Photo by ELIZABETH A. MUNDSCHENK New Hartford native, Luigi Cizza. Cizza's mother was U.S.-born and his father came to the United States from southern Italy in the early 1900s

'What a beautiful language'

By KATE STEVENSON
Observer-Dispatch

As a child, New Hartford resident Luigi Cizza was wary of speaking his native Italian.

It wasn't that he didn't have the language skills — Cizza, an East Utica native, grew up in a duplex with the other half occupied by nine Italian-speaking aunts and uncles.

His mother was U.S.-born and his father came to the United States from southern Italy in the early 1900s for the same reason so many other immigrants did: to get a piece of the American Dream.

But because of the social climate of the 1930s, immigrants were viewed as outsiders, and those caught speaking their mother tongue in public were looked down upon.

As Cizza grew older, however, he began to embrace his culture.

Like many Italian Catholics, he went to a parochial school — St. Mary of Mount Carmel — and spent a lot of time in the church there, where the priests preached in Italian.

"Sitting there in church and listening to them, I thought, 'My God, what a beautiful language,'"says Cizza, 83.

Since then, the language has been an integral part of his life.

He started studying Italian in school, and now jockeys "Ricordi Italiani," an Italian language radio program, with his wife, Dolores, from a small room in the back of their Cherrywood Boulevard home. The show airs Sundays at 10 a.m. on WRNY 1350, WADR 1480 and WUTQ 1550 AM radio stations.

The ages of the listeners of the popular music program vary, the Cizzas say.

"I never dreamed about young people listening to the program, but our grandson said his friends listen to it," Dolores Cizza says with a laugh. "I said, 'Your friends?' He said they have to when they're over at their grandparents' house eating dinner."