As many who know me know, I’m of Italian descent. My grandparents came from Italy, and we grew up in an Italian American home, with many Italian delicacies on our table, and many of the Italian influenced celebrations of holidays/feast days, but our family, like many of my schoolmates’ families, were proud to be Americans, just as much as being Italian.

Many of my friends’, also of Italian descent, fathers served this country in one of the armed forces, and were proud to have done so. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, were celebrated patriotically and proudly, as were all the holiday/feast days of our Italian and American heritages, so we weren’t just Italians living in America, we were raised as true Italian Americans.