From the Archives: The Feast of St. Rocco Returns to it's Home on Lower Main Street

Tradition is a living and breathing organism that without care will wither and die, and once dead can never be brought back to life.  Our cliff top home here on the Palisades by its very name, Fort Lee, is tied to tradition that goes back to the birth of our nation in 1776.  This tradition is alive and visible as every Saturday before Thanksgiving in November the ghosts of General Washington and his army appear in the form of the Brigade of the American Revolution and recreate the events of November 20th, 1776 and Washington’s Retreat to Victory.  The march runs from the Fort Lee Historic Park on Hudson Terrace up lower Main Street and west on Main Street, the same path General Washington took with his troops on that fateful November day in 1776.  This year, as in previous years, the borough of Fort Lee will partner with the Fort Lee Historic Park-Palisades Interstate Park and reenact this retreat on Saturday, November 23rd.  As part of the retreat activities this year, the borough, with the help of the Brigade of the American Revolution, will unveil four historic Retreat to Victory Markers that will be placed on Main Street near Bigler Street, Main & Schlosser, Main Street in front of Borough Hall and Main Street near Jones Road.  The markers will detail specific information of that November 20th, 1776 Retreat which enabled Washington and his army to escape British capture and allowed patriot and soldier Thomas Paine to write about that day in his famous American Crisis.  The funds for these permanent markers were provided by donors courtesy of Fort Lee’s Mayor Mark Sokolich.

Each year the Fort Lee Film Commission carries on a rather recent tradition on the birthday of acclaimed American actor John “Jack” Barrymore.  As an 18-year-old, Jack lived with his thespian father Maurice in a Victorian home in the Coytesville section of the borough.  In 1900 young Jack made his stage debut in a play directed by his dad at Buckheister’s Hotel on Main Street and Central Road, the present day site of the new development project.  The Fort Lee Film Commission worked with the Mayor and Council to commemoratively name the intersection of Main Street and Central Road “John Barrymore Way” a few years ago.  Each February 15th, Jack’s birthday, the Fort Lee Film Commission and friends lay a wreath at that commemorative street sign at 7PM and then we go across the street to the bar at In Napoli Restaurant where we pass a donation jug around the bar and read from Barrymore’s biography as we raise funds in his name for the Fort Lee High School Drama Department.  Each of the past three years we have raised well over $1,000 in Jack’s name for the benefit of the student actors of Fort Lee High School.  The new 3-screen cinema and film museum to be built on the corner of Main Street opposite Palisade Avenue will be named The Barrymore Theatre in honor of Jack Barrymore and his family and to commemorate this location as the spot where he made his stage debut.

I mention this tradition and history because this portion of the borough is also home since 1929 of the annual Saint Rocco Feast.  For decades the feast was held right on lower Main Street from Fire Company #1 east to the chapel of Saint Rocco on Main Street opposite Central Road.  The Saint Rocco Italian-American Mutual Aid Society of Fort Lee was founded in 1927 by Italian immigrants from the Italian region of Calabria.  The feast honors their patron saint, Saint Rocco.  Profits from the feast in turn are donated to people and organizations and communities in need.

For many years the Saint Rocco Feast moved from its traditional home on lower Main Street and was held on Martha Washington Way.  The feast survived and thrived but something was missing.  This year the festival organizers including Domenico Tripodi, Phil Arfuso, Sal Luppino and Rocco Palaia have worked miracles with the assistance of the borough and the Fort Lee Police Department to return the feast to its roots on lower Main Street.  As a kid many, many feasts ago, I recall a lower Main Street of the 1960’s and 1970’s full of wonderful stands, of colorful lights strung across the street, the smells of zeppoles scenting the hot summer breezes blowing off the Hudson River across the cliffs and down lower Main Street.  I still can visualize the faces of the people sitting outside their houses, on stoops, in lawn chairs listening to the feast music, greeting old friends and making sure they taught the kids about this tradition so they can carry it on and pass it along to future generations.  Always a constant was Saint Rocco himself  presiding over the feast outside the chapel and being carried on the last day of the feast, Sunday, through the streets of Fort Lee.

Fort Lee has changed in so many ways since those days and many of the people who were such a part of this experience are gone as are the many stoops and homes that lined the feast area including the garden apartment complex on Central Road where my Aunt Anna lived and where my cousins and I heard the Feast cannons fire off daily which was our signal to run down Central Road to Main Street and join the fun of the feast.  Today where that garden apartment complex stood there rises a 47-story structure that defines the beginning of a new era in Fort Lee.  Progress is important and it is great to see Fort Lee plan for the future but thankfully this borough and its people understand that it is important to carry on traditions in the shadows of these towers, to continue to make every August a time to bring Saint Rocco back to lower Main Street, and every Saturday before Thanksgiving to turn that same lower Main Street into Washington’s Retreat to Victory Route, and every February 15th to recall that here on lower Main Street the greatest American actor of all time, Jack Barrymore, made his stage debut in a fundraiser for the Coytesville Company # 2 Fire Department organized by his dad Maurice.  Traditions runs deep in Fort Lee so be sure this weekend to stop by lower Main Street, grab a bag of zeppoles and absorb the sites and sounds, and the faces of the people and remember, this is an important intersection of Fort Lee’s history and we must continue to work to keep this history alive for future generations.