It only took seconds before two people at Table #15 said, “How’s your son, Giordano, who we met in Oak Park’s Ciceroni.” Ciceroni is an Italian language support group that used to meet at Mancini’s Restaurant on Lake Street. Now it meets at Casa Italia cultural center in Stone Park.
Vincenzo DiVito, a jovial gentleman who hails from the Bari region, was the first to greet me. Maria DiMarco, the scholarly leader of Ciceroni, whom I believe comes from Rome, was the second. She teaches Italian at Triton where I’ve had four classes. She’s the reason I showed up.
“Most of us are either Ciceroni or volunteers at Casa Italia,” Maria said.
One charming lady, Jeanette Vierman, was both. “I visited Ciceroni in Oak Park quite a few times to practice my Italian with different levels of speakers,” she said. “I hold a master’s in Italian from Rutgers but I needed to have conversational Italian, not academic.”
She later introduced me to Sicilian American Cultural Association (SACA) president Sam Cannizzaro and honoree Josette Mentesana Weber, a retired educator who created an Italian curriculum in Chicago Public Schools decades ago. Two others received awards, Dominic Candeloro and Paul Ciminello, a couple prominent Italian Americans who also seemed to enjoy their delicious five-course Mediterranean meal.
We were all part of an elegant room at Monastero’s Ristorante & Banquets at Devon and Pulaski for SACA’s 2014 Medial of Merit Brunch where the Sicilian flag in red and yellow is hung behind the speaker’s podium. The flag symbolizes Sicily’s three corners. SACA honors professional leaders in the very diverse Sicilian/Italian community — a group much-maligned sometimes by media folks like me and occasionally by members of their own community. This organization heralds prominent Italians, many of whom come from the colorful southern region — Sicily.
In full disclosure, my Italian is not very good. What little I know is Tuscan dialect, though once I get conversational like my fluent son, Jordan, whom they affectionately call “Giordano,” I plan on learning the Greek and Arabic-inflected Sicilian dialect that at one time was the standard.
Now Tuscan Italian is the standard. And since pride in anything Italian often peaks around Columbus Day, “positive attention to Italian citizens goes a long way toward bridging understanding,” Jeanette explained to me as she made me commit to visit Casa Italia in November to practice my language skills.
Happy Columbus Day.