Sons of Italy - Joe Turco Interview

For Nebraska ETV Producer Joe Turco, there are only a couple of groups of people left in the world that you can safely ridicule, insult or make jokes about without fear of repercussions: One of those, according to Joe, is Italians.

Joe is Italian and he has strong feelings about the stereotypes that persist in popular culture today. For starters, he takes issue with the way commercial media portrays Italian-Americans -- "often not as families, but as crime families."

Joe is Italian and he has strong feelings about the stereotypes that persist in popular culture today. For starters, he takes issue with the way commercial media portrays Italian-Americans -- "often not as families, but as crime families."

Joe says the prevalence of these negative images makes it all the more difficult to erase such stereotypes. Recently, while driving his young son home from school, Joe heard a radio commercial on his son's favorite station that astonished him. "The commercial basically said that 'you can't buy Playstation II (a video game for kids) unless you have an Italian in your family that can steal one for you.' They actually said that -- as if it were a joke -- not even thinking that such a thing would offend someone."

Joe points out that the family is the centerpoint of the Italian culture. "People hear 'la familia' and they automatically think of one thing. It always refers to the Mafia, but that is not what it is. The community is your family."

Joe grew up in Omaha near Tenth and Martha Streets, an area once known as Little Italy. He remembers how the whole neighborhood was, in essence, a family. The community revolved around the traditions of St. Francis Cabrini Church, the Santa Lucia Festival, and, of course, the Sons of Italy.

"Twenty-five or 30 years ago, the Sons of Italy was primarily a club for Italian immigrants who didn't speak English. It was a place for them to sit, talk, read Italian newspapers and speak in the Italian language. When my father's generation was ready to retire, they needed a place to talk, so they all joined the Sons of Italy at the same time."

That large influx of a new generation of Italian-Americans into the Sons of Italy brought new life to the organization. "Somebody would make lunch or breakfast and they thought, 'This was pretty good, maybe somebody might like this!' So they decided to start doing a Thursday luncheon."

From the very beginning, the menu has been the same: spaghetti or mostacciolli, with either sausage or meatballs. It started as a local dinner, mostly catering to people in the community. But it continued to grow, and now it enjoys a near cult status. It's a tradition for many in Omaha, and surrounding communities, to go to the Sons of Italy dinner on Thursday afternoons. You can almost always share a table with a fireman, a police officer, or a politician on any given Thursday.

But today, there is a growing gap in the age of members and volunteers in the Sons of Italy. Most of the original group of men that began the Thursday spaghetti tradition are gone. And young people aren't as involved in the organization as they once were.

"It's difficult to get people younger people involved in the Sons of Italy because they don't have the connection like I did," says Joe. "Growing up in that neighborhood was like growing up in a little town. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody knew what everybody was up to so they took care of their kids, their grandparents."

Joe's older brother, Butch Junior, thirteen years his senior, is current president of the Sons of Italy. "It is really his generation that's in charge of the club, and they're trying to recruit younger people. But that's really the toughest part. Now all of these people have moved further west, so their connection to this part of town isn't the same."

One might conclude young people don't need the organization the way past generations have. But Joe disagrees. "I think people probably need it more than ever."

"I went to the hall a week ago and one of my parents' friends, an older woman, came over to greet me. I shook her hand because I hadn't seen her for a long time and she grabbed me and hugged me and said 'Joey don't you understand? I may never see you again.' It's that kind of thing -- it's not your immediate family. The family is much broader than that. It's all of the people who were associated with your family -- who remain part of your family forever. And that's the one thing that I know." -- Joe Turco

Joe didn't always feel that way. With age, he has developed a stronger connection to his heritage. He says he was a classic case of the younger generation pulling away from the older, more traditional community. "When I graduated from college, the very first thing I wanted to do was to leave the community because I felt smothered by it. I felt that I didn't want everyone to know what I was and what I did. I didn't want to be 'Joe, Jr.' I wanted to make it on my own. And now, as I get older, I find that what I want more than anything is to go back there, because that was a really good place to be."