St. Paul's Italian Festival is quickly approaching, but the food prep has been underway since June.


On Tuesday, it was all about making over 3,000 meatballs.


St. Paul's kitchen was filled with the scent of Italian seasonings as volunteers rolled and cooked thousands of meatballs. As Tricia Louis said, "When we come to the Italian Fest next weekend, we might be eating some of the meatballs that we made, so we really enjoy supporting the organization."


In order for the Italian Fest to be a success, it takes lots of prep work and that includes rolling hundreds of meatballs, that's all done with the help of volunteers, some doing it for years, while other fairly new to it. Some volunteers have been donating their time since the festival began in the 1980's.


Kathie Iarussi said she loves volunteering with her friends, "We have been friends, my son is 47 and my daughter is 50 years old and we have been friends for 50 years."


But as volunteers get older, the need for younger people and community members to step up and help increases. Phyillis Adelman has been a volunteer for 45 years and said, "We are getting older, a lot, lot older and it's getting harder, but with all this help from Erie Insurance, it's phenomenal."


Over a dozen volunteers from Erie Insurance took time to help parish members roll all the meatballs that will be enjoyed in a few weeks. "Erie Insurance really encourages us to really support the community events and the community in general. So they give us some service core hours that we can use on a work day and come out and help, so it just seemed like a fun thing to do to come out with our team and make meatballs", said Louis.


Longtime volunteers said every person plays a role in the success of the annual festival. Ronald DiVecchio has been a volunteer since 1980 and said, "We are a very small parish, I doubt very much that we have the manpower to do it ourselves. I might be one of the younger guys and I'm only 90, so we will take all the youth we can get."

St. Paul's Italian Festival runs from August 9-11. The hours are Friday from 5:00-10:00, Saturday from 1:00-10:00 and Sunday from 12:00-6:00.