Retired Italian teacher honored as '2024 Person of the Year'

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) -- Peter LoJacono has spent his lifetime promoting Italian heritage and culture in Western New York. He was honored Sunday night at Classics V Banquet Center by his fellow Italian Americans as their “2024 Person of the Year.”

LoJacono is president of the Federation of Italian-American Societies of Western New York, which supports the work of more than two dozen local clubs and associations. The federation hosted its 116th Annual Italian Heritage Gala, where he was honored. 

Close to 300 guests paid tribute to the educator who recently retired after 36 years of teaching Italian and Spanish to students at Hutch-Tech High School in Buffalo. 

Generations of students have thrived learning Italian culture, visiting Little Italy neighborhoods, hosting student exchanges, and nurturing sister school relationships with Italian students, all under LoJacono’s guidance.   

LoJacono says he shared with his students the importance of “understanding our diversity and the perspective that what binds us together is stronger than what divides us.”

“I also told my students there is a world out there beyond these four walls and it is yours to discover and explore.”

LoJacono’s wife, Francine, children Sarina and Marco, and numerous other relatives attended the event, including his 94-year-old father, Vincent. 

Vincent wanted the crowd to know that Peter learned his love of the Italian language by sitting with his blind grandmother and listening to her many stories, in Italian, about her native Sicily.

While LoJacono has played leading roles in promoting his Italian heritage during festivals, films, parades and more in Western New York, he called his teaching career “the opportunity of a lifetime. I only wish I could do it all over again.”