Brier Hill Fest
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
The Brier Hill Italian Fest will return this week with four straight days of music, food, dancing, bocce and morra tournaments, a wine contest and a hot pepper contest.
The event, which begins Thursday, sprawls over a few blocks at the intersection of Calvin and Victoria streets in the Brier Hill neighborhood of the North Side.
The hillside neighborhood was once the home of the city’s Italian population.
Hours are 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday and Friday and noon to midnight Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free.
This year’s fest will honor Claire and John Maluso, who have each devoted countless hours to organizing the festival.
Accepting a proclamation on the Malusos’ behalf will be their daughter, Mary Jo Maluso.
Claire and John, who married in August 1950, have been actively involved in many civic and local events and charitable organizations over the years.
Claire served as Federal Plaza director for the city of Youngstown and on the staff of two congressmen. John’s 35-year career in the Youngstown school system included time as a principal and, after his retirement, as a Board of Education member.
The Malusos have been involved with the Brier Hill Italian Fest since its inception 25 years ago.
In fact, the event was conceived by Dominic “Dee Dee” Modarelli, Joey Naples, Neil Buzzacco and Claire, with the intent to create a traditional Italian street festival that would bring back the traditions of that neighborhood.
The Malusos have served on the festival committee since its inception.
The Brier Hill Italian Fest also names a man of the year, and this year, it is Aniello “Neil” Buzzacco, who was born in the neighborhood on Dec. 14, 1932.
Buzzacco was the youngest of four boys: Jimmy and Sam, who were born in Italy, and Dominic, who was born in the United States. Neil’s parents, Rafael and Angelina, came to the United States from Bagnoli Irpino, Italy, and settled in Brier Hill, where Rafael took a job as a track foreman at Youngstown Sheet and Tube while Angelina stayed home to raise their children.
As a boy, Buzzacco had a paper route that included the streets that now host the Brier Hill Fest.
Buzzacco, who attended The Rayen School, worked at Youngstown Towel Supply, Goldberg’s grocery store and as a welder at U.S. Steel in McDonald. In 1953, he was drafted by the Army and spent two years in Germany. He returned in 1955 and married Anna Mae Marenkovic, from the Lansingville neighborhood on the South Side. They raised their six children on the West Side, while Neil worked 30 years as a carpenter for the Youngstown City Schools before retiring in 1994. He also started Buzzacco Builders with his brother, Dominic, building homes in the area. The company is still in business.
Buzzacco still remembers the day, more than 25 years ago, when his old neighborhood friend, Dee Dee Modarelli, called him up with an idea for a festival in Brier Hill. He immediately began helping to plan and organize that first Brier Hill Fest, beginning a Youngstown tradition.
The Brier Hill Fest is unique, said Buzzacco, because it’s like a big block party, where old friends can reunite. He loves seeing so many people exchanging hugs and smiles on the old neighborhood streets.
One of his favorite memories comes from the very first Brier Hill Fest, when he and the other organizers, serenaded by the Lowellville Italian Band, marched up the hill from the festival grounds to St. Anthony’s Church on Sunday morning. He can still remember seeing tears in the eyes of the crowd, as they thought back to the old St. Rocco’s Festivals, when the community would parade through the streets holding up a statue of the Italian saint.