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06/08/2022 08:30 AMWhen Dale Izzo served as Branford Festival chair in 2003, only extreme weather could stop the ‘Fest from taking place. Fast forward to 2022, when Dale, now serving her last year as president of the Branford Festival Corporate Board, is relieved, delighted, and excited to help bring the three-day festival back to the Town Green.
On Friday, June 17 through Sunday, June 19, the 38th Branford Festival returns, following two years of cancellations due to the global pandemic.
Dale’s first interaction with the festival goes back to the very first festival. The Branford native, now a North Branford resident, graduated with the Branford High School Class of ‘87 and was a teenager at the time of the first festival.
As a young adult, Dale got involved as a festival volunteer soon after she was hired as program coordinator for the Branford Parks & Recreation Department. She thanks her boss, Parks & Rec Director Alex Palluzzi, Jr., for encouraging her to get involved with the festival. In 2003, the same year she was named Festival Committee chair, Dale and her husband, Dan, were married, and Dale was also named to her current role of Parks & Rec assistant director.
November 2022 will mark Dale’s 24th year with the Town of Branford department.
It was through her early affiliation as a Branford Festival volunteer that Dale first met co-community compatriots Charlotte Mattei and Catherine Kiernan. Working together, the three went on to found the annual Branford Holiday Parade. Mattei was festival chair when Dale first signed on to volunteer and is one of the people who has inspired Dale to do as much as she can to create community in Branford.
“Charlotte was also pretty instrumental with switching the music on the green to what’s now the jazz series,” Dale points out.
Mattei helped found the annual jazz series in 2009. Happily, this year’s Branford Jazz series is also making a comeback, after a two-year pandemic pause. Dale credits another long-serving Branford Park & Rec staffer, Program Supervisor Victor Amatori, for his track record of bringing in big names for the Thursday night live music shows on the green. The 2022 jazz series kicks off June 30 and runs through Aug. 25.
Dale first joined Branford Festival’s corporate board in 2003-’04 as an immediate past chair of the Festival Committee. After a year, she was asked to become the board’s recording secretary. It didn’t take long for the board to recognize Dale’s knack for multi-tasking combined with her ability to take on leadership roles. With a laugh, she remembers the day she got the call to consider becoming board president.
“I was weeding my garden, and I got a call from one of the board members asking me if I would take it for one year,” Dale says. “I had two babies—I think one of them was outside with me in the Pack n’ Play—and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it for one year.’”
That was about 14 years ago. Dale says Dan and their two kids, Eric and Tanner, both now in high school, have all been supporters of her volunteer work in Branford and North Branford as well as volunteers assisting along the way.
“They see the value of volunteering,” says Dale.
In addition to serving on her kids’ school PTOs and sports team programs through the years, Dale is currently president of the North Branford Touchdown Club.
“I’m only as good as everyone who sits on these boards with me,” says Dale of her leadership roles. “The title means nothing. We all like to give back to our communities.”
Leading the Branford Festival Corporate Board
While many may be familiar with the extraordinary work of the all-volunteer Branford Festival Committee, which pulls together every aspect from its food court to kids’ activities to the stream of live entertainment, not as many may be as familiar with the work of the all-volunteer Branford Festival corporate board.
“The board is made up of great people who always want to help make the festival successful,” says Dale. “We set the budget, we provide the guidance. We help out with corporate fundraising in years when we’re struggling a little bit.”
Due to the pandemic, the past two years have made traditional festival fundraising difficult, to say the least.
“We didn’t really fundraise; but we wanted to keep the community together,” says Dale.
During the first festival cancellation in 2020, past co-chair, the late Sue Calistro, “found a way to keep the Father of the Year program and found ways to honor the Police and Fire [departments], because without those two departments, and Public Works and the Parks & Recreation department, the festival couldn’t happen,” says Dale. “Even though the festival [fundraising] provides the financial back of it, it really is a town event that gets a lot of support from the town.”
A public event at Nuzzo’s Farm in Branford in August 2021, Festival at the Farm, was last year’s benefit for the Branford Festival.
Fundraising is an essential part of the festival’s success, and part of the work of the board and festival committee leadership over the past two years has included making sure the festival had the financing to run on all cylinders when it was ready to return to the green.
“There are a lot of expenses people don’t see,” says Dale. “The rentals for equipment, the insurance we have to carry; we have to keep up the rights for the music...Over the last two years, those bills kept coming in.”
This year’s Branford Festival headline act, Almost Queen, a Queen tribute band, “has been booked for two years,” Dale notes. Almost Queen takes the sponsored Legacy Theatre Town Hall stage on Saturday, June 18, at 9 p.m. The stage is also set for many other extraordinary top acts and local bands and entertainment starting from the first night of the ‘fest; visit www.branfordfestival.com to see the full schedule.
Dale says the community has made a strong response to this year’s annual Branford Festival monetary donation appeal, and also thanks the strong support shown by the multitude of business and organizations who are sponsors of the 2022 Branford Festival.
“Branford’s just a special community,” she says.
Dale also thanks 2022 Branford Festival Committee co-chairs/Festival Corporate Board members Kristine Klarman and Barbara Barringham for their hard work, together with that of so many others, including Festival Town Stage Entertainment Co-chair/Board Secretary Dennis Nardella.
“Kris and Barb have worked very closely with me, as well as Dennis Nardella. Everyone just really pulls together,” she says. “The board is only as good as the committee, and I’m not a micro-manager. I’m putting my faith in the people that are running the committee as a well-run committee. They’re the ones that are out there doing it, putting it all together. Everything comes together because of the people that help put it together.”
Due to supply chain scenarios and other pandemic-related issues, this year’s festival folk have been facing—and finding ways to overcome—additional hurdles, from the helium shortage to running down rental tents.
“Who would have thought it would be hard to get tents? But, because of the pandemic, schools are using tents, restaurants are using them...so it’s interesting, the things we thought couldn’t happen, have happened,” says Dale. “Even now, with the festival just a week away, we’re still getting some curve balls thrown at us.”
Despite it all, “we’re still able to bring back this iconic event,” says Dale.
That being said, Dale adds that she hopes everyone who attends this year’s festival will enjoy it and appreciate the work and effort that has gone into bringing it back during a time of transition.
“If we learned anything during the pandemic, it was that we were resilient and we continued to find a way to do things,” she points out. “We were all in it together, and we’re still all in it together, even though we’re coming out on the other side of it. So, I hope people are thankful that the festival is back. It might not look exactly the way it’s been in the past, but it’s still a homecoming for Branford, and I think this year’s festival will help to bring the community back together.”