March ROAR - Arlington Sons of Italy

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
At this month’s meeting – Tuesday, March 17 – we will conduct our annual election of officers.
The nominating committee will present a slate of officers, further nominations may be made from
the floor, and an election will be held.
If you are interested in becoming an officer, please contact the nominating committee, or me, or
simply show up at the meeting. Your participation is genuinely invited. This is an opportunity to
become involved. The Lodge needs your help, your ideas and your involvement. Show up – speak
up – vote, and after the meeting enjoy Brother Pat Oppedisano’s fabulous monthly collation spread.
MONTHLY MEETING on the third Tuesday of the month. Our next meeting will be
held in the Lodge Hall Tuesday March, 17, 2015 at 7:30 PM.
THE ROAR IS AVAILABLE ONLINE @
http://arlingtonsonsofitaly.com/members-info
HEALTH AND WELFARE OF THE LODGE-
NEW HOURS FOR THE MEMBERSHIP LOUNGE:
1st, 3rd + 4th Thursday of every month
5-Close.
Per Favore! Let us know.
If you know of a milestone birthday, anniversary, special event, sickness or death of a member, or his family, please
notify any member of the committee.
Thomas Caccavaro 781-643-4974
Richard Arena 781-953-2220
We need your help!
If you have any suggestions or if there is any news or information that you would like to have printed in the Roar,
Please contact Richard Arena at 781-953-2220 or at [email protected]. Thanks to those who have previously
submitted articles and information.
Scholarship Donors Needed!
If you’re interested in donating to help promote the academic pursuits of our members and their families, please send
checks payable to the Arlington Sons of Italy Scholarship Trust and send to ALOSIA c/o Scholarship Chairman, 19
Prentiss Rd, Arlington, MA 02476
Scholarship Applications Available
Awarded to those who exhibit extenuating financial circumstances
Two Scholarships will be available:
1. One given to a child of a Lodge member in good standing and if one is not eligible, it may
go to a grandchild of a current member.
2. AHS Senior who is an Italian-American.
Applications are available @ the AHS Guidance office + by email [email protected].
Scholarship Honor Roll The following people have donated in the memory of Josephine Beninati:Dennis + Alexandra
Gibson, Michelle + James Paszko, Katherine + Stephen Urquhart, Cynthia Gibbons
The majority of our donations are made in memory of a loved one. Through the generosity of
our members and their families and friends, we were able to award three scholarships this
spring.
The Culture Corner!
North End History: The Irish Influx
North End History by Guild Nichols
PART 3: THE IRISH INFLUX 1840-1870
The Irish have been part of Boston – in small numbers to be sure – from the very outset of the American
Revolution. Patrick Carr of Ireland was one of the five men shot by British soldiers on the evening of
March 5, 1770 in what has come to be known as the Boston Massacre. And General George Washington
even used the password “St. Patrick” as a secret code for his Colonial troops on Evacuation Day, March
17, 1776, when the British Militia “evacuated” Boston.
Yet, the fact remains that over the 40-year period, from 1815 to 1855, over 1 million Irish
emigrated to America. Boston was a major destination, the North End neighborhood its poor
haven.
In an almost arithmetic progression: 2000 Irish were living in Boston in 1820, 5000 in 1825,
7000 in 1830, and between 1846 and 1855, 37,000 more Irish had fled Ireland for Boston. In
1847 alone 13,235 Irish emigrated to Boston. This was the year known as “Black 47″ and was
the most deadly year of Ireland’s Great Potato Famine or, as it was called in Gaelic, An Górta
Mor or “The Great Hunger.”
Arriving in Boston, many Irish immigrants initially settled in the North End and along its waterfront –
impoverished and in despair. Disease became so endemic to the overcrowded neighborhood that by
1845 the neighborhood suffered a communicable disease rate twice that of the rest of Boston. “Children
in the Irish district [North End],” wrote Bostonian Lemuel Shattuck, “seemed literally born to die.”
By 1850, the Irish comprised over half of the North End population of 23,000 and five years
later 14,000 of the 26,000 North Enders were Irish born. Families were packed together in
one-room decrepit apartments and run-down boarding houses – all in a neighborhood
comprising less than 70 acres traditionally used for housing (the remaining 30 acres
comprised waterfront warehouses and wharves).
