Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
San Rocco has been a part of Frank DeFrenza’s life from his childhood in Italy through his adult life in the Chicago area.
DeFrenza was born in 1946 in Valenzano, a town outside Bari, Puglia, where San Rocco is the patron saint.
“They say because of him the plague didn’t touch Valenzano,” DeFrenza says.
San Rocco was a 14th-century French noble who gave away his wealth to live as a pilgrim, miraculously healing plague victims across Italy. After contracting the plague himself, he was saved by a hunting dog that brought him food and licked his wounds in a forest cave. When he returned home, ravaged by the disease, his family didn’t recognize him and threw him in prison as a spy. He languished there for five years without complaining or identifying himself. When he perished, his identity was revealed through miraculous intervention.
DeFrenza’s father died when he was 3 months old and his mother’s modest salary as a seamstress was stretched thin to provide for the family. DeFrenza remembers looking forward to the Feast of San Rocco as a child because of the bounty it would bring.
“When it was the San Rocco feast, we were happy because we’d get new shoes or pants or have a special meal like eggplant parmigiana,” DeFrenza says. “Those were things you didn’t get every day, especially after the war.”
An important part of the annual celebration was a procession during which the faithful carried relics and a statue of San Rocco through the village.
DeFrenza left Italy at 20 years old to pursue a career repairing motors and electrical components, first in Canada and then in the Chicago area, where he resettled in 1968.
Emigrants from Valenzano to Chicago formed a society in honor of their patron saint in the 1930s in the Taylor Street neighborhood, but it had faded with the passing of the generations. In the mid-1980s, post-war emigrants from Valenzano created Associazione San Rocco di Valenzano to continue the tradition.
In the early 1990s, DeFrenza led the effort to create the current San Rocco statue. It portrays the saint dressed from head to toe in silver, holding his staff and pointing to the wound on his thigh, which was caused by the plague. At his feet sits the faithful dog with a small loaf of bread in his mouth in perpetual offering.
During his regular trips back to Italy, DeFrenza found an artisan who was capable of crafting a statue of that caliber. Then it was time to raise funds.
“I sent a letter to all of the paesani and collected more than $10,000 for the statue,” DeFrenza says.
He asked his brother, Giuseppe, a master wood carver, to create a wooden base for the statue once it arrived in America. The base, which is just as opulent as the statue, bears the inscription “A devozione di Giuseppe & Antonietta DeFrenza,” in honor of his brother and his sister-in-law.
Giuseppe donated his talents, DeFrenza says, and the wood was donated by Montalbano Majestic, where Giuseppe, who will turn 90 this fall, still works.
“Hopefully I’ll get to live that long, I am 80 and still get up in the morning and come to work,” says DeFrenza, who is the owner of FDF Armature Inc. in Addison.
Staged for years at Casa Italia in Stone Park, the Feast of San Rocco di Valenzano is now held at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in Melrose Park. This year’s celebration will take place on Aug. 2 and include a noon Mass, followed by a procession with the Sicilian Band of Chicago. For more, call De Frenza at 630-292-7300.
DeFrenza, who has been president of Associazione San Rocco di Valenzano for more than 35 years, credits his fellow officers with the organization’s longevity and success.
“Without them, our annual celebration wouldn’t be possible,” he says of First Vice President Rina Caringella, Secretary Vito Lollino, Treasurer Consiglia Uva and Honorary President Tommaso Naccarata.
DeFrenza says he will lead the group for as long as the board will allow him, nothing that he carries on as president because of how important it is to keep the tradition alive.
“I’m never going to tire of it, and I will always do the best I can,” DeFrenza says. “We do it for the tradition because if you don’t have a tradition then you don’t know where you came from.”
