Cristoforo Colombo Lodge #1534

Our Lodge hopes you all had a wonderful summer and are looking forward to Fall. 

In April we had our member, MargareSpano’s brother, Joe Lanza, as our speaker at our dinner meeting. His is a restauranteur and businessman and spoke about his family and his restaurants in Nevada and California. His restaurant, Lanza’s, in Tahoe City is one of the most popular in the Tahoe area. Our chef, Antonio Ricci, and his crew, Hugh Ricci, Frank Picone, and Alexandra Cleary continue to make us delicious meals for our meetings. We continue to have between 40 and 60 people attend our monthly dinner meetings. Although at one of our meetings we had 88 people!!

May was our very, very, successful Festa Primavera at the Elks in Reno. It’s our one big fundraiser for our scholarships and charities. Our members really came through with their organization, hard work, and donations. We had over 300 people in attendance and our raffle and silent auction were a huge success. Sam Olson was our auctioneer, and he was amazing. One of our local TV news celebrities, Jeff Martinez, attended this event and reported about our lodge the next morning! Also, in May we were blessed to have the Artist Co-op in Reno host a fundraiser for our lodge. They donated 20% of all their sales for the month of May to our lodge. They also donated several incredible paintings for our Festa silent 

auction. At our monthly meeting, Madeleine Zunino and Christine Handy were presented with beautiful gifts for their many, many years serving our lodge as Financial Secretary and Treasurer. 

June was our scholarship month. We gave a $3000 scholarship to Jack Monson, a $2500 scholarship to Sophia Patch, and a $1000 vocational scholarship to Cesar Guillen. Jack and Sophia came to our dinner meeting and told us about themselves and their Italian families. As you know, also in June, we hosted the Grand Lodge Convention at the Silver Legacy in Reno. It was very well attended, and the food was fabulous, the events were great and the meetings informative. We want to wish congratulations to 

President Arlene Nunziati and her new Grand Council and can’t wait to see what the future holds.

We do not have meetings in July or August, but in August we had our annual picnic. This year it was another very fun day. The weather was beautiful, everyone brought great dishes to share, and our cooks made delicious hots dogs, Italian sausages, and peppers and onions. The little kids and “big” kids had a blast with the water balloons and with the two big water guns brought by one of the attendees. 

In September we will initiate our new members; we have several. October is the Great Italian Festival at the El Dorado. Our lodge will have a booth on Saturday, October 7. If you are in town, please 

come see us. Also, at the Italian Festival in October, the County Board of Commissioners will be presenting Dawn Romero with a proclamation that October is Italian Heritage month in Washoe County for 2023.

Thank you for reading about our Lodge. Stay involved, get out there, have fun, live your life, because CHI DORME NON PIGLIA PESCI (You snooze, you lose). 

Please visit our Face book page at Reno Sons of Italy and our website for more information: www.renosonsofitaly.org. Learn more about our Lodge, your Italian heritage and upcoming events.