KAREN HAYMON LONG klong@tampatrib.com
Published: Jul 28,
2002
For those with Sicilian heritage, a trip to the Italian island
becomes a celebration of family.
TAMPA - Vince Pardo felt at home during his first visit to Sicily.
He met relatives there, people who spoke the same ancient Sicilian dialect he learned as a child, who cooked the same pastas and shared his fondness for Italian art and architecture.
"I feel so many connections there, so much camaraderie,'' says Pardo, whose great-grandparents on both sides came from Sicily to settle in Ybor City in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Tampa's ties to Sicily are particularly close, since 90 percent of the Italians who settled here at the turn of the 20th century came from three Sicilian villages close to Agrigento: Alessandria della Rocca, Santo Stefano Quisquina and Cianciana.
Like Pardo, who is president of Ybor City Development Corp., many Sicilian-Americans here have visited their families' homeland and cherish their close connection to it.
Pardo says when he and 60 other Tampa residents recently visited Agrigento and the three villages with Tampa ties, half the group had relatives still living in the area. Some had never met them before that trip.
Pardo, who chairs the Tampa-Agrigento Sister Cities Committee, the trip's sponsor, has family in all three villages, including his grandfather's cousin, Granziella Marchetta, who lives in Alessandria della Rocca.
When he and his late father, who also is named Vincent, visited her, she pulled out a box of letters his grandfather had written to her years ago.
"It's just amazing,'' Pardo says, "I feel so comfortable there. My great-grandfather's house is still FAMILYHOMELAND1 there. It's now home to a theatrical group.''
Pardo, who has been to Sicily five times, says when he visits he notices all sorts of familiar things. Many foods Sicilians eat are the same as what Pardo grew up eating and still eats today. The froscia in Cianciana, made with eggs, cheese, bread crumbs and asparagus, are just like the omelets Pardo's family makes. The pasta, made with red sauce, fennel, sardines and toasted bread crumbs, is like his family's pasta.
Many Sicilians who settled first in Ybor City, then in Davis Islands, Palma Ceia, West Tampa and in other Bay area neighborhoods, planted mango and peach trees when they got here like the ones they grew back home. Some started dairy and produce farms, like Pardo's family did, or opened grocery stores or had produce carts they pushed through Ybor City.
Sicilians Seek Better Life
Sicily's economy was desperately bad in the late 1800s, which prompted many Sicilians to emigrate here to start new, more prosperous lives. After some settled here, more followed, some taking jobs in Ybor City's cigar factories to finance future businesses.
In 1894, they founded L'Unione Italiana, a mutual aid society and social club, still active on Seventh Avenue in Ybor City.
Pardo says he loves to travel to Sicily to see his relatives and the countryside he grew up hearing about. On his recent visit, he and the other Tampa travelers toured the ancient Greek ruins in Agrigento's Valley of the Temples. The ruins were left behind by the Greeks, who colonized Southern Italy and Sicily beginning in the eighth century B.C.
More standing Greek ruins are in Agrigento than in all of Greece, Pardo says.
Sicily's eclectic architecture reflects the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Spanish rulers from its past, he says.
While in Agrigento, the Tampa group toured the city's museum, which contains most of the ancient Greek artifacts that will be displayed at the Tampa Museum of Art from Feb. 2 to April 20. Most of the works have never left Italy.
Agrigento and Tampa have had other cultural ties, thanks in part to the sister cities committee. Dario Danile, chairman of Agrigento's sister city committee, has visited Tampa with his Sicilian folklore dance and musical group, which has performed at the Italian Club's Festa Italiana in Ybor City.
Danile also volunteers to help Tampa residents with Sicilian ties find their relatives in Sicily. The Italian Club of Tampa's Web site - www.italian- club.org/- also features a genealogical section that helps Sicilians research their roots.
Warmth Of Camaraderie
Joe and Dora Caltagirone, whose families both come from the area around Agrigento, first visited there 35 years ago.
