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Croatians celebrate heritage
YOUNGSTOWN
The food was undeniably the biggest attraction Saturday at the St. George Croatian Home on Vestal Road.
The place was packed. Just about every chair at every table was filled as people tasted the old recipes they likely first tasted in their mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen.
Chicken paprikash with dumplings. Kielbasa. Pigs in a blanket. Cevapcici, or ground-meat grilled sausage. The soups — homemade chicken noodle, or grah i zelje, which is bean, sauerkraut and ham.
Pork-schnitzel sandwiches, paired with Croatian potato salad or slaw — vinegar and oil on that, no mayonnaise.
And then there are the sweets. Palacinka, which are blintzes or crepes filled with marmalade, jellies or cheese. Kolachi. Cheese gibanica, or pan strudel. Nut kiffles, those little boomerang-shaped nutrolls. They tasted better than — well, sorry Mom.
Ron Ples rattled off the menu, even spelling “grah i zelje” off the top of his head without blinking. Renee Ples, his sister, warmed, filled and rolled palacinka while he talked.
He is the “historian” who knows all things Croatian, she said.
She is the one responsible for starting Croatian Pride Day seven years ago, he said.
“We wanted to have a celebration where we would feature everything Croatian,” he said. “Food, music, handcrafted items. It’s one day.”
In the corner of the room, Veseli, a professional Tamburitza band from the Brookfield-Sharon, Pa., area was playing the tambura — a group of stringed instruments that sound like a mandolin.
Vendors included Milka Juzbosich of Youngstown, selling her homemade egg noodles; Darlene Marks, owner of Dar Lane Gifts; Castlebrooke Wines, owned by Tony Butala of the singing group The Lettermen; and the Happy Hearts Jr. Tamburitzans, who were selling fruit-filled strudel.
Marks, who sells her own hand-painted glassware along with food items from Croatia such as chocolates, cookies, dip mixes and cooking mixes, said she also vends at the Simply Slavic festival in Youngstown.
“But this is my home,” she said of Croatian Pride Day.
“The club’s been here a long time and has persevered though they are losing members,” she said.
The Jr. Tammies, as she called them, learn the songs and dances and how to make the strudel. They even visit Croatia, she said, and she is glad to see that level of involvement for kids.
Hanna Marsh, 11, of Austintown, who was helping sell the strudel for the Jr. Tamburitzans, has been in the group since she was 5.
Two older brothers preceded her — Kody, 13, and Kyle, 18, she said — and they have been to Croatia.
She has not been there yet. But she has been to Chicago, Niagara Falls and Florida on trips with the group. There, they met up with other groups of Tamburitzans to dance and play music.
“It’s really a good group to get in to,” said her grandmother, Kay Susany of Youngstown, who went to Croatia with Hanna’s brothers. “It was beautiful,” she said.
St. George Croatian Home draws members from what has been considered the seventh-largest Croatian settlement in the country — the Youngstown-Sharon, Pa., area, said Ron Ples.
“We’re one of the largest lodges of the Croatian Fraternal Union in the U.S. and Canada,” he said, with 1,000 fraternal members and 800 social members.
To become a fraternal member, one must purchase a life-insurance policy, he said. A social membership costs $25 a year.