Spaghetti with Thanksgiving dinner. Sunday dinners at mom and dads house, and you better have a good excuse if you don't show up. Men doing a lot of the cooking. Tripe at Aunt Esthers' house. And how about this one, having friends and family over and everyone hangs out in the kitchen. For some reason one our biggest family traditions has to do with food. It must be the Italian in us. But probably more so, it's a place we all want to be. Cooking, tasting the food as it comes off the stove, laughing and talking, it's all part of the entertainment and what we all enjoy.

Another family tradition comes from Alfonso Procopio (b.1860), that is the masonry trade. The skill of the masonry trade has been passed down from generation to generation. In many cases within the Procopio family, the men and women were somehow involved in the home building business, and if you weren't a builder you had something real estate business. It was what we learned when we were young and it just seemed like what you should do since that's what you knew best.

We have many family traditions. Every once in a while when you're visiting a relative. They'll do something and say "this is what my mother used to do" or " if my father was here he would say ".......". Whatever it may have been, you can bet that if your father or mother used to say it, you'll be saying it too.

It's important to remember our ancestors and the good qualities that they passed onto us.