A Festival Of Diversity

You could say it's anything goes at the St. James Parish Festival this Saturday and Sunday. The festival starts at noon both days and ends at 9 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday.

Many church festivals stick to a certain style of food. Not so at St. James. There will be traditional American, Italian and Polish cooking, said Linda Demler, festival spokeswoman.

"Anyone who wants a booth can have a booth," Demler said. "We try because we do have a high Italian population but we also have other nationalities as well."

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Many church festivals stick to a certain style of food. Not so at St. James. There will be traditional American, Italian and Polish cooking, said Linda Demler, festival spokeswoman. A Polish booth is seen above.
Submitted photo

The same diversity holds true for entertainment. Saturday evening, the Kokomono Tune Band will feature a style that's hard to place. It's sort of a mixture of Latin and Jamaican music, Demler said.

On Sunday afternoon, the festival will present the easy-listening music of Happy Echoes and also the Happy Days brother duo. Happy Days plays a mixture of contemporary music, uses costumes and other props for a highly entertaining show great for dancing, Demler said. They also include several acts like a tribute to the Blues Brothers.

"We're really happy to have them come back," Demler said of Happy Days. "They play all the way from Florida up to here, and they are parishioners. They're here more in the summer."

It's not that big a surprise that St. James has such a mixture. Today, the congregation is decidedly diverse, Demler said.

But when St. James was founded in 1909, St. James was mostly Italian. The Buffalo Diocese actually asked an Italian priest - a man named Carra - to move to Jamestown to attend to the heavily Italian congregation, Demler said.

Three buildings and nearly 100 years later, things have changed. It's different, and the festival shows it.