Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
For 50 years, members of the Mazzini-Verdi Club and Mazzini-Verdi Ladies Club have gathered at 9230 Belmont Ave. in Franklin Park to spend time together, host events in the clubhouse ballroom and play in friendly yet competitive games of bocce on the indoor courts.
To lead the clubs as they begin the next 50 years are two presidents with plenty of experience, Luigi Banducci and Lydia Arnstein.
Arnstein joined the Mazzini-Verdi Ladies Club around 35 years ago. This year and next will be Arnstein’s third two-year term as president. Her predecessor, Giovanna Carlino, sadly passed away late last year, during the holiday season and near the end of her term.
“She came to the Presidential Ball that we have in December and she was fine, she was healthy,” Arnstein says. “It really was a shock.”
Luigi Banducci has switched off two-year presidential terms with his close friend Bernard Ghilarducci for around the past 20 years.
Banducci says the two have a great working relationship. When this Fra Noi writer came to visit the Franklin Park clubhouse in early April, the pair were hard at work together preparing the clubhouse’s large banquet hall for the club’s Easter dinner.
Other holidays where club members gather include a Valentine’s Day dance in February, a St. Joseph’s Table in March, an Italian Heritage Dance Celebration in October, a Christmas party in December and a New Year’s party. The Ladies Club creates flower arrangements and centerpieces for all the events.
Arnstein says her favorite annual gathering is Festa Fuori in August, which is always held outside, weather permitting.
“That’s my favorite because you can really put yourself out there with your different decorating ideas,” Arnstein says. “And you see everybody and they’re all in a different mood I think from being outside.”
But it doesn’t have to be a special occasion for members to gather in Franklin Park. Members gather every Monday for a cenetta that features bocce and dinner, with a different menu each week. The men’s bocce league meets during the day on Wednesday and the Women’s league gathers Wednesday evenings. On Fridays, the clubhouse is open for members to gather, socialize and play card.
Banducci says most every weekend the clubhouse will host an event, often a special party hosted by a member of the club for their friends and family.
“We are pretty busy right now,” Banducci says. “We can’t complain, let me put it that way.”
The club was largely closed for two years by the pandemic but Banducci says they have returned slowly but surely to the way things were before.
The Franklin Park clubhouse has a full commercial kitchen, banquet area, full bar with RAI satellite television in the bar area, a card room, three indoor bocce courts and ample free parking.
The club dates back to its founding as the Mazzini Club in 1933, named after Giuseppe Mazzini, a hero of the Risorgimento. In 1948, the club merged with another social and cultural club named after legendary opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, and it has been known as the Mazzini-Verdi Club ever since.
Banducci came to America from Italy in 1967 at 23 years old and became involved with the Mazzini-Verdi Club soon after. He says he was looking for a strong community like the one he’d left behind in Italy.
“I was surprised because I didn’t expect it when I came here to see a big Italian community together,” Banducci says. “Every Friday we had dancing and that’s when you get to meet the Italian people.”
Arnstein says her top goal is to bring new and younger members into the club.
“Little by little, of course, we kind of have gotten less and less,” Arnstein says. “So I’m hoping that we could get some young people to start coming and join the club.”
Banducci says his dream is to see the club, slowly but surely, be taken over by younger people.
“It is the way we were when we took it and continue the Italian heritage,” he says.
For more information on the club including how to join, call the clubhouse at 847-671-0055.
