If your in Renton can you scan real page for me, thanks
http://www.rentonreporter.com/jumpstory.html?story=community1&pubdate=10/20/2007
She\'s looking for her Italian roots
by By Emily Garland
Crystal Smith Ainardi spent a lot of time with her Italian family when she was younger.
“My grandfather would take me around a lot in the Renton area,” the 27-year-old says. “He would take me to peoples’ houses and say, ‘This is your cousin.’ It seemed like everybody was related to us.”
Louis Anarde treated his granddaughter to meals at Vince’s Italian Restaurant for her birthdays and brought her on family trips to the hardware store.
“He’d like to go pick up the extended family and go down to the hardware shop,” Smith Ainardi recalls. “McLendons - that was their thing.”
Smith Ainardi’s large extended family always gathered for holidays.
“On Christmas, Christmas Eve, a lot of people would come over for snacks: Sausage, pepperoni and cheese,” she says.
She grew up on Renton’s Earlington Hill, where her father’s Italian family settled in the early 1900s. Her mother is Irish.
Smith Ainardi’s father used to tell her about picnics Renton’s Italian families enjoyed.
But she says the family gatherings slowed after her grandfather’s 1999 death.
“Since he passed away, nobody has kept in contact,” she says. “My father is not one to keep in contact with people and my grandmother isn’t either. I had to hunt them down myself. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Smith Ainardi is searching for Renton’s Italian families. Specifically, the 20-some families who attended a 1935 picnic in McDonald’s Grove - now thought to be Cedar Grove - on Maple Valley Highway.
Smith Ainardi received a copy of the picnic photo from Silvo Tonda, an Italian man she met through a search on a genealogy Web site. Tonda also has family in Renton. He gave Smith Ainardi some names and phone numbers of people in the photo. A Bellingham man also helped Smith Ainardi with contacts. She has also received help from Sons of Italy and City Council member Randy Corman, who posted a bulletin seeking the photo’s families on his MySpace page.
But the search is far from over.
“So far, I’m ranging around 70 people, and that’s not even half of the people,” she says.
Smith Ainardi has received positive feedback from many families she has found.
“One guy, Mario Tonda, said, ‘Thank you for doing this for us,’” she says.
Smith Ainardi says her father initially thought the reunion idea was crazy.
“He said, ‘You make me feel like I’m not Italian enough,’” she says.
But he changed his mind after she showed him old family photos she had found.
“He was really happy. He said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’”
Some of the Italians Smith Ainardi has contacted share her father’s initial reaction.
“Some people are getting it, and some think I’m nuts,” she says. “That’s fine. I think it’s important to find some secrets and mysteries everyone’s forgot about.”
Smith Ainardi wants to reunite with the families in the photograph she knows and meet the ones she doesn’t.
“I want to know these people,” she says. “I want to share stories with these people and hear stories about growing up in Italian families like I did.
“All these families came in the early 1900s, and I just want to hear about all the things people can remember.”
Smith Ainardi’s great grandparents came to Renton from Mattie, in north Italy, in 1906. Her great-grandfather, a miner, and his wife settled on Earlington Hill, in the south end of the Italian area called Garlic Gulch.
Many Italians immigrated to Renton during that time, and many of these families are in Smith Ainardi’s picnic photo.
There’s the Cuginis, she says, who owned Barbee Mill on Renton’s waterfront and the Cuginis of Cugini Florists and Fine Gifts; the DeLaurentis of the gourmet Pike Place Market shop and the DeLaurentis who owned Renton’s Rollerland; and the Favros, who dotted Renton Hill.
“They’re all Italian, all close friends,” Smith Ainardi says. “A lot of them were related; a lot of them were my family; a lot of them were just really close friends. Somehow everybody was related in those days.”
Like the Ainardis (many have changed the spelling to Anarde or Anardi) most of these families are from north Italy.
Smith Ainardi is hoping the reunion picnic inspires Renton’s Italian families to keep in better contact. She has scheduled the picnic for May in Philip Arnold Park.
Before the picnic, Smith Ainardi will start classes in January at Washington State University. Her intended area of study? History and Italian.
The former professional artist wants to work for the Italian embassy, or something to do with immigration.
“I’m starting a whole new career,” she says. “I would actually like to work with immigration, after learning all this stuff, what people had to go through to get here.”
