BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Bloomfield UNICO, the Italian community-service organization, held its 21st annual Columbus Day observance Monday morning, Oct. 10. The event took place on the Green, at the sculptured relief of Christopher Columbus. An award ceremony was held for fourth-grade essayists followed by a pancake breakfast in the Civic Center.
The Columbus Day ceremony is probably the smallest holiday celebration in the township outside of an Earth Day tree planting. But if intimacy matters, it is perhaps the best public event Bloomfield has to offer. Everyone who had to be there — the children and parents — was there. With schools closed for the holiday, all elementary school principals and a handful of teachers attended. And with the event taking place on the spacious Green, in an area the size of a small backyard, there was a sense of enclosure that generated a feeling of physical connection between people. Traffic, on the typically quiet Broad Street, was handled by the Bloomfield Police Department.
The only thing missing this year, however, was the longtime master of ceremonies for the event, UNICO member Paul Alongi. Alongi regularly has used the holiday podium as an opportunity to express the need for continued recognition of Columbus. His place was taken by Tom Pelaia, the former Bloomfield Fire Department fire official. Pelaia told the audience of 50 that Alongi was in Sicily. But Pelaia remembered Alongi’s message.
“Mr. Columbus was Italian,” Pelaia said. “UNICO is in the forefront of keeping Columbus Day. Remember your heritage. In the future, people will be looking to you.”
Pelaia introduced the principals and the media specialist from Demarest Elementary School, Rosemary Petrano. He acknowledged Petrano for coordinating the essay contest which traditionally extols the qualities of character Columbus must have possessed to risk his life to discover the New World. Mayor Michael Venezia was introduced and he congratulated the essay-contest winners. Second Ward Councilman Nicholas Joanow and Thomas Atkinson, the Bloomfield High School director of systems and technology, attended the event.
“We had an essay contest,” Pelaia said. “In front of me is everyone who will be recognized.”
The winning essayist, he said, would receive a check for $125, and a second $125 check for the Home and School Association of their school. The winning essay was by Thomas Haverick of Franklin Elementary School.
Similarly, the second-place winner, Gabriel P. del Flerro, of Demarest Elementary, received two $75 checks. The third-place winner, Teresa Nole, of Oak View Elementary, received two $50 checks. There were 10 honorable mentions. Each student received a Columbus Day essay plaque engraved with their name.
Pelaia said when he was the Bloomfield fire official, the BFD had a contest, too. “I told the students to remember what they wrote,” he said. “You just didn’t get a prize. If you wrote about Christopher Columbus, he set out to discover that the world was round and not square.”
Pelaia told the students that they would not be discovering any new continents like Columbus did, but they should remember the significance of what they wrote: the importance of having a goal and pursuing it, like Christopher Columbus.
Then it was time for pancakes.
Those receiving honorable mentions were: Ryan Davila, Franklin Elementary; Natasha Valdez, Carteret Elementary; Carly Kaminski, Fairview Elementary; Madelyn McLaughlin, Brookdale Elementary; Olivia Langton, Oak View; Matteo Camacho, Berkeley Elementary; Julian Mullett, Watsessing Elementary; Aidan Heaney, Fairview Elementary; Samantha Moya, Berkeley Elementary; and Windel Manalansan, Brookdale Elementary.
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