By Elizabeth Barhydt
St. Roch’s Feast will return to Chickahominy on Aug. 12, renewing a Greenwich tradition built by immigrant stonecutters, sustained by parish volunteers and passed from one generation of local families to the next.
For four evenings, the grounds of St. Roch Church and the neighboring field and parking deck at Hamilton Avenue Elementary School will hold the familiar parts of the feast: carnival rides and games, music, food, beer, wine and the parish raffle. Pizza fritta, the fried dough that has become the event’s signature dish, provides another connection to the families who established the parish.
The rides and food occupy one part of a five-day observance. The festival will run from Wednesday, Aug. 12, through Saturday, Aug. 15. Parishioners will carry the statue of St. Roch through Chickahominy on Sunday morning before gathering for Mass in the three languages that reflect the parish’s history and present membership: English, Italian and Spanish.
The sequence—festival, raffle, procession and Mass— has made the feast an annual reunion for residents with roots in the neighborhood and an introduction for newer Greenwich families. Children come for the rides. Adults gather beneath the tents and around the food stations. Parish volunteers spend days preparing for the crowds and then work through each night of the celebration.
“It is a massive amount of work,” longtime organizer and volunteer Paul Cappiali told the Sentinel, “and we have a lot of fun.”
That work began long before there was a completed church on St. Roch Avenue. According to a Sentinel article on its history by Dan FitzPatrick, adapted from the St. Roch Annual Feast booklet, Italian immigrants from Morra de Sanctis in the province of Avellino settled in Chickahominy, Byram and Port Chester. They formed the Societa Morresa di San Rocco, a mutual-aid society whose members gathered in midAugust to honor the patron saint of their hometown.
Catholic families in Chickahominy initially walked to Sacred Heart Church in Byram for Mass. Father Sullivan, Sacred Heart’s pastor, and Angelo Roina, president of the St. Roch Society, approached the bishop about establishing a church in the neighborhood.
The Morresa purchased the property in 1918 and transferred it to the Diocese of Hartford, according to the Sentinel history. The Diocese of Bridgeport would not be established until 1953. Many of the prospective parishioners were masons and stonecutters who worked at the Byram Quarry, which supplied stone for the Brooklyn Bridge, the base of the Statue of Liberty and St. Roch Church.
Residents contributed their labor to the new church. When the money ran out, workers placed a temporary roof above the completed foundation and furnished a basement chapel with an altar and pews. The chapel was dedicated on May 14, 1922.
Local societies continued holding feasts and raising money. The St. Roch Feast became the largest of those fundraisers, according to the parish history. By 1928, the community had saved $5,000, allowing work to begin on the upper church. That year remains inscribed on the cornerstone. The parish will celebrate its centennial in 2028.
The feast’s growth followed the development of the parish and neighborhood. St. Roch marked the celebration’s 90th anniversary in 2010. The 100th anniversary arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the event continued on a reduced scale under publichealth restrictions.
The date has remained central. St. Roch’s feast day is Aug. 16, and organizers schedule the festival as close to it as the calendar permits.
“Our feast is always during this time in August, as close to August 16th as we can possibly get, because that is the celebration day for our parish patron Saint Roch,” Cappiali said.
St. Roch, also known as San Rocco, was a French pilgrim who cared for plague victims while traveling to Rome, according to the Sentinel’s parish history. He later became ill, and a dog brought him food during his recovery. He became associated with protection against plague and serious illness and is also recognized as the patron saint of dogs.
The procession places that religious history on the streets of Chickahominy. Parishioners, descendants of the church’s founders, clergy, musicians and local officials have accompanied the statue through the neighborhood in past years. The 2026 procession will take place from 9 to 11 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 16. A trilingual Mass will follow at 11:30 a.m.
Food carries its own history at the feast with tables and tents serving pizza fritta, sausage-and-pepper wedges, hamburgers, hot dogs, cannoli and ice cream, along with dishes from the parish’s Latino community. Pizza fritta can be served with sugar or with gravy and cheese.
First Selectman Fred Camillo told the Sentinel that his childhood memories included his grandmother making pizza fritta. His family’s connection to St. Roch also appears inside the church, he said, in a window inscribed “Donated by three friends.”
“The three friends are my cousin, Al Moreno, Joseph P. Kennedy, and Clare Boothe Luce,” Camillo said.
The feast also reflects changes in Chickahominy while preserving the history of the parish’s founders. The food offerings and trilingual Mass bring the neighborhood’s Italian origins into conversation with the families who worship and live there today.
“The Feast has long been a way in which Chickahominy celebrates its unique nature, not separate from Greenwich, but a unique part of it, and its history and its roots,” FitzPatrick wrote.
FitzPatrick reduced the appeal to a simpler description: “It’s The Wonder Years all over again.”
This year’s feast will open from 6 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Saturday’s hours will be 4 to 11 p.m. Stewart Amusements will provide rides and games for all ages, according to the parish announcement. Area children may ride free from 4 to 5 p.m. Saturday.
“We want to make sure everybody has fun,” Cappiali said.
The parish raffle will award 13 American Express gift cards worth a combined $40,000. The first prize is $20,000, followed by prizes of $6,000 and $4,000. Ten additional winners will receive $1,000 each.
Tickets cost $25 and are available at the parish office and after weekend Masses. The drawing will take place at 11 p.m. Saturday and will be streamed at parishraffle.com
