County Officials Raise The Flag For Italian Heritage Month

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — The Italian flag is now flying over an especially apt Hudson Valley location.

On Tuesday afternoon, elected officials, including County Executive George Latimer, County Clerk Tim Idoni and White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach, were on hand as the Italian flag was raised at Kensico Dam Plaza to honor Italian Heritage Month. In addition to the flag ceremony and the honoring of the U.S. flag with the national anthem, speakers repeatedly pointed to the importance of the Westchester landmark to the Italian-American community.

Organizers of the event note that nearly 21,000 Westchester residents speak Italian at home, making it the third-most-spoken language in the county after English and Spanish and that an estimated 37 percent of county residents are of Italian descent. Those impressive numbers might not have been the case, if not for an ambitious construction project conceived more than a century ago.

Pointing to the dam behind him, Latimer noted that Italian immigrants were largely responsible for the construction of what was, at the time, the largest structure of its kind in New York.

Idoni shared a a more personal connection with the stone dam holding back a substantial reserve of New York City's water supply.

"I kinda tear up every time I come here because my grandfather, Vincenzo Idoni was one of the stone masons that built this structure," the former mayor of New Rochelle recounted.