Emily Garland can be reached at emily.garland@reporternewspapers.com or (425) 255-3484, press 4 then 2.
She\'s looking for her Italian roots
by By Emily Garland
Crystal Smith Ainardi spent a lot of time with her Italian family when she was younger.
“My grandfather would take me around a lot in the Renton area,” the 27-year-old says. “He would take me to peoples’ houses and say, ‘This is your cousin.’ It seemed like everybody was related to us.”
Louis Anarde treated his granddaughter to meals at Vince’s Italian Restaurant for her birthdays and brought her on family trips to the hardware store.
“He’d like to go pick up the extended family and go down to the hardware shop,” Smith Ainardi recalls. “McLendons - that was their thing.”
Smith Ainardi’s large extended family always gathered for holidays.
“On Christmas, Christmas Eve, a lot of people would come over for snacks: Sausage, pepperoni and cheese,” she says.
She grew up on Renton’s Earlington Hill, where her father’s Italian family settled in the early 1900s. Her mother is Irish.
Smith Ainardi’s father used to tell her about picnics Renton’s Italian families enjoyed.
But she says the family gatherings slowed after her grandfather’s 1999 death.
“Since he passed away, nobody has kept in contact,” she says. “My father is not one to keep in contact with people and my grandmother isn’t either. I had to hunt them down myself. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Smith Ainardi is searching for Renton’s Italian families. Specifically, the 20-some families who attended a 1935 picnic in McDonald’s Grove - now thought to be Cedar Grove - on Maple Valley Highway.
Smith Ainardi received a copy of the picnic photo from Silvo Tonda, an Italian man she met through a search on a genealogy Web site. Tonda also has family in Renton. He gave Smith Ainardi some names and phone numbers of people in the photo. A Bellingham man also helped Smith Ainardi with contacts. She has also received help from Sons of Italy and City Council member Randy Corman, who posted a bulletin seeking the photo’s families on his MySpace page.
But the search is far from over.
“So far, I’m ranging around 70 people, and that’s not even half of the people,” she says.
Smith Ainardi has received positive feedback from many families she has found.
“One guy, Mario Tonda, said, ‘Thank you for doing this for us,’” she says.
Smith Ainardi says her father initially thought the reunion idea was crazy.
“He said, ‘You make me feel like I’m not Italian enough,’” she says.
But he changed his mind after she showed him old family photos she had found.
“He was really happy. He said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’”
Some of the Italians Smith Ainardi has contacted share her father’s initial reaction.
“Some people are getting it, and some think I’m nuts,” she says. “That’s fine. I think it’s important to find some secrets and mysteries everyone’s forgot about.”
Smith Ainardi wants to reunite with the families in the photograph she knows and meet the ones she doesn’t.
“I want to know these people,” she says. “I want to share stories with these people and hear stories about growing up in Italian families like I did.
“All these families came in the early 1900s, and I just want to hear about all the things people can remember.”
Smith Ainardi’s great grandparents came to Renton from Mattie, in north Italy, in 1906. Her great-grandfather, a miner, and his wife settled on Earlington Hill, in the south end of the Italian area called Garlic Gulch.
Many Italians immigrated to Renton during that time, and many of these families are in Smith Ainardi’s picnic photo.
There’s the Cuginis, she says, who owned Barbee Mill on Renton’s waterfront and the Cuginis of Cugini Florists and Fine Gifts; the DeLaurentis of the gourmet Pike Place Market shop and the DeLaurentis who owned Renton’s Rollerland; and the Favros, who dotted Renton Hill.
“They’re all Italian, all close friends,” Smith Ainardi says. “A lot of them were related; a lot of them were my family; a lot of them were just really close friends. Somehow everybody was related in those days.”
Like the Ainardis (many have changed the spelling to Anarde or Anardi) most of these families are from north Italy.
Smith Ainardi is hoping the reunion picnic inspires Renton’s Italian families to keep in better contact. She has scheduled the picnic for May in Philip Arnold Park.
Before the picnic, Smith Ainardi will start classes in January at Washington State University. Her intended area of study? History and Italian.
The former professional artist wants to work for the Italian embassy, or something to do with immigration.
“I’m starting a whole new career,” she says. “I would actually like to work with immigration, after learning all this stuff, what people had to go through to get here.”
Emily Garland can be reached at emily.garland@reporternewspapers.com or (425) 255-3484, press 4 then 2.