VCU news

By Brian McNeill

For the past 10 years, Chris Saladino, a political science instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Beth Saladino, who teaches fashion merchandising in the School of the Arts, have hosted a spaghetti dinner fundraising event in honor of their daughter, Lucy, who died in 2009 from cystic fibrosis.

To date, the Lucy Saladino Memorial Spaghetti Dinner has raised more than $100,000, with all of the money going to the Lucy Saladino Memorial Scholarship Fund at Mills Godwin High School and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in support of its efforts to find a cure for cystic fibrosis.

You might get sauce on your shirt, so dress for eating.

This year’s 10th anniversary spaghetti dinner will be Saturday, April 30, at the Wembly Swim & Racquet Club, 1311 Gaskins Road.  

“Expect fun and food and families and chaos and red sauce,” said Chris Saladino, a faculty member in the College of Humanities and Sciences. “It's all about being communitarian and so you walk into this world in a little tiny swim and racket clubhouse. You might get sauce on your shirt, so dress for eating. There is a lot of talking and meeting and laughing. There are a lot of desserts.”

The Saladinos’ original plan was to let Lucy, who was in ninth grade at the time, create an event where friends, family and the community could come together to have fun and raise money and awareness about cystic fibrosis. Together they decided to hold a spaghetti dinner.

“Our original money take that first year was like $3,000 and we were ecstatic,” Saladino said. “Only after Lucy died in 2009 did we start to really try to raise a lot of money. That meant feeding a lot more people — we cover about 300 people each event — and also adding in raffles and prizes and corporate support. The more we explored these options, the more money we raised — $25,000 in one year is our best effort so far.”

While raising funds is the goal, he said, the most important thing about the event is the community.

“We like that we know or are happy to meet everyone who comes in the door,” he said. “And, we love that they all get to know each other over a bowl of spaghetti and explain to each other how they heard about this, how they know us, and even how they came to know Lucy. We keep that spirit alive at all costs, and that's a little bit of Lucy that we try to conjure every year.”

The event has proven successful over the past decade because of “the amazing effort of so many of our friends and family who make meatballs, collect money, bake desserts, reach out on social media to get new people to come every year, and do all sorts of things to make it happen.”

“I think it is successful also because we have yet to be deterred,” he said. “Both of us, and our son Jack, are still deeply committed to making it work. And it takes that kind of drive to see these things through. I'm not saying we are unique, beyond having lost our child, but simply that anyone who wants to do this sort of thing at this level has to be all in.”

Cooking a feast for 300 people each year comes naturally to Saladino. Prior to joining VCU’s faculty, he worked in Richmond restaurants from 1982 to 1998, and was the executive chef at a Carytown restaurant called The Track for the last dozen years of his career.

“It is impossible to take the cook out of the professor,” he said “Almost as hard as it was to find the professor in the cook.”

Heading into this year’s event, Saladino estimates that they will make roughly 80 quarts of meat sauce — his great-grandmother’s Sicilian “gravy” — as well as 60 quarts of vegan marinara sauce, and will roll out and roast around 500 meatballs.

The Saladinos said they are grateful for the opportunity to be able to hold the event once again this year, honoring Lucy’s memory and raising money for a cure.

“There isn't a day that goes by that we don't think about Lucy,” he said. “And there isn't a day that goes by that my gut doesn't absolutely ache when I remember I won't see her again. So, raising money in the slim hope that our dollars will enable the research so that someone else doesn't have to go through this, so that one more kid won't die … well, that’s a no brainer.”

To RSVP for the 10th annual Lucy Saladino Spaghetti Dinner, email saladinobeth@yahoo.com or call 804-519-5292. If there is no answer, leave your name, contact number, total in your party, and preferred times you want to eat.

Seating times will be at 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 p.m.

A minimum $10 donation per person is requested.

 

Subscribe for free to the weekly VCU News email newsletter at http://newsletter.news.vcu.edu/ and receive a selection of stories, videos, photos, news clips and event listings in your inbox every Thursday.