Moreover, as Thomas H. O’Connor has written: “Native Bostonians might have been willing to
send money and food to aid the starving Irish as long as they remained in Ireland, but they
certainly didn’t want them coming to America.” Thus began the long saga of incessant
suffering and discrimination.
Unlike the subsequent waves of immigrants that followed over the next half-century – the
Portuguese, European Jews and the Italians – the Irish had neither the resources nor the
competitive skills to adjust easily. Employment opportunities were limited and anti-Irish job
discrimination was rampant: “No Irish Need Apply” signs seemed to be everywhere. The Irish
were forced to take only the lowliest, most menial jobs – as domestics, laborers and unskilled
factory workers. And most of these jobs were outside the North End. Much of the work force
employed for Boston’s land reclamation projects, such as the filling in of the City’s Back Bay,
were Irish laborers from the North End. They also helped build Boston’s transit system and the
bridges and highways to the suburbs.
It was the American Civil War (1861-65) that provided an opportunity for the Irish to
demonstrate
their national loyalty and in so doing help Boston’s
Brahmins to temper their “Nativist” sentiments. Over 10,000 Irishmen from Massachusetts
served in the seven Irish regiments, including Col. Thomas Cass’s “Fighting Ninth” 9th
regiment that distinguished itself at the Battle of Malvern Hill.
What is perhaps most telling, however, is how the sheer number of Irish immigrants to Boston
came to re-shape electoral politics in the city and hence, over time, the socio-economic
conditions of Irish men and women at the dawn of the 20th century. By 1880, more than
70,000 Irish lived in Boston. A decade later, Boston had become the only city in the United
States (with populations in excess of 200,000) where the Irish represented more than half of
the foreign-born population.
Efforts redoubled to organize these newly-arrived Irish voters as a new and potent force for
political change.
In 1882, Patrick Collins became the first Irish-born Congressman from Boston. Two years later
Hugh O’Brien was elected the City’s first Irish Catholic Mayor. He was succeeded in turn by
Collins in 1902. And, John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, who lived on Moon Street in the North
End, became the first American-born Irish Mayor in United States history in 1906. He was also
the first Boston mayor without a beard or mustache. His daughter, Rose, who later married
Joseph P. Kennedy, was born in 1890 at 4 Garden Court just off North Square.
With the election of David Ignatius Walsh as the first Irish Catholic Governor of Massachusetts
in 1914 and James Michael Curley’s mayoral victory in the same year, there began a
succession of Irish-American mayors that would span the next three decades to 1993, when
Thomas M. Menino would become Boston’s first Italian-American mayor.
Yet despite these political developments, the North End remained relatively isolated and
certainly impoverished. The Irish immigrant population that had peaked in the late 1870s
began a swift decline as European Jews and Italians moved in. By the turn of the century, the
Irish population had dwindled to less than 3,000 (from a high of over 14,000 just two decades
earlier). South Boston replaced both the North End as the area of the majority of Irish
settlement.
Nichols, Guild, “North End History –The Italians”. North End Boston.Com . Web 9 Jan 2015.
http://www.northendboston.com/north-end-history-volume-3/.
Be Proud Of Your Italian Heritage!!
Radio Italiano!
Program
Station
Time
Boston Radio Italiana
740 AM – WJIB
Sat 10am - 2pm
Sun 2 - 6pm
Don Giovanni's Italian
House Party
950 AM WROL
Sat 6 am-9 am
Sun 5pm-7pm
Italian Culture Program 890 AM – WBPS Sun 9 am – 11 am
Mattinata Musicale
1330 AM –
WRCA
Sat 10 – 11 am
Grand Lodge News:
(www.osiama.org)
NEW MEMBERS ARE ELIGIBLE FOR A THREE YEAR $500 LIFE INSURANCE POLICY FOR A ONE TIME COST OF $5.
Contact the Benefit Insurance Commission @ 617-489-0196.
Want to contact the Grand Lodge?
Address: Grand Lodge: 93 Concord Ave, Belmont MA 02478
Phone: 617-489-5234
Fax: 617-489-5371
Web site: www.osiama.org
Email:[email protected]