In 1920, a group of men meeting in downtown Canton founded the National Football League. What’s more American than that? In that same year, the number of Italian immigrants living in Northeast Ohio exploded. Some 60,000 Italians called this most American of states home, including my Grandma and Grandpa Costello. And the Recchios on my mother’s side.
I am Italian as far back as the “proverbial they” can trace. And I was raised to be proud of it. I grew up dancing the tarantella and doing the hustle, fearing the malocchio and the monster under my bed, playing the morra and diving for baseballs, and arguing for no good reason at all.
As Grandma Costello always told us, “Never forget where you came from.” She insisted on that, even though only two of her nine children and dozens of grandchildren were born in Italy. Didn’t matter. That’s how she felt, and that’s how we felt.
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