Constable: If it is 'Goodbye, Columbus,' what fills that void?

Four metal posts jut out of the empty stone pedestal where a 9-foot-tall statue of Christopher Columbus once looked over Arrigo Park in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood. A chain-link fence encircles the spot where city officials yanked the statue off that pedestal in the middle of the night after protests and vandalism in July.

It's still an open wound to Ron Onesti, the charismatic president and CEO of The Onesti Entertainment Corp. and the historic Arcada Theatre in St. Charles. Onesti, 58, is one of the leaders of an Italian-American celebration scheduled at the park at 10 a.m. Monday in the absence of the annual Columbus Day parade, which was canceled because of the pandemic.

"My family landed here in 1911, about four doors down," Onesti says outside a coffee shop on Taylor Street in the heart of the Little Italy neighborhood where his grandparents, Gaetano and Sabina Onesti, set up a tailor business and lived the American dream of so many immigrants.

"Columbus Day is more than Columbus and a statue. It's about our tradition," Onesti says, as he stands next to the flags of the United States and Italy hanging from the fence. "You're not thinking of Columbus. You are thinking of Italy. It's the one day out of the year we truly let our green, white and red prevail."

So many memories of friends, family and food flood Onesti's remembrances of Columbus Days in the past.

"I met my wife in the Columbus Day parade," Onesti says of the 1987 event when the future Elena Onesti was a queen candidate and Onesti was one of the escorts. They were married on Columbus Day in 1996.

"People would say, 'You got married on a Monday?' and I'd say, 'No, we got married on Columbus Day,'" Onesti says. The couple said their vows in church that morning and then the entire bridal party rode in the parade on a float designed to look like a wedding cake.

As he's telling these stories, a young woman walks by and shouts out a vulgar wish for Columbus.

Adhering to his mantra of "Proud and Positive," Onesti tells her to have a nice day, and notes, "I'm trying."

In the past two decades, Columbus has become synonymous with the evils of colonialism, labeled as racist and a slave-trader, blamed for genocide and branded as a cruel and evil villain. While noting that Stanford University professor Carol Delaney, who got her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, wrote a book putting Columbus in a more favorable light, Onesti says those allegations deserve to be heard.

"History has always been argued," Onesti says. Americans have widely different takes on events happening now, let alone 500 years ago. He says he welcomes thorough debates about how to handle the Columbus issue.

"Our biggest problem as a community is more about the process, or lack of process," Onesti says. "Something that is so near and dear to our culture was so completely removed at the behest of violence and destruction."

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she ordered the Columbus statues in the city removed and put into storage in the wake of vandalism and accusations of violence directed toward police and similar accusations of police violence against protesters.

"Maybe the statue removed from the equation for now, during this horrible time we are living in, isn't such a bad thing after all," Onesti told the crowd during a speech at Arrigo Park the day after the statue was taken down.

But losing that symbol of the Italian American community causes pain.

The Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans delivered a letter to Lightfoot's office on Friday, reminding the mayor of her "temporary" removal of the statues, and "respectfully" requesting the Columbus statues removed from Arrigo Park and Grant Park "be returned to their rightful locations in time for our beloved holiday this Monday, October 12th." The mayor did not respond, and no one expects the statues to return for Columbus Day.

"Those Columbus statues, which were ripped off their pedestals recently, were often paid for and/or raised up by hardworking Italian immigrants, pinching their pennies to create something that would give them a sense of acceptance and dignity," says Bill Dal Cerro, a senior analyst of the Italic Institute of America, and a teacher at Fenton High School in Bensenville. Watching protesters "throwing blood on those statues or destroying them felt like a gut punch."

As president of the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame and vice president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, Onesti says he wants his community to be part of the discussion about the Columbus statues, and the fate of future parades.

"We don't feel we get the respect and sensitivity that other ethnic groups receive," Onesti says. "Why should we be dictated who our icons should be? You have an issue, there's a process. All we want is to sit down at the table and be part of that decision."

This isn't the first time Columbus has been put in storage. The bronze Columbus statue, first displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, was sculpted by Moses Ezekiel, who also has a complex history. A Jewish American born in Virginia, Ezekiel fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee encouraged Ezekiel to be a sculptor, and Ezekiel spent most of his artist life in Rome, according to his biography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

After the 1893 Exposition, the statue graced a second-story alcove on State Street's Columbus Memorial Building, until that building was razed and the statue went into storage. Illinois State Rep. Victor Arrigo raised private funds to have the sculpture relocated in 1966 to the park that now bears his name and serves as a rallying point for Italian American pride.

"So much history. So many memories. So many weddings, graduations and other family photos with that massive statue in the background," Onesti says.

The first observance of Columbus Day was in 1892, a year after anti-Italian groups lynched 11 Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans, when President Benjamin Harrison called for an observance in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' voyage. It became a federal holiday in 1934 during Franklin Roosevelt's administration. Now, several states and cities incorporate it or replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day.

In an attempt to curb controversy, Colorado just declared the first Monday in October as Frances Xavier Cabrini Day, a state holiday to honor the Italian immigrant who became the first U.S. saint for her work with children and immigrants. Cabrini made her mark in Chicago, as well, and Onesti had 28 banners made to honor her and other Italian Americans worth celebrating during his Columbus Day ceremony and processional.

"We're celebrating Columbus Day. We're not celebrating Columbus," Onesti says. "This is about our food, family, friends - our community."