Brier Hill Italian Fest returns this week

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Brier Hill Italian Fest will return this week for its 23rd anniversary year.

Brier Hill was once the city’s most-iconic Italian neighborhood, the unique street festival captures the spirit of life there in bygone days. It’s centered at Calvin and Victoria streets, the heart of the North Side neighborhood that clings to the hillside between Martin Luther King Boulevard and Belmont Avenue.

Both Calvin and Victoria streets will be closed to traffic for a block in all directions from their intersection. The neighborhood is best accessed from Burlington Street; the festival is just down the hill from St. Anthony’s Church.

As always, there will be plenty of Italian food and table vendors, nearly nonstop live Italian music, games, and morra, hot pepper and wine contests.

The festival runs from Thursday through Sunday. Hours are 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday and Friday and noon to midnight Saturday and Sunday.

At the opening ceremony at 7 p.m. Friday, the two Men of the Year — Carmen Barbone and Rocky Modarelli — will be honored.

Barbone, 89, grew up on Dearborn Street on Brier Hill, where his family lived for 37 years. The son of Louise (Chieffo) and Dominic Barbone, he attended St. Anthony’s Church and Hayes Junior High School.

His father died in an accident when he was 4. Barbone went to work to help his family after finishing junior high because the country was in the Great Depression.

He attended carpentry school, and became a boilermaker, millwright and an electronics and hydraulics technologist. He served overseas in the Army from 1943-46, and married Margaret Beard in 1947. They had two sons — Michael and Carl — and a daughter, Carla. Margaret died in 2009.

Barbone worked for General Fireproofing for 41 years and lives in Liberty in a home that he built. He has been an active member of ITAM Post 12 in Brier Hill for 68 years, and also is active at St. Anthony’s Church and the AARP.

In 1995, he took an 11-day trip to Italy.

Modarelli, 85, was the sixth of Egidio and Caroline Modarelli’s 10 children. The family lived in a small house on Poplar Street on Brier Hill.

Modarelli graduated from Rayen High School and was drafted in the Army in 1951, where he was a sergeant first class for two years. He then worked at Youngstown Steel Door until his retirement in 1989.

Modarelli married Evelyn Murphy in 1956, and the couple lived behind his parents’ house on Poplar Street before moving to a South Side home that his brother DeeDee built. Evelyn is now deceased.

They have a daughter, Roxanne; two grandchildren, Danielle and Kevin; and one great-grandchild, Leo.

Modarelli purchased his first vacation home on Geneva on the Lake in 1971 and the family has spent time every summer at the Lake Erie resort town.

He has been a member of the ITAM Post 12 for more than 40 years, and served as quartermaster. When his brother DeeDee began laying the groundwork for the first Brier Hill Fest, Modarelli served on the committee. He has worked at the festival for the last 22 years.