~~The Tuscarawas County Italian-American Festival~~
The Tuscarawas County Italian-American Festival was a fantastic small scale festival (founded in 1989) taking place in Downtown Dover that celebrated the Italian culture within the local community. The festival itself consisted of a stage where musical performances took place, food vendors, games, and more. The performances of the Dominic Greco band (run by former high school band director Frederick Delphia) was one of the festival's most popular attractions. It was quite a small festival that was locally funded however, for the two decades that the festival ran it was an event that many local people enjoyed and took pride in.
Many people in this community come from Italian descent so the whole purpose of this festival was to celebrate that culture through things like italian music, italian food (strombolis are my favorite!) and more! One of the founders of this festival, Bob Mueller of Dover, is of Italian descent himself and has expressed on numerous occasions how thankful he has felt throughout the years to have had such a good run with the festival. Though the festival came to an end in 2015 due to insufficient funds, Mueller and the rest of the community remain thankful to have been able to enjoy it while we could.
I feel that this festival is still important to talk about though it no longer exists because it is my hope that one day maybe it will return, or perhaps we can have a Guatemalan-American festival some day to appreciate the Guatemalan culture that is so prevalent in our community just like we did with Italian culture! I feel it is so important to appreciate our history and to know where we come from. There are so many cultures in this community (particularly German, Italian, and Guatemalan I've noticed) and it would be wonderful to give each culture the amount of appreciation we gave for the Italian culture through the Italian-American Festival.
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