October President Message

ITALIAN HERITAGE MONTH

106 Years of Heritage, Friendship, and Belonging

The Colombo Club of Oakland

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Ciao a tutti,

This October, as we celebrate Italian Heritage Month, the timing feels especially meaningful. Just weeks ago, we gathered to celebrate the Colombo Club’s 106th anniversary. These are not two separate celebrations. In many ways, they are the same story - the story of immigrants, families, friendship, sacrifice, and a heritage strong enough to travel across an ocean and endure for generations.

In 1920, twenty-two Italian immigrants came together with a simple but powerful purpose: to create a place where they could gather, belong, share food and fellowship, and preserve the customs and traditions they had brought with them to America. Their earliest gatherings took place in the basement of Maggiorino Lovisone’s home on Pleasant Valley Avenue. They played cards, Pedro, Morra, and bocce. Their families gathered for special occasions. What they were building, perhaps without fully realizing it, was much more than a social club. They were creating a home away from home.

That story is deeply connected to what Italian Heritage Month asks us to remember. For many of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, becoming American came with sacrifice. Some arrived speaking little or no English. Some felt pressure to leave the Italian language behind so their children would fit in. They worked with their hands, raised families, served their new country, and built lives from very little. Yet around the dinner table, in the way family cared for one another, in the food, the stories, the laughter, and the traditions, Italy remained.

The Colombo Club became one of the places where it could remain openly and proudly. By 1922, our members had built the Club’s first permanent home at 49th and Broadway. In 1951, despite those who doubted such an ambitious move could succeed, the Club opened the doors of our present home on Claremont Avenue. More than seven decades later, we still walk through those doors and continue what those first members began.

That is what struck me most as we celebrated our 106th anniversary. We were not simply recognizing the age of a building or the longevity of an organization. We were honoring 106 years of people choosing to come together. Generation after generation has cooked the meals, set the tables, volunteered, served on committees, welcomed new members, raised families, told stories, argued a little, laughed a lot, and kept this place alive.

And that, to me, is Italian heritage. It is not something preserved behind glass or remembered only during the month of October. It is something we practice. It is the table we make room around. It is the friend we greet when he walks through the door. It is the recipe handed down without ever having been written. It is the stories we tell about those who came before us. It is our willingness to make sure the next generation knows that this place - and this heritage - belongs to them too.

Today, the Colombo Club is home to roughly 1,000 members. We are different from the twenty-two men who gathered in that Oakland basement in 1920, and yet the heart of what they created remains remarkably familiar: food, friendship, family, tradition, and a place to belong.

So this Italian Heritage Month, especially on the heels of our anniversary celebration, I hope we do more than simply say we are proud to be Italian American. I hope we honor that heritage by living it - by sharing our stories, speaking a little more Italian when we can, welcoming someone new to our table, teaching our children and grandchildren where they came from, and caring for this Club so that generations we will never meet can one day celebrate here as we do today.

One hundred and six years ago, a small group of immigrants gathered because they did not want to lose the connection to one another or to the country they had left behind. What they began has become our inheritance. What happens to it next is our responsibility.

This month, let us raise a glass to them - to the past that made us, the heritage that connects us, the friendships that sustain us, and the generations still to come.

Ci Vediamo,

Joseph A. Ianora

President, The Colombo Club of Oakland