For much of its nearly ninety-year existence, the faces of the St. Mary of Carmen Society have been male — men in blue short-sleeve shirts with red, white, and green sashes and black trousers — organizing the local Children’s Christmas Party, the Memorial Day Parade and most notably, the annual Italian-American festival, Festa.
Both men and women — whose families emigrated to Nonantum from the area in and around San Donato di Comino in Italy — have engaged in serving their community and preserving their traditions as part of Nonantum’s Our Lady Help of Christians Parish. The St. Mary of Carmen Men’s Society has flourished during this time.
In recent years, the St. Mary of Carmen Women’s Society had been inactive, but several fourth-generation millennial women decided to revive it. They wanted to contribute to the community as their predecessors had. Arrianna Proia, 23, the president of the new Women’s Society, explained that the women always did much more than people realized. In fact, the Proia sisters’ great grandmother was the last president of the previous Women’s Society. The new group reorganized last year, becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Arrianna’s older sister, Maria, who is 27, is Chair of the new Women’s Society Board, which includes Siobhan Anderson, Alyssa Battista, April Pellegrini, Antonia Bennington, Vanessa Battista, and Rebecca Torcasio. Several board members are fourth-generation members, too. The Women’s Society now has thirty-one regular members and ten to thirteen “junior” members, of whom the youngest is thirteen. Teresa Gentile Sauro, whose family has been marching in the St. Mary of Carmen parade since its founding in 1935, is a third-generation Women’s Society member and the oldest member of the current organization.
Members take a rewritten oath, honoring one another and their traditions. Once having taken the oath, members are considered sisters. They meet on the second Wednesday of every month and are working on goals. Their Executive Board meets with the Men’s Society Executive Board to discuss ways to work together, as they did at this year’s Festival, where the Women’s Society members filled roles previously held by the men. Currently, the Society has been raising money for the John M. Barry Boys and Girls Club and for cancer research.
Arrianna has been actively engaged in the Festival since she was the angel who threw rose petals on the statue of the Madonna returning to Our Lady’s Help of Christians Church. In 2008, angels were hooked up to a wire stretched between two trees and pulled along over the statue. Regrettably. her wire became stuck in mid-air – an accident that made her “the famous angel.”
Explaining that many Nonantum families came from San Donato di Comino, Arrianna said that she had been there twice and still feels connected to it. Our Lady’s was a touchstone for people who come from other parts of Italy, but value their heritage, she said. In fact, people who have moved away from Nonantum return for the Festival and its connections to their traditions.
Teresa Sauro, now in her seventies, said that both her grandmother and her aunt were members of the original Women’s Society. When she was a little girl, she and the other children were expected to decorate the platform bearing the Madonna, and to walk with the Madonna in the procession, a task they loved.
For Arrianna, the new Women’s Society presents an opportunity to pay back all the many ways in which the older organization and the Men’s Society have helped the community.
