June in Steubenville is busy. Summer concerts are in full swing, festivals and events are kicking off and soon, the annual Dean Martin Celebration will be here before we know it, this year taking place June 16 and 17.

While I was working at Historic Fort Steuben, the Dean Martin event was something that the Visitor Center took pride in being a part of, and thanks go out to the Spot Bar for keeping the event alive for many years. This year is no exception as there will be an exhibit and a film at Historic Fort Steuben as well as an opportunity to ride the trolley for a mural tour; performers at the Spot Bar; The Dino Dash in Beatty Park; a car show on South Fourth Street; an art show at the Grand Theater; and a traveling Dean Martin Museum based on North Fourth Street.

The Rat Pack Dinner show will be performed to a sold-out crowd at Froehlich’s Classic Corner. And don’t forget to join in the fun at the Dean Martin/Rat Pack Parade kicking off at noon on Fourth Street on June 17. Special thanks to all the organizers who made this a fun community event this year. Also, funds are being raised for a Dean Martin Statue that will be designed by Ohio artist Alan Cottrill. Funds for the statue are being collided by the Community Foundation of the Ohio Valley, if you wish to donate.

Working at the Visitor Center, I was constantly surprised that folks still are drawn to Dean Martin, even though he has been gone since 1995. Folks come in from all over the country and most don’t know anything about Steubenville, but when they learn that Dean Martin is from here, they immediately form a connection. Visitors remember him, obviously, for his music career, but also for his role in the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis Jr. Others remember him for his movies and his partnership with Jerry Lewis that famously broke up in 1956. Most visitors have fond memories of him on “The Dean Martin Show” that, according to his Wikipedia page, ran from 1965-1974 and his celebrity roasts. I still watch them online and even though the last episode aired almost 50 years ago, they still crack me up.

Dean Martin in Steubenville will always be a hometown kid who did his community proud by making it big. Locals recount often how their family was connected to Dino in one way or another, or how their parents and grandparents remembered the family from back in the old days, and mine is no exception.

Dino Paul Crocetti was born on June 7, 1917, at their home located at 319 S. South St. in the Italian section of Steubenville. His parents were Italian and spoke it at home. His mother was born in the states to Italian immigrant parents, but his father Gaetano (Guy) was an Italian immigrant. Guy was born in 1898 in a town in Italy called Montesilvano just north of Pescara on the Adriatic Sea in Abruzzo, just 50 minutes south of where my great-grandfather was born around the same time.

Around 1913, Guy made the decision to come to America and made his way to Steubenville. The very next year in 1914, Guy married Angelina Barra, most likely at St. Anthony’s Church. Their address at that time was listed as 443 S. Sixth Street as noted in the Steubenville City Directory. By 1917, the Crocetti family was living at 319 S. Sixth Street in a home above Guy’s barber shop, where Dino was born at 11:55 p.m. His birth was reported by V.B. Diloretto.

Guy worked hard to support his family as a barber, but his wife, Angelina, was a seamstress who also brought an important income into the home. Dino was the second son to the couple, as his brother William was born in 1916. In 1926, Guy was listed as living as 425 Slack St. In the Steubenville Herald-Star in June of that year, Guy reported the theft of his car, a Cole Roadster, from his residence. This was part of a larger operation where nine cars were stolen around the same time.

At some time between 1926 and 1929, Guy and his young family moved to 803 N. Fifth St., where Angelina hosted parties, especially for her sewing club called the Roma Club, where women would get together and sew, but also have lunch and play for prizes. The Crocetti family moved two more times in 1929, once to 118 Brady Ave, then to 630 Grandview Ave, a move which appeared in the paper on Nov. 7, 1929.

By 1933, the family had moved again, this time to 1210 Riverview Ave. Today, that location is near the on-ramp for the Veterans Bridge. My great-great-grandmother lived on Sycamore, the next street over from Riverview at that same time. I would like to think they passed each other in the old neighborhood.

Life for the Crocetti family was improving at this time. Guy was listed as working for the Hub as a department manager and Dino was engaged in sports in addition to performing in amateur singing contests typically held onstage at the Capitol Theater. Folks who remembered Dino in those days said he was always singing, especially Italian songs that would later be a trademark of his style.

Dino dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because, according to him, he knew more than his teachers. He wished to support his family and in 1936 he was listed in the City Directory as working in Weirton Steel. My aunt Lilian recalls my grandfather saying he worked in the mason department as a bricklayer’s helper for a short time in the very late 1930s.

In September of 1959, Dean’s wife wrote a story about life in their home that was included in a special supplement in the paper, she wrote “Occasionally Dean still has nightmares about the mishap that made him quit: A four-ton coil of steel dropped from a crane, missing him by inches!” At that time Dean and his parents were living at 313 N. Seventh Street, the only one of Dean’s Steubenville homes that is still standing. His father was running the beauty shop in the Hub, but Dean needed a steady income as well.

That’s when he became a boxer called Kid Crochet. A few broken noses later, he quit that profession saying that he won 11 out of 12 fights. He went on from that job to deliver bootleg booze, but his parents made him quit. Dean eventually got a job working at the Rex Cigar Store on Market Street, which featured illegal gambling in the back. Dino eventually became a dealer and a croupier in that establishment and was good at it too, making, as his wife explained in 1959, $125 a week.

But Dean kept singing with local bands and nightclubs and eventually was discovered by band leader Sam Watkins. Dean was drafted into the service in World War II, but due to a hernia, he was discharged after 14 months. In 1941, Dean married Elizabeth McDonald in Cleveland at St. Anne’s Church of Cleveland Heights and moved back to Steubenville with his parents in their home located at 2130 Sunset Blvd, their last Steubenville address, at the same site as Taco Bell today. Then his singing career took off and the rest is history.

Dean returned to Steubenville a few times over the ensuing years, participating in the 1947 centennial parade, and in 1950 when the city announced that Oct. 6 would be Dean Martin Day. Jerry Lewis and Dean were treated to a hero’s welcome. Dean was rarely seen in the city after that and, if he visited, it was not public. He still supported his hometown by donating annually to St. John Hospital’s cobalt division, which was used to treat cancer.

Dean Martin had a personality that was larger than life, but to folks here at home, he would always be Dino Crocetti, son of Italian immigrants from the South End of Steubenville who made it big. Stories will always be shared by our residents on what Dean Martin meant to them and their families as long as his music is played, and stories are shared, and “That’s Amore” to me.

(Zuros is the Hancock County administrator.)