Italian roots in Chicago Heights. When Jerry Colangelo was 7 years old, he was given his first basketball, a simple act that ignited the fuse to an extraordinarily successful career in national and international sports. “I smelled the leather, and it was the beginning of a love affair that has lasted a lifetime,” Colangelo tells Fra Noi in a wide-ranging interview about his life and myriad achievements as a player, coach, administrator, owner and overall leader. …

October through December is my favorite time of year. I’m that person who decorates for fall in August and drinks pumpkin spice lattes when it’s still 90 degrees. Out of that whole glorious season, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Last year, I spent Thanksgiving in Treviso, Italy. I hadn’t planned on still being there that late in the season, but I can hardly complain. With 2020 being, well, 2020, it was a miracle I was in Italy at all. Since Thanksgiving is a uniquely American observance, it had me reminiscing about a magical celebration back home almost 20 years before. …

A fierce advocate on behalf of his heritage for decades, Basil Russo has undertaken the Garibaldian task of uniting the community on a national level. Basil Russo was watching the ballgame on TV with his immigrant grandfather when Cleveland Indians slugger Rocky Colavito hit his record-tying fourth consecutive home run against the Baltimore Orioles on June 10, 1959. Russo was only 12 at the time, but that moment is forever etched in his memory. “My ‘nonnu’ was a tough, old Sicilian who rarely showed much emotion, but there he was with tears of joy running down his face,” Russo recalls. …

When I chat with a new friend or someone I just met and mention my fig trees, they almost immediately shake their heads and ask, “Did you just say fig trees?” Living in the Midwest as I do, it comes as a surprise to most people that we raise figs. And believe me, keeping these beauties alive in this region is truly a labor of love. I have vivid memories of the 22 fig trees my father kept when I was a kid growing up in Chicago. We all know the size of a city lot, but my parents owned …

With a notable diplomatic pedigree and multinational roots, Thomas Botzios brings a global perspective to his role as the Midwest’s new Italian consul general. If anyone was born to be a diplomat, it’s Thomas Botzios. The Midwest’s new Italian consul general pursued the same career path as his father and uncle, Elias and Christos Botzios, both of whom served in the Greek diplomatic corps, and was raised to view the profession as a noble one. “My father always told me that being a consul is not only a matter of diplomacy, it’s a matter of service, to be of help …

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as case numbers multiplied with each passing week, it was apparent there would be only one solution to this global health crisis. The answer fell in the domain of what I believe is the single greatest advancement in modern medicine — vaccination. Over this last year, we all witnessed what our world looked like when a vaccine didn’t exist for this highly contagious illness. Worldwide, there have been nearly 200 million cases of COVID with nearly 4 million lives lost, more than 600,000 of these in the U.S. alone. I received my first …

The tide is turning in New York and across the country as Italian Americans mobilize to counter a jaded political formula. The strategy was straightforward: To score political points, all one needed to do was remove a Columbus statue, look the other way when one was illegally toppled or simply rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. The formula worked for years, the blowback was containable and many media outlets, sympathetic to the anti-Columbus movement, didn’t kick up much of a fuss. But quite a bit has changed over the past 12 months, as Italian-American organizations have continued to mobilize …