Jul 26, 2018 5 min read

Anita Mazzei Sefchok remembers Fourth of July vividly from her childhood. That was when her father always got ice cream for her and her nine siblings. “My parents came from Italy. Neither one could speak English,” Sefchok says. “My dad worked in the coal mines, and he became a citizen. Fourth of July meant a lot to him, coming from another country.”

That holiday still holds significance for hundreds of Angelo and Maria’s descendants as the time of year they hold their family reunion. The Mazzei family reunions have been going strong for more than 55 years, and the 2018 reunion on June 30 gathered relatives from 15 states back at the family farm in Belle Vernon.

Sefchok, 89, still lives in Belle Vernon, where her parents settled after emigrating from Calabria, Italy, through Ellis Island in 1907. Angelo and Maria Cardamone Mazzei came to the United States as a young couple, ages 22 and 18, respectively. They dreamed of starting a new life together and had 11 children – six boys and five girls. Sadly, one boy died soon after birth. Anita is the youngest of their children and the only surviving sibling. Angelo was a coal miner and purchased the farm on Martin Road in 1944. There, they raised cows, chickens, wheat, barley, hay and corn. The kids helped him on the farm, and Anita remembers moving there with her parents at age 15. She stayed until she married at age 21.

After Angelo died, Anita says her mother continued the tradition of family visiting the farm for Sundays, holidays and especially for those Fourth of July picnics and ice cream. Through the years and generations, it became a bigger and bigger party. Eventually, the annual reunion moved from the farm to a park and attracted more and more relatives. Anita’s son, Tim Sefchok, is 62 and lives in Maryland. He remembers going to the reunions as a young child.

“The reunion started back on the farm when I was a kid,” he says. “It was every year, then it went to every three years, and now it’s every six years.”

Though the frequency of reunions has fallen, both the family bond and attendance remain strong. How do you organize a family reunion for more than 200 members from across the country?

“We put a lot into it,” Tim says. “There’s a committee of senior cousins that are working on this.”

He says that committee consists of about 10 cousins who are also each responsible for collecting data on their family members. Months of planning pay off with a big guest list. “We sent out that invitation at the first of the year, and the response is pretty big this time,” he says.

This reunion is much more than a party. It’s also a chance to study the genealogy of the Mazzei clan, with attendees taking home compilations of the family tree, birthdays, marriages, dates of death and more family history. There’s even a calendar showing everyone’s birthdays.

“For this reunion, we have something very special,” Tim says. His cousin, Jimmy Mazzei from Connecticut, has created a 100-page family journal with photos and family history he compiled through the years. “He grew up on the farm for 20 years and shares a very personal story of the very beginning, which takes us from 1944 to 1964,” says Tim. “Stories about all of the siblings, the grandparents, how uncle Dom (Jimmy’s father and Anita’s brother) modernized the farm.”

The reunion moved to Cedar Creek Park in 1976, but this year it returns to the family farm and, for the first time, into the barn, which has been completely restored by family members Gary and Lori Flower. Foundation repair, new wiring and lighting and a new metal roof were part of a renovation so that Lori can turn the barn into a place of business. So what better place to hold the Mazzei family reunion than inside the barn? Anita says, “Having the reunion there this time is bringing back wonderful memories of my mom and dad.”

One of the best parts of a family reunion is the homemade food. This huge Italian reunion had family members cooking up pasta, meatballs, sauce, chicken, sausage, halupki and halushki. Raffles, volleyball, hayrides and even fireworks rounded out the family fun. With so many relatives, how do they know who is who? After all, Tim says they’ve added 55 newborns to the family since the last reunion in 2012. Everyone wears a name tag, of course, and each family has a designated T-shirt color to identify them. Anita says it’s wonderful to see relatives you know and to meet new ones. “Oh, definitely, yes,” she says. “As an example, one of my brother’s granddaughters I have not seen since they were young.”

Anita herself made pasta sauce, zucchini casserole and some desserts for the reunion, and she’s not surprised the tradition has endured. Her son, Tim, is confident they will continue for generations to come.

“The tradition is to always serve ice cream and watermelon at the end of the reunion,” he says. “My uncle Dom started that.”

Just like grandpa Angelo used to do on the Fourth of July.