The Lutz couple ate dinner at Dora Caltagirone's cousin's house in Alessandria della Rocca, with aunts and uncles and lots of cousins she had never met.
"My cousin lives in the house my mother was born in,'' says Dora Caltagirone, whose family comes from Santo Stefano Quisquina and Alessandria della Rocca. "When my mother was born, animals were in the barn on the first floor and the family lived on two upper floors.''
They've been back to Sicily five times since. Four years ago, they renewed their marriage vows there in celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary.
"We renewed our vows in an 800-year-old church in Agrigento, which sits on the foundation of a Greek temple,'' Joe Caltagirone says.
Sicilians have always made them feel at home, but last year's visit was especially poignant. They were in a little fishing village on Sept. 11.
"People put handmade signs in their shop windows that said, `Your pain is our pain. Your mourning is our mourning. God bless America,' '' Dora Caltagirone recalls.
Close Cousins
Joe Capitano Sr. and his wife, Gilda Ferlita Capitano, have come to love Sicily, especially Santo Stefano Quisquina, where both their families lived before settling in Ybor City.
On their first visit to the little village, they were welcomed by Gilda Capitano's cousins and their families with gifts and wonderful meals.
"One brought a basket of figs. Others, pastries,'' Gilda Capitano says. "They like to promenade. They're proud. `This is my American cousin,' they would tell their neighbors.''
Gilda Capitano's parents were born in the little village she says looks like it is still in the Middle Ages in many ways. Death notices are posted on walls lining the narrow cobblestone streets where shepherds herd sheep and goats.
Yet many villagers are sophisticated college graduates, she says. Her cousins' children are successful professionals who commute from their village to work in Agrigento and Palermo. But they find time to press their own olives and keep bees for honey.
"The people are progressive, but they don't forget the past,'' she says. "They teach their children how to live off the land.''
The Capitanos enjoy the more relaxed lifestyle in Sicily, which still holds to its tradition of midday siestas. And they love the Sicilian value on families, which they share here in Tampa with their own six children and their grandchildren.
"There are no nursery schools in Santo Stefano, no assisted living facilities,'' Gilda Capitano says. "They're unheard-of. The elderly are taken care of by members of their families. So are the children.''
Photos Help In Finding Family
History repeated itself in the Perez family. In 1943, while stationed in Palermo, Ray Perez, an Army engineer from Ybor City, went in search of his mother's relatives in Santo Stefano Quisquina.
He told a man he met in the village, "My mother was born here. I want to see the house where she was born.'' He asked the man if he could help him find his relatives. The man left by mule to go up into the mountains. He came back down with Perez's whole family.
Perez, who went on to become vice president of Florida Power and Light, took pictures that day of the Sicilian family he had just met.
After Ray Perez died in 1974, his nephew, Angelo Perez, another Ybor City native and a history professor at Hillsborough Community College, found those pictures.
On their first visit to Sicily in 1992, Angelo and his wife, Derrie Perez, took those old Browning photos to Santo Stefano Quisquina, hoping to find someone who would recognize his relatives in the photos.
"I was so nervous,'' Perez recalls. "I swear to God, all I had were these four pictures of relatives and three pictures of my uncle.''
They went into a gift shop and showed the clerk the pictures.
"This is Philip,'' the clerk told them. "And this is Josephia. Where did you get these?''
The woman got the long-lost relatives together.
"I met my family,'' Perez says, still moved by the moment. Since then, he has been back so many times to stay with his relatives he has lost count.
"I go every year,'' he says. "I love to go to Sicily.''
While there, he visits the chapel his grandmother's grandfather built on top of a village hill. He goes to see his relatives' prosperous farms. He always stays with family, never in a hotel.
He became particularly close to his father's first cousin, Giuseppe Reina, a history professor, who died last year. They had identical mannerisms and many other things in common besides their profession.
"Americans are all looking for their roots,'' Perez says. "I'm fortunate because I found my roots.''