On Top of Spaghetti: 39th Annual Italian Dinner at Eatontown Memorial Middle School

Principal Ronald Danielson of Eatontown's Memorial Middle School said that teachers and staff had been busy all day rolling meatballs in preparation for Friday night's 39th Annual Italian Dinner.

Students and their families filled the school's all-purpose room on Feb. 25 to carbo load on bread and pasta to support the eighth grade's annual trip to Washington, D.C. in the spring.

According to Danielson, the dinner usually generates about $3,000 to $4,000 to help offset expenses of the trip. Danielson has been going on the trip to the capitol since he started teaching at Memorial in 1965 and became principal six years later.

Taking a break from filling plates with food in the kitchen, the principal stood in the hallway that is lined on both walls with pictures of eighth grade classes on the trip throughout the decades posing in front of the iconic capitol building. He said the school has only skipped one year of the annual visit, in 1968 out of safety concerns due to rioting in the capitol following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Aileen Woloshin, an office aide at Memorial School who was selling tickets at the front door of the event, said that her husband had grown up in Eatontown and had gone on the trip over 30 years ago.

"When you walk down that hallway," she said gesturing to the walls of pictures behind her, "you can see your whole family."