President’s Message
Greetings and Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.
This past year, 2025, marked the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Abruzzo and Molise Heritage Society! In this year we honored the founding through in person events and Notizario articles. We still have a couple articles that will come out in the new year.
Further we revamped our website. This made all of the online PDF issues of the Notizario into searchable, individual articles. We have also been building an online archive off all of the previously off-line society content. That will be ready to launch soon.
The Society was also involved in the launch of the first Italian festival in our region in 20 years. The festival was a success and saw many thousands of attendees each day. Many of our members came and helped out with our table and visited the vendors. AMHS sold coffee and pizzelle; we sold out each day. We also had a successful raffle and gained several new members!
We have also continued with our annual favorites such as the Ferragosto and the wine tasting.
In the new year we also have some new writers for the Notizario. While, Sonny Scafetta will continue to regularly write biographies of people with roots in our regions, Michael DeMarco and Philip Micali will be contributing articles about the history and culture of our regions. This is a part of our continued emphasis on the promoting the regions in our society and the D.C. area.
I would also like to welcome our two new board members, Carmine Spellane and Sophia M. Giudici.
Carmine is a familiar face who has been an AMHS member for 17 years. He served as AMHS Secretary from 2017-2023 and has been the editor of the Notiziario since 2019. He recently took a trip to Italy with Phil~italy to our regions and he came back with an even deep appreciation of his Molise roots and a desire to serve. We are all very grateful for what Carmine has done and his desire to serve further.
Sophia is a personal friend of mine whom I met a year ago at the Italian American Future Leaders Conference. She is a PhD student in English at the Catholic University of America. In addition, her grandfather is a very talented painter who has made many stunning depictions of Italy. She has only been in the Society for a year but has already written for the Notizario. I look forward to incorporating her artistic eye and writing talents into the Society.
We have several virtual and in-person events to look forward this year. Our first event is Wellness, Nutrition, and the Mediterranean Diet on Sunday, January 25, 2026. Learn more here: https://www.abruzzomoliseheritagesociety.org/events/wellness-nutrition-and-the-mediterranean-diet!
I hope everyone had a great 2025 and I look forward to seeing you all soon,
Chris Renneker
Winter 2026