Great job!
The streets of Uniontown came alive this past weekend, as the Italian Heritage Festival brought crowds downtown for fantastic food and frivolity.
It was great to see such large crowds — and to hear the sounds of music reverberating throughout town and the wonderful smells wafting from block to block. Event organizers said this year’s festival was rivaled by none other in the festival’s history, attracting people from all over.
Kudos must be given to the nine-person committee, headed by chairman Terry Cellurale. They all had to put in a ton of work, but safe to say it was well worth every minute.The event is really catching fire, with larger crowds than ever in the past two years especially. It was estimated that 70,000 people attended the festival this year.
And as a testament to their commitment — and the amount of effort that goes into the annual event — the committee met this week to begin planning the 2012 Italian Heritage Festival.
“A lot of work goes into planning and preparing for this,” said committee member Joe Careigh, “This is by far the largest event in Fayette County.”
We see many factors in the festival’s success, including the emphasis on the local and the tireless commitment to ensuring that each subsequent event is better than the previous. The amount of activities on hand each year — from bands and fireworks to the outdoor Mass — never ceases to amaze.
And the food — the food is incredible. Lines at food vendor booths offering everything from canolis to gnocchi and lines for specialty food items like “zuppa shooters” and “Giuseppe sandwiches” were steady all weekend. It’s not hard to “be an Italian for a day” when the menu is so appetizing.
And if you felt like there were more options than ever before, your eyes weren’t deceiving you. The event this year had over 125 vendors, up from 78 last year. There were also, you might have noticed, five bars set up this year instead of last year’s two.
All in all, it was an incredible weekend for the community, made especially notable because of the amount of local effort that goes into it every year. The Italian Heritage Festival is truly becoming a staple of Fayette County.