Exhibit celebrates Norwich's Italian heritage

NORWICH – Norwich’s Italian heritage is a bridge to the past that’s important for many reasons, say organizers of an exhibit on Sicilian immigration that opened Monday in Norwich.

“Sicilian Crossings and the Derived Communities,” created through the Sicilian government and the University of Messina, will be on display from 1 to 8 p.m. starting today until May 22 in the Monsignor Guy Festa Parish Center, located next to St. Bartholomew’s Church on East Main Street in Norwich.

Many of Norwich’s Italian immigrants came from Lipari, one of seven islands in what’s known as the Aeolian Island chain, located off the coast of Sicily. “Crossings” tells their story, and the stories of thousands of Sicilian immigrants who left in a mass migration to the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“The exhibit is meant to reinforce the relationship between the Sicilian communities there and in the United States,” said Marcello Saija, a professor at the University of Messina (Sicily) who helped create the exhibit, funded by the Sicilian government. “The best way to reinforce this relationship is to discover the roots of emigration of the Sicilian communities.”

Many Sicilian and Aeolian immigrants relocated to New York state, forming communities in New York City, Norwich, Oswego and Rochester. Locally, many worked in the stone quarry on West Hill or in the Ontario and Western Railroad yards where Norwich High School sits today.

They also landed in cities like Newark, New Orleans and San Francisco.

The exhibit consists of 120 two-by-five-foot panels depicting the struggles that led Sicilian and Aeolian immigrants to leave home, the challenges they faced in making the voyage, and the lives they created once in America.

“The people that came in the 1920s – they were looking for a better life,” said Frank Speziale, who came to Norwich later in the 1950s from Lipari. “They brought their love and their lives to this community.”

Norwich is the exhibit’s last stop in the United States. From here, it will travel to Milan, Rome and Palermo. It has already been displayed at Ellis Island, the Boston Public Library, Stonybrook College in Long Island, St. Thomas University in Miami and in Newark, New Jersey.

“Crossings” also highlights the importance of what Saija calls “mutual aid” societies, groups or brotherhoods that helped immigrants retain their culture and look out for one and other as they adjusted to life in a far off place.