Organizers of the annual Italian Festival in McAlester say they have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2021 event — but they plan to come back stronger than ever in 2022 to celebrate a major milestone. This marks the second year in a row the Italian Festival has been canceled due to concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We've had several meetings since we canceled last year," said Bobby Lenardo, who is president of the McAlester Italian Festival Foundation and co-chairman of the Italian Festival Committee with Luke Whittall. "We met about a month ago," Lenardo said. "It gets to the crush to where you've got to send applications to vendors," he said "We decided we needed to go ahead and cancel it."