FROM THE PRESIDENT:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

October is a special month for all of us of Italian heritage.  It is during this month that we come together in several venues to honor Christopher Columbus, discoverer of our great country.  Members of the Vincent Lombardi Lodge #2270, should be honored to be members of the ORDER SONS OF ITALY IN AMERICA, founded in New York in 1905 by Dr. Vincenzo Selaro. 

With that in mind, I hope to instill in all of you a renewed sense of pride in being of Italian heritage.  Think about your family members who have gone before you and made it possible for you to maintain and share your heritage with future generations.  Think of what you can do to pass this all on to your children and grandchildren.  There are several ways we can accomplish this.  We know many of the younger generations do not seem to share our pride in our Italian heritage but it is within your power to pass this information along by looking up your own family history and documenting it along with writing down your own memories of your childhood and stories you were told by your elders.

Think back to how things were done differently when you were a child and family traditions that got lost somewhere along the way. Computers have made this much easier but for those of us that are not “computer geeks” there are other resources available which we will discuss at future meetings of our lodge.

In October we also have several events that we can participate in such as our General Assembly Meeting on October 9th where we will be installing several new members into our lodge.  We should be proud of our lodge and seek new members but also do what we can to keep our older members with us.

On October 11th the Columbus Day Parade will once again take place downtown and our lodge will participate under Tony Palucci’s guidance.  We will have several decorated vehicles and hopefully you will come join us for a day where we celebrate our pride in our Italian heritage.  Those of us that participated last year had a tremendous sense of pride as we passed onlookers along the parade route waving Italian and American flags. For those that can’t participate in the parade, we encourage you to gather your children, grandchildren and friends and bring them downtown to show your pride in being of Italian American heritage.

Our Ad Book, which is our major fundraiser of the year, allows the Italian American Community to see who supports our Lodge through the ads that people have placed for their businesses.  We can also foster new membership for our lodge through the ad book and dinner dance.

On Saturday October 18th we will have our Christopher Columbus Dinner Dance being held at the Diplomat Banquet Center.  Our honored guests that evening will be our State President Nancy DiFiore Quinn and her husband First Gent John as well as our annual award winners and scholarship winners.

Proud to be an Italian American and proud and honored to be your Lodge president,

                                                                                                            Fraternally,

                                                                                                            Joseph A. Rubé, Jr. MD