When the eighth annual Washington Italian Festival gets underway this weekend at the Main Street Pavilion in Washington, PA, dedicated organizers from Primo Italiano Sons and Daughters of Italy No. 2800 will be in full force to ensure that the event is a success.

The wholehearted effort, they say, builds upon the legacy of their dynamic predecessors – the leaders of Washington’s first Italian festival, which ran from 1982 to 1988. Fittingly, this year’s festival will honor those leaders of the 1980s on the main stage at 1:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 21.