Italian-American women’s club scholarship recognizes its 82nd year of recipients

By: HSSN Staff
Saturday, May 5, 2018 | 8:48 PM

In the midst of the Depression in 1936, Julia Brunelli met with a small group of other Italian-American women in her home in Greensburg's Hilltop neighborhood to devise a plan to help young girls of Italian descent go to college.

If there was any money to send a family member to college, “the money went to the male child,” said Jonie Daigle, a member of the Greensburg Club of Italian Women.

Brunelli, the first Italian-American woman hired as a teacher at Greensburg High School, wanted to change that practice by giving local girls of Italian descent a scholarship, said her friend, Mary Pedrazzoli, 82, of Greensburg.

“She wanted to make something available to the women,” Pedrazzoli said.

The scholarship she established has continued and grown for 82 years, and will recognize its latest recipients next week.

Brunelli's goal made sense to Anna Monteparte, 97, of Greensburg, a friend of Brunelli's whose family ran a grocery store in the Hilltop neighborhood.

“Everybody else had a scholarship,” Monteparte said, referring to financial aid available to others.

So Brunelli founded the Greensburg Club of Italian Women. Current members in the club believe that in the early years of the club, $50 scholarships were given to the students. That amount grew to between $100 and $500 in the 1970s. At one time, the $1,000 scholarship was spread out over the recipient's four years at college — $250 per year, Daigle said.

The club has handed out an estimated $300,000 in scholarship aid in the past 20 years, said Michelle Answine, club president.

In previous years, the club hosted a tea for the young women who were awarded the scholarship, Daigle said. The tea has been replaced with a dinner.

This year, the 11 scholarship winners from Greensburg Central Catholic, Greensburg Salem and Hempfield Area high schools will be recognized at a dinner May 15 at Rizzo's Malabar Inn in Crabtree. Each of the college-bound students will receive $1,600, Answine said.

The club's scholarship fund is supported by an annual wine and cheese auction, which attracted about 400 people who jammed Rizzo's Banquet Hall on April 27 to enjoy food, wine and music, Answine said.

Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-5252 or jnapsha@tribweb.com.