Marchegians, Muslims, Ukrainians Turn 250

Andrew Mortali remembered the porchetta. Wasyll Gina remembered the pirogi. Abdul Karim Hasan recalled the bean pie that helped build his mosque.

As Italians, Ukrainians and African-American Muslims celebrated the 100th and 50th anniversaries of their communal organizations this weekend, their thoughts turned to memories of their great foods and the rich cultures they reflect.

They also wondered if the younger generations would carry on the heritage into the future. In at least two cases, food may play a role.

The groups’ three milestone cultural events took place within 24 hours this weekend.

The first occurred on Saturday night. Nearly 500 African-American Muslims gathered at the Holiday Inn in North Haven to hail the pioneers of their 50 years at the Muhammad Islamic Center, originally on Dixwell Avenue and then Carmel Street in New Haven, then on Dixwell Avenue just over the Hamden line.

Sunday, parishioners of St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church on George Street marked the centennial of the community in New Haven.

On the same bright morning across town in Morris Cove, 500 descendants of immigrants to New Haven from the Marche, a province along the Adriatic in Italy, gathered at Anthony’s Ocean View. They held a centennial dinner to celebrate the founding of the Marchegian Society on Cedar Street in 1909.

The groups hailed differing food, ethnic, and religious traditions. They had in common the spirit of self-help and self-sufficiency, and good appetites.

Muhammad Islamic Center
After hearing a speech in Hartford by Malcolm X, the most dynamic preacher they’d ever heard, Abdul Karim Hasan (at right in photo at the top of the story) and his brother Dr. Abdul-Majid Karim Hasan came down to New Haven as ardent Muslim missionaries to establish the area’s first mosque on Dixwell at Goffe. That was in 1959.

The locals did not welcome them.

“Doors were slammed in our face. We were cursed, and spit at, and told we wouldn’t last two weeks,” said Dr. Hasan, the center’s current imam.

The naysayers were wrong. His brother cited two turning points: In the mid-1970s, the nationalist themes of the Nation of Islam were officially supplanted by a mainstream and universalistic traditional Islamic message. The Hasans and their congregation followed Warith Dean Muhammad, who abandoned some of the teachings of the Nation and formed a new organization called The American Society of Muslims.

By then the New Haven community had developed self-sufficiency in the form of a bookstore and a bakery. Soon the bakery was producing a secret culinary weapon: Muslim bean pies. From the small stores to the supermarkets, ​“we were selling so many we were able to buy two station wagons,” recalled Abdul Karim Hasan.

With those vehicles they were able to transport kids to the private educational institution that the Islamic center had established, which still functions as the Sister Clara Muhammad School.

The secret of the bean pie that helped build the center? It tasted more like sweet potatoes, said the elder Hasan, who is now the leader of the Bilal Islamic Center in south central Los Angeles.

The congregation here currently has 60 active families, most from New Haven and Hamden. Hasan’s brother remains the leader. Its influence has been widespread, having led to approximately 30 mosques and centers between New Britain and the New York State line.

At the dinner Saturday night, the Muhammad Islamic Center was formally renamed the Abdul-Majid Karim Hasan Islamic Center.

350 Pounds of Potatoes a Month 

The original Ukrainian families who had lived first in Fair Haven and then the Hill have long since dispersed to the suburbs. Many of St. Michael’s Church’s 250 families returned from surrounding towns for Sunday’s centennial of the founding of the church.

Keeping the culture alive these days, especially among young people, is a challenge, according to Mike Lipcan, the general chairman of Sunday’s centennial celebration. The bag of pirogis he is holding just may be a not so secret weapon.

In addition to a weekly school teaching Ukrainian, the congregation hosts a monthly baking of major amounts of pirogis, the iconic potato dish of Ukraine. They’re sold at fundraisers. They also give young cooks a literal taste of the culture.

Wasyll Gina likes pirogis as much as the next fellow. But in advancing Ukrainian culture in New Haven, his specialty was to follow his dad’s footsteps teaching the hopak, the traditional Ukrainian dance, to kids at St. Michael’s, including Lipcan’s children.

Gina, who’s 89 and was born on Oak Street, was particularly proud of having helped to found the Ukrainian Heritage Center at St. Michael’s and in representing his community to the city of New Haven.

Sunday Bishop Paul Chomnycky (pictured at the top of the story with Gina) came up from his post in Stamford to present a pontifical liturgy for the centennial. He said the 25,000 New England and New York Ukrainian Catholics are being augmented by a new fourth wave of immigrants from the now free and religiously resurgent Ukraine.

Marchegians

There’s no similar new wave of new Italian immigrants to augment the thousands who came looking for jobs a century ago. Back then, immigrants from the southern Italy settled in Wooster Square. Those from the Marche gravitated to the Hill.

There in 1909 the latter group founded the Marchegian club on Cedar Street. The majority of the Marchegianni moved to the suburbs in the wake of New Haven’s mid-20th century urban renewal. The club still functions with a popular sportsmen’s dinner once a month, but officials say it needs more people to fill it.

The clubhouse is still full of superb memories for Andrew Mortali (pictured with his son and grandson at the top). His father Giuseppe was one of the signers of the club’s founding document in 1909.

Andrew Mortali, who’s now 95, and his brothers and friends became renowned for cooking 120-pound pigs on a long spit. The dish is known as porchetta when flavored and spiced with the tastes of the Marche region.

In 1950 there were five Marchegian clubs in the state. They sent sons and daughters to Sunday’s dinner, according to Larry Baldelli, the club’s president. Today only the Derby club survives, joining New Haven’s, the oldest Marchegian institution in the country.

Although many return for special events such as the centennial, participation has fallen steeply from its height of more than 1,000 members after World War II. To counter that, successors to Andrew Mortali make a monthly ​“3 P dinner.”

Those P’s would refer to pasatelli, pasticchita, and polenta: namely, pasta with bread crumbs, inexpensive beef round cooked all day, and the traditional corn meal.

That would be in addition to the ​“first P,” the renowned porchetta.

Mortali said he thinks the cooks who have followed in his foot steps are terrific.

While Baldelli said young people were staying involved, Harry DeBenedet (pictured with memorabilia) said it was a challenge. A man in his mid 60s, DeBenedet remembers both Mortali’s porchetta and pleasurable hours working as a pin boy in the club’s three basement bowling alleys. They since been converted to bocce courts.

“We’re trying to get our sons and daughters involved, but it’s a challenge,” he said. ​“There are other interests and less emphasis on unity of their heritage because there’s less necessity.”