COVER STORY
Beyond Shrewsbury Street Revisiting Worcester’s Italian-American heritage CRAIG S. SEMON
grandmother would look at me and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, “I don’t know?” “All right, let’s make some polenta” et me say a word about and she’d make polenta or she would bake Shrewsbury Street. This was, a loaf of bread or pasta or pizza fretta and and will forever be, the heart show me how to do it. She made all this stuff of the Italian community of and I just became so infatuated with the fact that you didn’t need a grocery store other Worcester. The very name is integral with than to get the real essential essentials. And the Italian Community. Anyone in WorcesI was so proud of them. If I had an opportuter who thinks of the Italians, instinctively nity when I visited my father’s side, I go visit thinks of Shrewsbury,” according to Rev. John my grandfather. He’d teach me Italian card J. Capuano (deceased), pastor of Our Lady of games like Scopa (broom in Italian). But, he Mount Carmel-St. Ann Parish, in “A Brief His- wouldn’t just play cards with me. The funny thing was he was a great teacher and he tory of the Italian Americans of Worcester, would talk to me while we played cards.” Massachusetts from 1860 to 1978.” “I grew up down on East Central Street. So we were right in the center of the Italian There are four absolutes for any true section. Growing up, I thought there were Italian who grew up in the Italian section only Italians and Irish because that’s all I of Worcester in the 20th century – a strong knew,” Bello said. “And I went to school up work ethic, a devotion to family, a belief in a the hill at Sacred Heart Academy and the good education, and, of course, a passion for church was across the street, Mount Carmel. food, fabulous, homemade food. The church was the social center. That’s While those absolutes still hold true how people met their spouses. My family today, some Italian-Americans argue that lived in the same neighborhood. My mother the younger generation has lost sight of the had nine in her family. My father had five. significance of some of these inherited prin- We’d walk up and down Central Street and cipals – but, not the food, no, never the food. Shrewsbury Street and everybody knew you. When you ask Mauro DePasquale and We had the first social media because no Carmelita Bello what does it mean to them matter what I did, my mother would know to be an Italian-American growing up in about it before I came home … I remember Worcester, they both simply say “Everything,” looking out my living room window, right before rattling off their personal family down Hill Street, and in those days, when history for the next 10 minutes that truly somebody died or it was a feast day, they had captures the 20th-century Italian-American the little parades down Shrewsbury Street experience. and I watch them from my window. And DePasquale and Bello, who are both 100 they had the band and the woman in the percent Italian (and very well known in the black and the statue going down … My aunt Italian community and beyond), have fond Gladys was very active in the (Christopher memories that go back when they were very Columbus Lodge No. 168 Order of) Sons of young. Italy and she got my sister and I involved. I “I lived off Bell Hill. There were mostly became the president of the State’s Sons of Italians. And I thought everybody was ItalItaly. My grandfather was the first one bringian,” DePasquale said. “I can remember one ing Sons of Italy to Worcester. So we were of my grandfathers holding me when I was very involved in the parades and making the one year old and he had a tattoo of Christ floats … I have great memories of it. I am tied to an anchor. I have a chain with that fond of my Italian heritage. I’ve been to Italy right now that I’ve worn since I became eight or nine times, supposed to go again in old enough to buy one. I remember visiting May but that blew up.” my grandparents and them taking me into As one can clearly see, DePasquale and the garden. One of my grandmothers made Bello both take great pride in being Italianwine. She showed me the machine when I Americans. was just a little kid. And I thought this was “Being an Italian-American, it was this so cool. These people didn’t need anything. pride. It was this ability to be self-sustaining. They could make stuff. When I was hanging It was the ability to take care of yourself, around my grandmother, she would come not cry about things, do what you have to and visit and help my mom out when we do, have faith in God that you’re going to be were little kids. My mother had six kids. My OK,” DePasquale said. “And, when they spoke
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about the Blessed Mother or the Christ, I actually thought the Blessed Mother was right there, like she was a tenant or something. She was going to come down and if I was a fresh kid, she was going to yell at me or something. This is how real and strong our faith was. My grandparents instilled in me the faith and honor and all the family values that are really important.” When talking to Italians about family memories, it doesn’t take long for food to slip into their thoughts. “My grandfather had this huge garden up on Franklin Street. He had this beautiful grapevine and every day I went up visiting there. We would sit at the grapevine at three o’clock and would have coffee and Italian cookies,” DePasquale said. “So I look up at the hill. I look at the backyard where the house used to be and my grandfather’s grapevine is still standing there strong. And I think of my grandfather all the time.” “Everybody had a garden, even though they lived in a three-decker and had a postage-stamp (size) yard,” Bello added. Jonelle Garofoli is 50 percent Italian. Garofoli’s grandparents (on her father’s side) are from Italy and her father’s family grew up off Shrewsbury Street, in a house built by her grandfather, complete with a yard with a big vegetable garden and fruit trees. “The cooking’s the number one thing about Italians,” Garofoli said. “Let’s be honest.” Garofoli said the Italian traditions that were passed down to her, especially from her Nana, are very important to her. “The seven fishes on Christmas Eve. I still cook like that,” Garofoli said. “I still cook the same Italian cookies for Christmas. I give them out to anybody and everybody I can find that needs cookies. I bake a lot and I make limoncello from scratch. I do everything that my Nana did. I picked up a lot from my Nana because I was always with her.” Garofoli said all families used to be closeknit and everybody knew everyone in the neighborhood. “They all came over from Italy and settled in the same neighborhood. They knew their parents, and the grandparents and the grand kids. My cousins were like my brothers and sisters,” Garofoli said. “Today, we don’t have the same kind of neighborhoods. There’s a lot of change. You need two incomes. There are two people working. Back then, women that were from Italy stayed at home took care of the house and kids. That was their job.”
